I finally beat everyone in a spin class
What would you do to win? An exploration of the role of competition in our lives, as examined closely through the context of spin classes.
A friend gave me a free class pass to SoulCycle back in August 2016.
I did not enjoy that first spin class at all and never expected to get into spinning at any future point in my life. However, three years later, in August 2019, a new spinning studio opened across the street from my apartment and their grand opening offer consisted of three free classes that week, no strings attached. My initial intentions were to claim this deal, get three free workouts, and then never go back again. But somehow, without meaning to, I really got into it. Before the week was over, I had committed to a recurring monthly unlimited membership. In the month following the spinning studio’s grand opening, I went spinning 13 times, which works out to an average of one class every 2.38 days.
I’d like to think that I’m not blind to savvy customer retention and marketing techniques. The frills of this spinning studio were cool — cute lockers, Instagrammable walls, free tacos after class one random Tuesday night, free mimosas after class one random Sunday morning — but these things were not what kept me coming back. Was it the music? I love grooving to unapologetically mainstream pop music in darkness; to me, it’s basically clubbing without the possibility of a hangover. But I already do this at home for free, so there had to be something else even more alluring. As it turned out, the thing that reeled me in was the element of competition. After every class, I received an email from the studio with my stats: RPMs (revolutions per minute), power, calories burned, and — most importantly — my ranking relative to everyone else who had been in that same class. This ranking was expressed in simple terms (e.g. 24/33) and there was no information about anyone else’s ranking or performance. I entered my stats into an Excel spreadsheet after every class, created a separate column with my placements expressed in percentages, and color-coded my best numbers to date for motivation.
Very visible improvements happened in just several classes. I rose from finishing in the bottom 15% to placing in the top third, sometimes even breaking into the top quartile. It was exhilarating. Even if I didn’t have my life fully together, even if my supervisor low-key (or high-key) disliked me, all that mattered each time I went to class was crushing it for 45 minutes. I was always happy when I bested myself, but at some point my objective shifted. I didn’t just want to beat myself; I wanted to beat other people, too. I wanted to beat every. single. other. person. It seemed daunting; I’m not very athletic and my unfunny joke throughout college was “I’m running…for student government!” And yet, I was improving so quickly, right? All I had to do was improve at a faster rate than my peers were.
According to the emails, one’s ranking was determined by the “power points” one earned that class. These power points were derived from one’s individual class stats (like RPMs, power, calories burned, etc.), but the exact formula was unknown.
With my power points as the independent variable and my class ranking (see side note below)^ as the dependent variable, I created a scatter plot graph. Based on 47 data points (47 classes from August 2019 to January 2020), there appears to be a strong positive linear relationship between the two variables. This is also reflected in the correlation coefficient between these two sets of data: 0.88. A low correlation coefficient raises the possibility that other factors, such as people of drastically different fitness levels showing up to classes at different times/days, might play a greater role in determining my final placement in class. In other words, my individual performance and ranking were closely correlated and I was almost never surprised by what I saw in my post-class emails. My ranking was always in alignment with what I roughly expected to place, given what I saw on the monitor at the end of that class.
Since I had no idea how much better or worse my classmates were doing, I wondered about the shape of the bell curve of the class scores, as well as the standard deviation of the class scores (assuming a normal distribution, which is not a given) in the context of wanting to know how much harder I had to work to reach the top.
^ Side note for those who could possibly be interested: I experienced considerable internal turmoil on how to most accurately convert class ranking into quantitative data.
One possible option was: [(number of classmates defeated / total number of classmates) * 100]
The person who places first in a class of 20 and the person who places first in a class of 200 can each claim to have beaten 100% of their classmates, i.e. everyone else in the class who is NOT themselves. They can both be reasonably described as being in the 100th percentile of their respective classes.
Under such an equation, [(19/19) * 100] = [(199/199) * 100].
A second possible option was:
{100 - [(individual rank / total number of people in class) * 100]}
Under this equation:
{100 - [(1/20) * 100]} = 95, whereas {100 - [(1/200) * 100]} = 99.5.
I ultimately went with the second equation in my study because I wanted the numbers to reflect that being first in a class of 200 sounds more impressive than being first in a class of 20. This also means that under this equation, it is not possible to ever get a result of 100.
From my 15th class onward, I started to consistently place within the top 10. When I placed in the top three for the first time ever, I was thrilled and I seriously considered ordering a bronze medal from Amazon to motivate myself. (I’m glad I didn’t do this, because it would have been a poor use of money.) And yet, inevitably, my rate of improvement began to slow down and I grew impatient. More than once, I placed second. In fact, I would go on to place second a total of six times. When would I ever be first? I NEED ANSWERS!! I began to consider other ways to boost my score.
