Spinning® Community: if you haven't met her already, let us introduce you to Amira Polack, the Founder & CEO of Struct Club, an app for ride design that supports music-inspired group fitness instructors, studios, and clubs in their process of curating and leading classes. As she demonstrated at the World Spinning® Experience 2023, she has a wealth of knowledge, data and tips to benefit the Spinning® instructor community.

Struct Club @ WSX!

Struct Club sponsored two lunchtime sessions at WSX where Amira and colleague Javier Santin presented BPM: Beats, Programming and Movement AND Music that Moves. When we asked her to share key insights from these sessions, she delivered!

Between two sold-out and waitlisted sessions, and a total of 2.5 hours of education (whew!) Javier Santín and I presented never-before revealed insights distilled from many millions of data points we’ve harnessed from fitness instructors programming classes in our app over the course of the past half decade, from all around the world.

Three Key Insights

Insight #1: Standout class experiences begin with the instructor identifying inspiring principles that they live by, and shaping the ride, playlist, and coaching accordingly.

Balance. Collaboration. Accountability. There are many powerful ideals that you may aspire to live by - but do you ride by them? Often, the ingredients of a class are a collage of an instructor’s training, ideas from other classes they’ve attended, musical preferences, and original creativity. A disconnected collage can feel random to riders - even if the class checks the boxes for safety, effectiveness, and fun. For the coach who seeks to rise from good to great, anchoring their classes in something that's personally meaningful is a key ingredient.

The most special (and highest-performing) programs we’ve seen at Struct Club showcase a unique perspective that only the author has, and they make their point of view perceptible to every rider. Don’t forget: You are the only you! So, what do you stand for? How does that connect to the riding journey you’re creating? During our sessions, we gave out this free worksheet designed to walk any trainer through the process of making this happen simply through musical choices. The same process can be applied to curating the movements and choices of words used to teach class.

Insight #2: While conventional wisdom dictates that “music is 100% subjective,” there are actually objective truths about how key musical elements influence behavior consistently.

At WSX, we shared data about all types of predictable reactions that you as a coach can spark in riders simply through song tempo choices! For example:

120 BPM (beats per minute) is a dominant tempo. When asked to tap their fingers or walk, many people unconsciously settle into a rhythm of 120 BPM. This tempo is perceived as relatively “fast,” and we know from studies that fast music can help lift exercisers out of fatigue. Perhaps then, it’s no wonder why analysis of more than 74,000 popular songs since 1960 show 120 BPM to be the most prevalent pulse!

The dominance of 120 BPM - on the flipside - ends up creating extra work for instructors to discover music at different tempos (especially with music player recommendation algorithms feeding you “lookalike” songs)! We all want to make sure we’re helping our riders build their skills across a variety of cadences and avoid boredom that sets in by listening to just one tempo.

For challenges like these, you want to be sure you don't fall into that trap with monotonous playlists. And herein is the challenge, but also hopefully WSX attendees felt that we also provided a solution…

Insight #3: You can now solve many of the most common, toughest problems around creating and conducting music-driven programming in an instant. We’ve designed the Struct Club app to solve these pain points that arise - and more. You can even tour it all before downloading.

In a nutshell, how do you do this?! Stand on the shoulders of best practice and draw from the needs of your riders.

With all the important work you are doing in your coaching practice to lead epic rides and have a positive impact on your community - remember - you’re not alone and do not have to reinvent the wheel. Between Spinning® and its amazing team including global Master Instructors, our Struct Club wolfpack, and all the incredible humans in this community, think about all the collective knowledge, resources, and inspiration to draw from and share. Even more, when you take the time to ask your riders what their goals, needs, and dreams are, you may be surprised at the new things you could learn to inspire your next ride.

With that, I couldn’t be more stoked to build upon the energy ignited at WSX and beyond. I hope you’ll stay tuned for fun updates coming up together with Spinning® – all with a mission of elevating the meaningful work you’re doing to help your riders lead healthier, better lives. Thank YOU for showing up and showing out to strengthen your community - it’s as important now as ever!

Participants of our Music that Moves session at WSX 2023!