My brother was in town over the weekend because we threw my mom a surprise birthday party. Friday we went to Mister Tuna (which you should check out if you’re in Denver. Excellent food and cocktails.). Dinner included a lot of raw fish, drinks, and a bottle of wine.
Anyway, we decided the best way to cure our to-be hangovers on Saturday was to sign up for a spin class. We had to go to Boulder to pick up a cake for the party, so we decided to book bikes at Beat Cycle. Denver/Boulder still doesn’t have Soulcycle, so this would have to do.
The Location
Beat Cycle is located right on “The Hill” in Boulder, Colorado. I’ve been to a number of modern fitness studios, and this is like all of them. You enter, you choose the bike you want, you get some shoes from the hosts, you go into the bike room and set up your ride.
Like basically every other indoor cycling studio, they have like 40 bikes all pointed at toward the instructor. Once class starts, the lights are essentially turned off and the music gets going. The room gets pretty hot until they turn the fans on.
Overall, I would call it average. There’s nothing too special about this place. It’s clean. It smelled ok. They have lockers you can use. They have a water bottle station that takes forever to fill up your water bottle.
The Workout
Here is where things took a turn for the worse for me. I’ve done PLENTY of classes. I’ve done crossfit, I’ve done other spin classes, I’ve done fucking pilates, I’ve done yoga. They have an element of awkwardness and you’re a little confused the first time you go, but all that was nothing compared to this class.
Let’s set the scene: 4 people. 4 people were taking this class. Not sure how they’re going to stay in business with so few signing up, but whatever. As soon as the lights went down and the music came up, the teacher began shouting directions at us. And I don’t mean a few short cues, this woman just yelled and yelled. It lasted the whole class.
She yelled so much that I couldn’t hear the music. Unfortunately the music was also super loud, so I could understand the teacher either. I was left gasping for air, trying to decipher what the hell she was saying.
Also, she made us do the weird spin class push-ups the ENTIRE class. Not just a song or two at the end, the whole fucking class was made up of the drill sergeant telling us to go up and down on our left and right sides.
Anyway, to say the least, it was totally obnoxious. In the end, I just stopped trying to keep up and attempted to tune her out while grinding through my own personal hell of difficult, hot indoor cycling and getting yelled at.
Afterward, I played nice and said it was great even though inside I was wondering how this crappy teacher ever got certified and how the owners allowed her to teach her own class.
The Results
For all my bitching and moaning, I did leave the class feeling much better than when I went in. My brother agreed. He even LIKED the class and said that he enjoyed all the chest and arm exercises. I’m not convinced.
Overall, I’d rate this class specifically a 1.5 spin bicycles out of 5. I would rate the studio overall a 4 and say that there’s potential for me to go to another class, just with a different teacher.
Los Borrachos Denver 