For the past year and a half I have been a personal trainer. I have trained people to have more endurance and gain muscle. Recently, I wanted to advance my career and I decided I should become a certified Spinning instructor. Spinning is a great total body exercise and it is a lot of fun.

There are three parts or phases to becoming a certified Spinning instructor. You need to go to an orientation, read the instruction manual and train for 6-8 weeks at home and take a written test. It takes approximately six months to complete.

The day long orientation begins with a lesson on the history of Spinning as well as learning the benefits of Spinning. You then learn how to adjust the bike to make it correctly fit your clients. Once that is done you hop on the bike for about an hour and learn to perfect each move. After learning and sweating there is a short break before more learning and sweating. You learn how to make a fun and exciting ride as well as how to choose music for each ride. At the end of learning there is a 40-minute intense Spinning class and then you can go home. The class lasts from nine in the morning until about six thirty at night. Although the class was long and intense it was so much fun and informative. When you are done with orientation one can start teaching at some gyms but you still have to take the test at the end of six months to be fully certified.

Spinning is a new way for me to help people gain endurance, muscle mass and confidence in just 40 minutes. Although Spinning is a high intensity workout, people can go at their own speed and anyone can do it. People with back or knee pain can have great rides as well as people who are overweight. I am looking forward teaching Spinning.

-Dana Fine