I didn’t come here to make friends
The spinning studio claimed that their power points equation also took its members’ weight and gender into account to ensure “a more equitable way to measure and compare total exertion of riders in a class” (directly quoted from one of their emails). However, you can never be completely sure about these things. These days, many systems are broken. As I lamented my inability to take first place, I began to think harder. This list covers the methods I considered in my quest to get the highest score in a spinning class. I implemented some of them.
Try harder and become stronger (boring, but an option)
I noticed that most people got to class several minutes early and pedaled leisurely to warm up. Many people turned on their monitors as soon as they sat down and clicked their shoes into their bike, meaning that several minutes of (relatively) low exertion counted towards their overall performance. This brought down their average RPMs and average power. Once I realized this made a difference, I warmed up in the same way that my classmates did, but only pressed the “on” button right at the beginning of each class, after 30 seconds or so of exerting regular workout intensity. This meant that I was starting the game already ahead of some people, with a tracked performance only reflecting high power and high RPMs.
“Isn’t this cheating?” a friend asked one day, frowning, as I told him about this over Japanese barbecue.
“I don’t think so,” I said, looking him steely in the eye. My defense was that the minutes leading up to the class were unambiguously NOT part of the class itself. It was a CLASS RANKING, not an all-encompassing ranking! It was not my fault that other people hadn’t caught on to this.
As the weeks and months went by, I noticed that several other people around me were also doing the same thing. So, it wasn’t just me.
Hacking into the spinning studio’s system to make myself the winner of each class (beyond my scope of abilities)
Each spin class at this studio devoted one full song, usually halfway through the session, to doing weights. Every bike had its own set of weights and people followed the instructor’s lead in doing curls, side moves for obliques, etc. In a similar vein to #2, while most people’s pedaling slowed down during this song, thus leading to a decrease in average RPMs and average power, I was hyper-vigilant to make sure that mine stayed constant throughout this time. Who needs muscular arms in the Information Age, anyway? Both this and #2 helped me to narrow the gap between myself and the people in front of me, as well as widen the gap between myself and the people behind me.
Steroids — I wound up in a rabbit hole, reading about various Olympic athletes who had been stripped of their medals for doping.
Switching up my classes to see if it would be easier to place higher at certain days or times of the week. Perhaps the kind of person who has it together enough to show up to class early on Saturday morning tends to be in better shape than the average member? The data did not appear to support this hypothesis; especially after I started consistently making the top five regardless, it was not clear that there was a specific time or day that would optimize my chances of placing first.
I worked from home one sunny day in November for the sole purpose of being able to attend a lunchtime spin class. My logic was that the class at noon would probably be smaller, and, if nothing else, meant that there were fewer people who could possibly beat me. I went into this class, looked at the five other people, and thought to myself, I GOT THIS. Nope. Opened my email from the spinning studio later that afternoon and saw that I finished 2/6. I didn’t talk to anyone for the rest of the day.
As mentioned, the spinning studio’s power points formula accounted for members’ weight and gender. The studio had its own mobile app, and members were encouraged to download it for ease of scheduling classes and getting updates. The app was also the only way for members to declare their own weight and gender, and this was done in the app’s settings. According to an email from the studio, the “calculation uses a ‘power per pound’ approach” — my understanding of this was that if two people exerted identical amounts of power output (and everything else was identical), the formula would determine that the one who weighed less would place above the other. Given these parameters, it would have been in my interests to understate my weight on this app. I floated this idea to another friend, who was aghast at my immorality, and I briefly felt bad. I did not end up deflating my weight on the app.
Unlike the method outlined in #2, I would consider #7 as cheating because it involves deliberately lying to gain an advantage.
Meanwhile, as I devoted my energy to thinking about these non-contributing-to-society things, I got into the best shape of my life. I hiked a very strenuous trail that involved scrambling with surprising ease, and I believe that it would have been undoable if I had attempted it during any earlier stage in my life.
I had always known exercise was good for me. For years, I had vaguely promised myself to exercise “more”, but it was the element of competition that got me to take it seriously. All this got me reflecting on the wider role that competition plays in our lives.
(Another explanation for my budding interest in the nature of competition and cheating: throughout 2019, I followed the various court cases from Operation Varsity Blues very closely.)
Variations of competition
The class rankings employed by my spinning studio have three qualities:
There IS a defined ranking, based on some quantifiable measurement
I know my individual placement
Other people in class do NOT know my individual placement
These three qualities were a good start in considering the variations of the kinds of comparisons we make between ourselves and others. Think of it in terms of a Venn diagram (see above). The spinning studio operates in the intersection of the purple (the existence of defined rankings) and blue circles (individuals are made aware of their own performance).
