I was amused that I had to look up _spinning_. I don't read the newspapers or watch television so I'm fairly disconnected culturally... I asked Google... which... tells me that "Spin(r), Spinner(r); and Spinning(r); are registered trademarks of Mad Dogg Athletics, Inc." .... I'm curious to know whether this is some kind of Organized Thing on television, or something like that, that I should know about. I ride a bicycle constantly, but for transportation, and I like to be aware of new mass public behavior in advance, since it often involves odd, unexpected phenomena in my vicinity which I might wish to avoid or account for. -- Gordon
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I had a similar reaction the first time I saw the word. It was in a monthly newsletter from a climbing gym... Spinning? Spinning classes? What yuppie bogus bullshit is this?
Then I figured it out. They were talking about the old stationary cycle for exercise, that silly looking thing with handle bars, pedals and an adjustable load gizmo for the rear wheel I'd seen at the gym. There are a whole row of these and they have newer styled handle bars with a computer and selectable programs to adjust and vary the load and cadence. There are related machines that mimic cross-country skiing with long handles for the arms and pedals with a horizontal sliding motion. Then the treadmills with computer driven loads and speeds for running in place, then rowing machines, etc.
Evidently there is a whole gym sub-culture developed over these aerobic machines and spinning is just one of them. So there are classes held with these machines and using them. The Berkeley YMCA downtown has exactly the same machines. They fill in the need for aerobic work outs that are missing in all the stationary weights and weight machines. The basic idea is you figure out your own aerobic profile (heart rate, lung capacity, muscle efficiency) and work on developing some optimum for them, by programming the computer for the machines. There are all these theories that go along with it. With spinning the idea is working out with higher cadences and lighter loads to develop better heart rate, respiration and the muscle and organ efficiency at storing and processing glycogen, then getting rid of the metabolic waste products like lactic acid during exercise.
The difference between this and actually riding a bicycle is you can concentrate on particular speed variations, loads, and time them to what you need to work on. My problem is I hate sitting down and pedaling up long grades and as a consequence I have no uphill speed at all. In other words I tend to ride like a kid, standing up, winding back and forth to minimize the grade and a whole bunch of other bad habits (that are fun).
Chuck Grimes