So lately I have been going to Soul-Cycle in Tribeca, this dedicated bike spin studio that opened up a few weeks ago. I am not really a big “spinner” but my right ankle has a touch of tendinitis so I haven’t been running. Plus they had free classes Tuesday and Wednesday morning, so I went to those, as well as a class during the snowstorm two weeks ago. So anyway, previously I had only been to spinning at gyms like Crunch and NYSC. This is a different vibe, just like going to a yoga studio is different from going to a gym yoga class. They have several different bike rooms which are all lighted with candles. The classes I took this week were “intro to bands” — all the bikes have stretchy resistance bands dangling from the ceiling. While you are spinning you also use the bands to do bicep and tricep curls and ab work. HARD. Actually even without the bands the classes are hard. My first class the room was a little warm and I almost felt like I was going to faint at times. It didn’t help that I couldn’t always make out what the instructor was saying … her words would get muffled in the microphone and sometimes I’d be going fast when I was really supposed to be taking it easy. I had no problems understanding the instructor from this week, Todd, who began things by telling us, “this is not going to be an easy class.” Yeah. I think of myself as a pretty fit guy, but at times I was wondering if I misunderstanding the instructions. There’s no way he meant two full turns of the dial, right? The dial controls the resistance to the flywheel … but I felt like if I literally followed his instructions I’d hardly be able to pedal. Still, I decided I was understanding him correctly but this was just a hard class full of veteran indoor cyclists (mostly women). And perhaps being fit in other ways doesn’t help you as much with spinning as one might think. In any case Todd at one point called me out to pick up the pace. He’s a great motivator.
P.S. If you do want to check it out, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of next week SoulCycle’s Band classes are free for first time “band” students. Call 212-406-1300 to reserve a spot.
So did people here about this John Roberts retirement rumor thing? Radar posted this item about how the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was considering retiring, and then quickly retracted it. The Above the Law blog claims that Radar got this from a law school exercise. Apparently Georgetown University professor Peter Tague began his class Thursday by announcing that Roberts would resign the next day, “but halfway through our lecture on the credibility and reliability of informants,” a student from the class told ATL, “he revealed that the Roberts rumor was made up to show how someone you ordinarily think is credible and reliable (ie a law professor) can disseminate inaccurate information. ATL postulates that this is how Radar got their erroneous scoop — by students texting and tweeting their friends — and the LA Times buys it. I’m a bit skeptical, however.
This week NPR and the Center for Public Integrity highlighted the case of Laura Dunn, a former University of Wisconsin student who says she was raped April 4, 2004, by two members of the men’s crew team. The case, which was picked up by a number of blogs, is said to show how campus judicial systems fail sexual assault victims. But both NPR and CPI ignored significant facts that didn’t fit their narrative — facts uncovered and made public by an investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Reading the reports by NPR and CPI, you wouldn’t know that Dunn originally said a portion of their sexual encounter was consensual; that she “hooked up” with one of the men twice more after that night; and that according to police, she significantly changed her story about an encounter with one of the men at a fraternity party a year later. Here’s NPR on the how the story began back on April 4, 2004:
In fact, Dunn said that a “portion of the sexual activity was consensual, but she believed that Students B and C had sex with her without her consent.” (OCR report, p. 5) (The men say she was flirting with them, and initiated a threesome) It took Dunn fifteen months to press charges. Before then (but after the alleged assault), Dunn acknowledges she went over to “Student C’s residence twice to engage in consensual physical contact.” On one of those times, “Student B” was there and Dunn and Student B watched television together (p. 6).
So one of the things we had to do for our yoga teacher training program is write a brief (one-page) essay on both books one and two and three and four of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, one of the classic yoga texts, perhaps written by Sri Patanjali anywhere from 5,000 B.C. to 300 A.D. It was just meant to be a personal essay to I think basically show you had read the book and thought about it a little. Anyway I thought I’d share my take on the first half of the Sutras here. |
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So anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that I enjoyed the class. I don’t think I would say it was “the hardest workout you’ll ever get”