What about the other areas of the Venn diagram? The circles themselves are pretty straightforward, so I mostly thought about the other three intersecting areas:
Defined rankings, you know how you are doing, AND others know how you are doing
I initially labelled the purple circle “objective rankings” but wound up changing it because that gets into a whole other topic of conversation. Gymnasts, figure skaters, and divers are scored numerically and are ranked by their scores, but these scores are still ultimately subjective and are dependent on the opinion of judges. My point is, even if you might not agree with the details of a specific ranking, this area covers instances where a ranking even exists in the first place and said ranking is articulated. Examples include: America’s Next Top Model, the Olympics, and US News Rankings of Liberal Arts Colleges
True story: I attended an elementary school that followed the Singaporean curriculum. The Singaporean education system is simultaneously known for being very stressful and unforgiving as well as for being one of the world’s highest-performing. Starting in first grade (yes, first grade), we had major exams twice a year on the “core subjects” (English, Chinese, and Math) and our cumulative scores from these major exams determined our class rankings. We also had tests very frequently. Several of my elementary school teachers returned graded tests to their classes IN DESCENDING ORDER and announced each student’s name and score OUT LOUD when doing so. This is a very specific example where there is a ranking, you know your ranking, and everyone else also knows your ranking. It was completely normal to me back then, but I have since learned that most of my friends today did not have similar elementary school experiences. Did this environment shape me into the person I am today? You bet. This is my explanation for continuing to monitor my spinning statistics on Excel.
You know how you are doing and others know how you are doing, BUT there are no defined rankings
This is basically life, in a nutshell — this happens every time you catch up with friends
Defined rankings, others know how you are doing, BUT you don’t know how you are doing
This is a more unusual situation, but I could see this happening with people with more power/authority than yourself — e.g. managers or administrators
Once I understood all this, my aggressive improvements in spinning made more sense. I am a very competitive person, but this is not evident to people who don’t know me well. I like to keep a low profile about my accomplishments and it only comes out when I sense that I might gain from sharing them. People have a good radar and low tolerance for casual bragging, and I care about being liked. I also dislike the attention that comes with public victories. Throughout my days of being publicly ranked in elementary school and beyond, my mother would regularly caution me with a Chinese saying: tall trees attract the wind. In my everyday life, I face seemingly at-odds desires to affirm my performance relative to others and also to not come across as deeply obnoxious. Looking back, it shouldn’t have been surprising that I would love and thrive under the private yet defined nature of competition in spin classes.
Self-Reflection in the Face of Competition
The mere existence of competition or lack thereof, as well as the type of competition, can heavily influence individual outcomes. The fact that my average power throughout a 45-minute spin class more than tripled within one month (!) is deeply inconsequential in the big picture, but the key takeaways from the concept of competition can be applied to life.
Firstly, it is good to understand yourself and how you react in different forms of competition. It is also good to, where possible, use this understanding to purposely put yourself in environments that influence you to be your best self. It is good to understand what winning means to you and to have a sense of the lengths you’ll go to in order to win. I know people who wanted to beat others and be someone so badly that they left the pool they were metaphorically swimming in for a smaller one. Some people look down on this, but I think that this actually reflects self-awareness and is not necessarily a negative personality trait.
Secondly, the desire to win — whatever that looks like to you — can overtake the intrinsic desire for the thing itself. This can be a good thing, a bad thing, or neither. If my desire to place first in spinning consumes me to the point that I don’t even care about fitness anymore, most people would agree that this outcome is bad. That said, I regularly think about the ways that competition inadvertently brought me to where I am today. Seven years ago, I was working on college applications. I was a clueless, awkward, lazy seventeen-year-old with few aspirations for myself. Around that time, my mother asked me what I wanted to do after I was done with school. I thought for a few minutes and earnestly answered, “I want to have a job.”
“A job,” my mother repeated, scathingly, unable to conceal her disappointment after sinking in so much time, money, and effort into my education.
I was surrounded by people who were applying to, or attending, highly selective colleges. I didn’t quite know what winning looked like for me, but I knew for sure that I didn’t want to lose by not getting into, and attending, a highly selective college. It was this peer pressure and fear of losing face that pushed me to put in a modicum of effort into my applications. I would say the same thing about my academic performance in college, as well as hustling to find a job before graduating. My motives for winning/not losing in these cases were not very noble, but the outcomes that arose from this sense of peer competition altered the trajectory of my life for the better and will continue to benefit me for the foreseeable future.
The pyrrhic victory
At this point, you know that the story ends with my eventual win at a spin class. The title is a giveaway! You would be right; I decided months ago that this essay could not be published until I beat everyone, and I mean everyone, in a spin class. However, my way of getting there was unexpected.
Four months after I started regularly going to spin class, I was out dancing with some friends when I saw several of the spinning studio employees across the room, hanging around the bar. They probably had no interest in talking about work at 11:50pm on a Saturday night. However, I have plenty of experience in being killjoy; I was that person who regularly brought up grades at college parties. So I sashayed over, disrupted their peace, and talked in-depth about my ongoing, thus-far unsuccessful quest to finish first.
