Over 4 billion hours of video are viewed each month. YouTube is the most-used search engine, after Google. Video is also changing indoor cycling classes everywhere. Like music, video engages our emotions. To reach a cycling audience with imagery and music creates a synergy that lifts indoor cycling to new levels.

Club owners seek something innovative. Cycling with video is enjoyable, entertaining, and a dramatic differentiation from the current indoor-cycling market. The number of emerging businesses that produce video attests to the impact it will have on indoor cycling.

As entertaining as video can be, however, the key reason people join clubs is to achieve their fitness goals and be educated in how to do that, not for entertainment.

Before writing the check, anyone investing in video programming must investigate the quality of education or coaching that accompanies the video product. This applies equally to live-instructor and virtual group classes.

At ICG®, we believe that video is JUST video. It’s an asset that can add to the indoor-cycling experience but will never dominate it. Even with the world’s best video, without proper coaching for the live instructor or excellent voiceover coaching in the virtual product, instructors will continue to teach to music only and virtual classes project to empty classrooms.

Quality instruction has always been the key to any successful indoor-cycling program. As long as facilities offer live-instructor classes, the instructors must appreciate, and be energized by, what video brings to their classes. Once they support video’s benefits, they will sincerely recommend virtual programming – provided that virtual class stands up to the quality of live coaching.

Empowering instructors to use video demands technology that allows them to control video as easily as they control their music. (DVDs just don’t make the grade in that regard.) It requires an education platform that teaches them to integrate video with what they’re already doing – while enhancing the members’ experience.

For a virtual class to invite people to train with no instructor, the content can’t be good. It must be great. There’s no motivating instructor who knows your name, maybe no social interaction with other members. What works for a solo participant on a bike in front of a small screen may fail miserably in the group-cycling studio. This is even truer if the facility doesn’t employ instructors.

So what makes a virtual class compelling?

Four dimensions make a virtual cycling class successful – Sensation, Flow, Challenge and Convenience.

Does the visual sensation grab attention? A compelling member experience must elicit strong, positive emotions. Is it forward-motion video of beautiful destinations around the world, or highly engaging top master presenters sitting on bikes?

Does the workout flow? Sound levels, content, matching voice and tone to the content, pacing – the sense of class flow must be better than with live instruction to be as effective. Members won’t show up for an average virtual class.

The members will want to be physically challenged by the workout and mentally engaged by the information. It takes quality recorded instruction, selection and use of music, music/video synergy, and editing.

Were the virtual classes offered at convenient times? Does the technology offer “auto” scheduling, allowing classes to be easily added to, or taken off, the schedule based on participation?

At ICG, we consider ourselves the leading authority in cycling with video. Indoor cycling is driven by instructor communication and motivation, plus social interaction. We believe instructors need education and training to integrate video skillfully and professionally into their classes.

We believe that virtual classes can rock. They must be visually stimulating. They must flow, provide a challenge, be offered at convenient times, and be better produced than a live class. Instructors must support the classes.

We’re committed to developing better techniques and technologies to make future indoor cycling experiences more “real”, as classes with video and virtual classes go mainstream.