When you think of spin a few words come to mind; BURN, SWEAT and LEGS. Your first session will look a little bit like this:
But there's a new spin class around town: it's spin but, in a swimming pool!
Water resistance is 12x higher than on land meaning your muscles have to push harder and faster to get moving and, in one class, you can burn up to 800 calories. And that's not the only reason AquALLURE have decided to drown a spin bike in a pool for a great workout - the water buoyancy helps support the body easing pressure of the joints, muscles and ligaments while pedalling, which is great if you're recovering from an injury or even if your pregnant... but, most importantly, you'll be able to tackle stairs with ease the day after which is highly significant if you live in a flat...
Moreover, being submerged in water keeps your body cool - so it's a lot less sweaty than your average spin class.
I kept seeing this new craze pop up in magazines and wanted to give it a go as I love spin. At the moment it's only held in the Dolphin Square Fitness Club in London, Chichester. I arrived and there was only 3 other women there. The pool had swimming dividers across it and we were put into one lane. The pool itself was quite a nice area but nothing amazing. The class begun and the woman began shouting commands whilst every so often thumbling with the iPod dock sat upon a chair, just inches away from the pool, choosing different tracks. It went on for a while and I started to loose interest - hoping they would add some additional exercises - making use of the fact we were in water - eventually she did - getting us to do push ups on the bike, jumps, as well as sit ups. Later on we were given a foam dumbell. I picked it up thinking: "I can lift like 100 of these..."... little to my surprise pushing a foam shaped dumbell in water is actually a lot harder than you'd think!
The class went on for 45 minutes in an almost interval based form. Unfortunately though, the hype around it just didn't live up when attending the class: Firstly: I was hoping there would be more people and I pictured a whole pool full of bikers - instead, there was only 4 of us and we were pushed into one swimming lane with barely any room to move and most of us kept getting splashed by heavy handed and heavy paddling swimmers in the lane next to us (so I would probably wear goggles next time), two: there seemed to be no structure; it was almost as if the teacher just kept randomly deciding things to do, which isn't always a bad thing but, it stutters the exercising too much and, thirdly: having the iPod dock teetering on the edge of the poolside is not the safest thing to do - nor is a wet person hovering around it changing music constantly. I was really disappointed but, I think as it's still quite new they have a lot to work out. In my opinion it needs to be more like a Les Mills class, or any class for that matter, where a routine is created, along with music, and that is done for a few weeks and then it changes again, and again. It just seemed too random and totally all over the place!
It definitely has potential though and I could see it being a fun date with a friend but, from my first experience it wouldn't be something I would bother about regularly.
What's your thoughts on aqua-spinning? Have you tried it out yet?