One of the spinning studio employees furrowed her brow, and exhaled.
"Pick Bike 12,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
Being on Bike 12 was easier, she explained, because “it moves well”.
In over 40 classes, I had not once considered the role of the bike itself in determining one’s class rank. I usually picked bikes that were located on the right side of the front row. I discovered pretty early on in my time at the spinning studio that I liked being in that area of the room and from that point on never really tried any other bike. For months, Bike 8 had been my default choice, and I occasionally switched to the neighboring ones if Bike 8 was taken. (8 is a lucky number in Chinese culture because it sounds similar to the Chinese word for “fortune”.)
Bike 12 was located on the left side of the front row, closer to the door.
Soon after, a friend mentioned that she was interested in trying out spinning for the first time. I immediately browsed through the studio’s app, only considering classes in which Bike 12 was available. After securing Bike 12 for myself, I suggested that my friend pick a bike next to mine.
This class was a morning class, and I woke up feeling slightly nervous. It also happened to be New Year’s Eve. I got ready, put on one of my five identical tank tops, walked across the street to the studio, and met my friend. Unbeknownst to her, I had a mission to complete.
Midway through class, the current rankings momentarily flashed on the screen: my name was at the top!!
At that point, the person who was in second place was 15 power points behind me. I pedaled even harder to make sure this (not very large) lead wasn’t narrowed any further.
I worried about my ranking for the reminder of the day. I didn’t receive the email containing my stats until 13 hours after class, when I was at a New Year’s Eve party and several drinks in.
I scrolled down impatiently: 1/19, 441 power points. My heart soared. I felt whole inside.
What a great end to the year!
Or…not really? At said party, I had started telling people about my grand endeavors to beat everyone in a spin class, and the reception was lukewarm. I expected my friends to be happier for me. Some expressed surprise that at least one spinning studio employee was aware of the Bike 12 phenomenon and yet chose to do nothing about it. Others asked if the victory felt truly earned, knowing that this was the means by which I won.
I didn’t know how to answer these questions, so I showed up on January 5 for my first spin class of 2020, once again on Bike 12 and once again with the same friend next to me. This time, my ranking was 1/27. With 472 power points and a “class ranking score” of 96.30, this marked my personal all-time best.
I had another class on Bike 12 a few days after hitting that personal best, on January 8, without my friend. My ranking for that class was 3/38, with 463 power points.
I had a few thoughts from these classes:
(a) Placing 3/38 on Bike 12 on January 8 despite producing a performance that definitely on par with the two times I placed first suggests to me that being on Bike 12 is not an absolute guaranteed method for placing first.
That said, my spreadsheet indicates that I only ever scored above 430 power points on five occasions over five months; it’s a bit odd if three of them happened days apart from each other and on the same bike. As you can see from my results on January 12, when I was back on my regular Bike 8, I had results that were noticeably lower and also closer to my norm. So was there really an advantage to being on Bike 12? Perhaps.
(b) To what extent could my two first-place finishes be attributed to the presence of my friend? On one hand, it might just be a coincidence that the only two times I ever placed first was when I was next to someone I knew. But on the other hand, given what the presence of competition brings out in me, it seems completely possible that working out next to my friend pushed me to try harder.
(I will also add that, other than the December 31 and January 5 classes, I went spinning with a friend on only one other occasion: I finished 2/27 and had a then-personal best.)
(c) To what extent could my two first-place finishes be attributed to the mere belief that I could and would win, which in turn produced greater results? Perhaps this was completely mental. What if the spinning studio employee had just picked a random number and the bike actually had NO intrinsic advantage? During that class on New Year’s Eve, when I saw my #1 ranking flash across the screen midway through, I was motivated to consciously push myself harder to prevent my lead from slipping away. Being in this kind of headspace can sometimes lead to a virtuous cycle of achievement.
(d) Did all this count as cheating? At first, I thought the answer was yes. Assuming the veracity of the spinning studio employee, I was gaining an unfair advantage by being on Bike 12. However, my conviction has since wavered somewhat. Given a full class, someone has to be on Bike 12. Conversely, nobody has to pay someone else tens of thousands of dollars to edit their children’s SAT answers. Nobody has to fraudulently pass their children off as athletes in order to help them gain admission to college. Was I just supposed to never go on Bike 12 again after gaining knowledge about its advantages?
When I was on Bike 12 and class was about to start, the spinning studio employee I talked to at the bar walked in. Employees sometimes joined classes at the last minute, taking unoccupied bikes. We made eye contact and I felt slightly awkward. Did she realize that I had taken her advice very seriously? Had she wanted to be on Bike 12 herself? Did she know how much effort I had put in all this time, trying to win? Did she know that it took me 45 classes to finally achieve this goddamn accomplishment that meant nothing to anyone else?
Never mind, I decided. Shame is temporary, but victory is eternal.