Originally posted by velocipedio
Now I'm not quite suer I have it right, because the spinning classes I go to are in French... but "courir" means to get up out of the saddle and pedal at a VERY high cadence.
The value? In terms of muscles, you tend to use your hamstrings and calves more when you stand on the pedals than when you sit in the saddle. Cyclists' hamstrings tend to be under-developed, and that can be a disadvantage in out-of-saddle climbing and sprinting. The high cadence helps train your muscles for leg speed, something that cyclists always have to train for or lose [or, so says Greg Lemond]. The combination is supposed to give you leg speed and strength.
But would locking your elbows into the bars and thus diminishing the weight on the legs be a good idea..it's the only way how I can speed up the 'running' .. the cadence while standing.
In terms of CV conditionning, you'll note that your heart rate usually goes way up when you get out of the saddle. If your spinning class is doing threshold training, that can be a good way to quickly get you up to your anaerobic threshold. At my spinning class yesterday, the instructor had me up to 175 for five minutes. It was not fun. [I think my maxHR is around 190].
Funny, I used to be fanatic about wearing a HRM but nowadays I leave it at home.. it distracts me and I know that I'll do my best anyway and when I don't I must be tired..
But it's interesting how the max HR has crept up with the spinning lessons.. always thought it was around 170bpm, and I've seen 176bpm as a max now (lowest seen ever was 32bpm in the morning). A girl in our class has a range of 50/55-220, she's fenomenal.
Ivana