ClassPass Confessions (Part 1)
Sweaty snapshots and exercise epiphanies from my years of fitness promiscuity
Part 1- Soulful Awakenings
Prologue: SoulCycle
San Francisco Financial District, 2014, 8:06pm
I never imagined I’d be here, much less enjoy this. I hadn’t envisioned myself gleefully out of breath, lost in a trance-like state in a sea of Lululemon crested buttocks bobbing to the beat of dubstep in the steamy confines of a dark room, while a fit and charismatic instructor lobbed motivational platitudes at us the way a dolphin trainer hucks sardines at try-hard cetaceans. In college I’d underlined Nietzche’s famous plea: “beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.”I now wondered what he might say about spin class.
As the lights came down at the start of class more than a half hour ago, I’d noted how the sleekly decorated room suddenly felt claustrophobic as I realized that had no idea what to expect next. There had been a palpable sense of anticipation in the air with a whisper of fear. I’d only felt this feeling once before, as I boarded the Space Mountain ride at Disneyland with my mom at age eleven. I’d said a silent prayer before clipping in that this super hyped spin class wouldn’t traumatize my anxious nervous system the way Space Mountain had. Even today I shiver to recall the look of raw animal terror on my face in the the mid-roller-coaster action shot they’d sent me home with.
The playlist won me over first. It had been been pure fire from the start, a bandolier of high BPM bangers packed with enough syncopated snare drums to exhaust a well-caffeinated marching band. I’d never heard music like this before and had certainly never experienced an exercise class like this before. It felt like working out in a music video.
The actual spinning had taken some getting used to, as biking in place for exercise proved to be much more elaborate than it sounds. As an avid cyclist I thought I’d be a natural, but there was choreography to follow, tapbacks to learn, and these tiny hand weights that magically became really heavy when you were winded.
I was impressed by the charisma and confidence of the instructor, Kamelle, who had a magnetism and muscle definition that was hard to ignore. As conductor of our aerobic symphony he kept us moving during the fast songs and just as carefully doled out slower songs with more resistance to break up the pacing and let our lungs catch up to our legs when necessary. At times I felt like I was at an inspirational concert, with a bike instead of a seat.
A hypnotically intense Diplo song before came on and even though I’d never heard it before, the hyperactive kangaroo cadence tipped me off that sprints were incoming. On cue, Kamelle stood up on his pedals like they were the stirrups of a war horse and began to fire us up with an inspirational speech. In total command of the class now, his trapezius and deltoid muscles glistening in the mood lighting, he reminded me of Maximus triumphantly leading the cavalry charge at the start of Gladiator. I pedaled harder.
As Diplo’s BPM pogo-sticked upwards towards an imminent beat drop, Kamelle told us to ride like it was payday and our rent was late. I tried not to overthink that remark and just do my best. Three and a half breathless minutes later felt supremely tired and supremely proud of myself.
Before I could rest, catch my breath, or gather my thoughts the tender echoey piano chords from the start of “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten came on and we began to use our quads to climb towards even higher breathless ecstasy. Cresting an imaginary hill together, hearts set on self improvement, our legs pumped furiously as Kamelle told us ”now is the time to set yourself free from doubt. Become who you need to be!” No longer in a music video or concert, I now felt like I was in some sort of secular, athletic church. Instead of the father, the son, and the holy ghost we had the quads, the glutes, and the tap-it-backs. As my lungs battled my quads for the remaining oxygen left in my circulatory system, I felt my heart touch the edge of something sublime and holy. Riding in a pack of wealthy women who haven’t skipped leg day since puberty I felt a centering sense of power and purpose. Was it the endorphins or was it love at first spin?
After class ended, still panting, head spinning, I stopped to get water on the way back to the locker rooms and realized just how few men had been in that room with me. I overheard one pair of women chatting.
“I just love Soul Cycle. It’s my new favorite habit.”
“Expensive habit, though.”
My first ride had been a free promotional one and I wondered how much these classes actually cost and why men didn’t like them as much as women. I made a mental note to look into these things at some point.
24 years old and lost in the anaerobic afterglow I wandered outside in a daze. The streets of the Financial District, were vacant at 8:30PM, save for a Lululemon photoshoots worth of Soul Cyclers waiting for Ubers. As I unlocked my Canondale from a nearby post, I wondered why no one but me used a bicycle for transportation in addition to fitness. Such musings would have to wait for years and essays yet to come. I decided to call my girlfriend at the time and leave her a voicemail. After describing my first SoulCycle class in perhaps too much depth I said something I’d never said out loud before:
“I feel really great. I think I like exercise.”
