Teaching Spin

My daughter and I enjoyed taking cycling/spinning classes together while she was in high school. We attended classes most weekends. As her graduation approached, she announced, “I’m going to get certified as a spin instructor and teach at college.” Then she added, “I think you should get certified to teach spin, too.”

So I did.

We both have regularly taught spin for the past 12 years, and I continue to teach classes every weekend. We have both reaped great rewards.

My daughter’s now-husband was a regular attendee at her classes. Although my daughter stopped teaching spin once she entered her emergency medicine residency, she has stayed active herself on a Peloton bike, even now in the final month of her first pregnancy.

I was nervous when I first undertook the new challenge of leading a group in a fitness activity: choosing and cueing the music, pushing my own effort, and at the same time trying to encourage the class through a microphone.

But in the years since, I have found that teaching spin helps me keep my own exercise habit alive:

– I am able to apply my knowledge of music, drawing on years of music lessons as a child, to an adult activity (even though I no longer play an instrument). Finding and using music to motivate fitness is a fun part of teaching spin.

– Even when I feel a strong inertial force, knowing that I have a class to teach in 30 minutes has never failed to get me out the door and to the gym.

– It’s a break from being a doctor. In fact, many of those attending my spin classes don’t know about my “day job.”

– The bond I feel with the members of my classes sustains me in teaching spin. There’s a synergy in the shared effort and accomplishment of the group, some of whom regularly overcome their own inertia to attend class.

Mitch Kaminski
Media, Pennsylvania