I am tasked with leading indoor cycling sessions three days a week at one of our Island’s two gyms. Five nights, M-F, I facilitate operations in our boutique facility offering fitness enhancements and group training. Again using the stationary bicycle as the cornerstone of activity.
Especially with the former, as I sit on an elevated platform facing the group, I am expected to choreograph, lead, motivate, instruct and inspire. All this as we move through our progressions and strictly adhere to the protocol du jour.
My opinion, steeped in humility, and based upon my personal history with cycling, indoors and out, exercise physiology, music, motivational speaking and race preparation, is that the combination, the mix, the farrago, of all these elements is what creates a positive and enjoyable experience. You can execute the most difficult session known to man, but in a group setting, if you fail on the musical accompaniment score, post workout doubts creep in like a smelly red tide. Or one can succumb to peer pressure and play nothing but the current hits of the day sacrificing any flow or deeper dynamic available only through experimentation, operatic trial and error the fat lady might say.
All this is secondary to the main issue today. The issue of finding that delicate balance of the combination of all of the above. One must talk the talk and walk the walk, or in this case spin the spin. I have been doing this for a long time and deeply enjoy the freedom to ad-lib as the mood, music, magic and endorphin flow dictate. I look at every class as a teaching moment, not so much as sharing the many secrets gleaned from thirty years of riding, but more from sixty years of living. It is a powerful combination. Toastmasters on wheels. Buddha on a bike.
Truth be known (always our goal here) sometimes I don’t get it quite right. Heck, sometimes I miss by a mile. I am willing to take that chance however, because when I DO get it right, it is VERY right. Like Jerry used to say about the Grateful Dead’s extraordinary and dedicated fan base, ‘our fans are like people who like licorice, not everybody likes licorice, but those that do REALLY like licorice.’
And so it was with great interest and appreciation, awe actually, that I watched Emma Gonzales speak in front of the White House on Saturday. She did what I could never do in front of an audience. The lesson was of power. And silence was the tool. Profound. She stared down a crowd of half a million for 4 minutes and 22 seconds to illustrate a point. Please allow me to put that in perspective, it is something I cannot do in front of a crowd of a dozen. To put it even more bluntly, it might have been the most amazing ‘speech’ I have ever witnessed. I was that moved.
The gift I practice, the opportunity I have almost daily to motivate through speaking, has been shown by a teenager to be totally inadequate. I am, we are, capable of so much more.
I do not mean to compare what I do to the courageous actions of the Parkland kids. I preach a choir of like-minded professionals simply wanting some early morning camaraderie and exercise, not hostile republicans blinded by blood money from the freaking NRA (the intended audience - not the actual live audience).
In closing today, let’s mix a metaphor or two and see how they roll.
Money Talks and Silence is Golden.
Listen up.
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