Welcome to ClassPass
The Tsunami of VC funding sweeping across the US in the 2010s changed our lives in many ways that we’re still digesting and grappling with today. It changed how we take taxis, get food delivered, and the frequency with which we hurl a perfectly good electric scooter into a nearby body of water because #YOLO. For me, it changed my relationship to exercise forever when I discovered ClassPass.
The premise, if you aren’t familiar, is that instead of paying the nose-bleedingly high prices for a drop-in class at one boutique fitness studio, you pay a fixed monthly price for the ability to schedule classes at dozens of them in your metro area. On paper, this was a delightful middle finger to the gate keepers of fancy fitness, democratizing boutique classes and also giving these studios more butts in seats, bikes, yoga matts, etc. It was the kind of value proposition where you could just imagine the smugly persuasive slide-decks that had preceded its inception.
My friend Kaitlyn had been using it and loving it so I decided to give it a try, too. For me, ClassPass was an appealing way to shop around for different types of exercise at different studios that also fit my mobile lifestyle. After two plus years as a line cook where I had little free time or energy for exercise, I’d switched to working as an event planner in SoMa. This gave me more free time and also had me commuting from my home in Oakland to my work in San Francisco. With ClassPass I could theoretically try a pre-work yoga class in Oakland or an after work HIIT class in the Mission, or just as easily do TRX or Pilates on the weekends without having to commit to any one of these options long term. It was the perfect way to get to try out different studios, learn about new types of fitness, and build a “choose your own adventure” exercise routine.
I had other reasons for making the leap, however. My SoulCycle days were numbered and I needed to find a replacement fix for those endorphins, fast. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. Quite the opposite. I enjoyed the content and I loved how SoulCycle made me feel. There’s a reason people for whom money is no object like Beyoncé, Katie Holmes, and Michelle Obama love the sweaty high of SoulCycle. The classes made you feel like working out in a crisply choreographed training montage, with the same saccharine inspirational content of Remember the Titans and I kind of loved that. Other than playing“You Know You Like It” by Aluna George and “Say My Name” by Odesza seemingly every ride (it was 2014, after all), the playlists had otherwise stayed good. They had hooked me hard and hooked me early. Kamelle and I were now on a first name basis and not to put too fine a point on it, but he’d shouted out my effort on more than one occasion. I’d bought clip-in Look Delta cycling shoes to save myself a few minutes of check in before class. I’d started listening to Soul Cycle instructor playlists on Spotify during my commute. Sometimes I would even catch myself tapping it back while I zipped down San Pablo Avenue on the way home from work.
The main issue was that paying for the service was looking daunting. SoulCycle famously got its start catering to wealthy Manhattan women and to this day does not offer a membership model, requiring everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to yours truly to pay for classes a la carte or in bundles. After my first free trial class, I’d realized that a single 45 minute class cost $35, which meant going to many of them would be tricky. Thankfully, I’d caught a break when I mentioned to my girlfriends friend Lizzie, who was a manager at SoulCycle, that I’d enjoyed my first ride a lot. She encouraged me to tell her when I was coming in so I could ride as her free guest. After doing this a few times, she came by SoMa StrEat Food Park, where I was working at the time, to distribute some SoulCycle flyers. She off-handedly gave me a stack of a few dozen of them, each good for a free class.
I felt like I’d won the lottery. For a few months, my bougie fitness routine was entirely subsidized by SoulCycle’s voracious growth marketing budget. Soul giveth and Soul taketh away, however, and a few spin-heavy months later the vouchers dried up and Lizzie texted me that she was moving on to a better paying job. Suddenly I realized that I couldn’t have this expensive spin class as the bulk of my fitness diet any longer.
It had been a fun ride while it lasted. More importantly, it had awakened in me a joy in intense physical exertion that had been elusive my entire life up until that point. For a long time, I believed that my athletic peak had been my undefeated volleyball season in 8th grade. Subsequent sports like soccer and crew had all at times felt too intense, stressful, and competitive for my at times fragile nervous system.
Now I had rekindled a fresh sense of wonder and possibility. What other delights awaited in the wide world of boutique fitness in the Bay Area during the height of the tech boom? ClassPass was my ticket to find out. After giddily handing over my credit card info to this fitness startup and scheduling my first class, I wondered: what would I learn in all these classes? Would anything be as fun as SoulCycle or would that forever feel like the stationary bike that rode away? More importantly: which of these seemingly infinite types of exercise would I actually stick with?