Hei's YP Get Fit Blog: Week One - Don't underestimate the bike
Throughout September, reporter Wong Yat-hei will train at Torq Cycle. His first blog post proves that an indoor studio is tougher than it looks!
Cycling studio at Torq Cycle I have been cycling since I was in primary school. I ride my bike to school, to the shops and for fun, but I have never cycled in a studio with music, lights and a coach before.
Cycling is one of my favourite sports so I am absolutely thrilled to be riding at Torq Cycle, an indoor cycling studio hidden in an office building in Central.
When I ride a bike it's usually for fun, or as a form of transport, so having devices to track my heart rate or distance travelled has never been important to me. However, for cyclists at Torq those numbers seems to play a huge role in every session.
After every workout, each cyclist receives an email about their performance, which looks something like the table below. I am not really into the statistics but it does feel like you have achieved something at the end of a workout when you get a report card.
Bike Power Metrics
| SPOT | 8 |
| AVG RPM | 82 |
| HIGH RPM | 142 |
| AVG POWER | 106 |
| HIGH POWER | 277 |
| TOTAL ENERGY | 306.9 |
| DISTANCE | 19.8 |
| DURATION | 50 min |
The stationary bikes at Torq Cycle are equipped with devices to measure riders’ performance. There is a screen on the wall that tells riders how fast they are going and their rank. I don’t think people care too much about the ranking because it is by no means a race, but you never want to see yourself in last place, so it provides extra motivation to pedal harder when you see someone overtaking you on the screen.
When I went to my first class, I made the stupid mistake of not taking my water bottle with me and I regretted it. 20 minutes on the bike and I could see sweat dripping onto the bike and the floor, and by the end of the session, I was worried that I might be dehydrated.
Initially, I thought because it was an indoor studio that it was not going to be too tough. I was wrong. I was sweating like I'd been running up a hill at noon. The studio is kind enough to provide you with a towel, which at the beginning I never imagined I would need, but the towel was dripping wet by the end of the workout. I totally underestimated the intensity of the workout, even though it takes places in an air-conditioned room.
I don’t usually shower in changing rooms at the gym because I am more comfortable using my own bathroom, but after the workout I had to shower, otherwise nobody would have stood anywhere near me on the MTR.
After a week of riding, I feel lucky that I don't have any sore muscles yet. The riding makes my quadriceps burn and I have trouble walking down the stairs immediately after the workout, but it always feels fine the next morning. However, I am not so sure that I will still be stay pain-free when I go for the special 90 minute session which is held on Saturdays, called TORQ90. Except for this extended ride session, all the classes at Torq are 50 minutes long.
In a couple of weeks I will challenge myself to go to the extended ride session, and I'm sure there's a good chance I won't be able to walk the next day.