Is Spin Class a Good Workout?

In my last post, which was a week ago, I talked about how I was going to “Spin Class” on Friday. Since I haven’t done a recap of how that went I thought I would write a little post about it.

For those who don’t know what Spin is basically it is a cycling fitness class that a lot of gyms run for their members. I’m not sure about other Spin classes but this one lasted about 50 minutes and it is intense biking on the stationary cycles.

So is Spin Class a good cardio workout?

Absolutely. I knew going in it was going to be a good workout for me because I had heard from friends and my girlfriend how tough it was. It lived up to what I thought it was going to be, and my legs were absolutely burning by the end.

When most people use the stationary bikes for 45-60 minutes you will often see them just go a slow pace the entire time, which can be an OK cardio workout, but the steady slow pace definitely isn’t something that will burn a lot of calories.

The Spin workout is a lot of intervals and bike sprints which really gets your hear rate going. If you’re doing it right you will be sweating quite a bit throughout and your legs will be on fire. I’ve talked about interval training before, and Spin class takes it to the max. We would do a lot of 30-40 seconds sprints, followed by a bit of a rest, then sprint, rest, repeat. And then we would go into more tension at a steady pace that simulated climbing a steep hill on a bike. Then back to the sprints, and repeat that.

The instructor said we could be burning upwards of 800 calories during the class. Pretty insane. If you were able to get to 2 Spin classes per week and work hard in them + do one other interval cardio workout during the week you would be set for your cardio workouts and it would really help with your fat loss.

Also I should mention that you can go your own pace, so if you aren’t in the best of shape you don’t have to worry at all. The instructor will tell you when to go faster and that, but that only means to the pace that you can go.

For the next little while I’m going to try and get to one Spin Class per week and then add one or two cardio workouts. I’ve got my two hockey games per week as well, so that would keep me in good shape for sure and help keep the fat off.

If you’re looking for a good workout I highly recommend Spin Class. Give it a try even if you are doing interval training by yourself right now I found that Spin was a lot more motivating than just doing my own thing. Being in a class and having the music pumped and an instructor getting on you to go harder helped a lot. Let me know in the comments if this post gave you the motivation to try it out and how you liked it!

P.S. – I’m off for my second Spin Class tomorrow morning 🙂

My workout update: Just 4 days until I’m off to Florida. I forgot that this Sunday was an Easter holiday and my gym isn’t open so I will have to do a kettle bell workout at home. I’m going to try and write one or two more posts before I leave for vacation because I know when I’m there I won’t be writing any. I’ve tested out a few new supplements and got a new great protein peanut butter I wanted to review as well (if you’re a fan of my Workout Tipster Facebook page you may have seen that). Have a good rest of the week.