Why Our Coaches Trained on the New ICG Connect System Before Teaching a Single Class
The spin studio at the Irish Life LifeFit Centre now runs the ICG Connect System, the interactive setup that links every bike in the room to a central screen.
On Friday 18 July, our Wellbeing Coaches spent the morning training on it. Thirty minutes of education, a full spin class ridden as members, then a further thirty minutes working through the system in detail.
Studio equipment at this level only earns its cost per head if the people teaching on it know it properly. That is the reason for the morning.
What the system does
The ICG Connect System is a touchscreen media unit that gathers performance data from the bikes and projects it onto a large in-studio display.
It runs three apps. The one used in most classes is ICG Connect Ride, which handles the interactive and competitive side: live data, leaderboards, team battles and race modes. The other two, ICG Tour Coach and ICG World Tour, cover scenic and choreographed rides.
Underneath all of it sits Coach By Color, the training system built into the bikes themselves.
How Coach By Color works
Coach By Color scales intensity to the individual rider rather than the room.
Each bike console shows five colour zones running from very light through to maximum effort: white, blue, green, yellow and red. The zones are calculated from the rider's own power output or heart rate, not from a fixed number.
So when the coach calls for green, everyone works towards green. Green just means something different for each person on each bike.
There is a detail here that matters for anyone running a studio. For the zones to match a rider's true threshold, the system needs their Functional Threshold Power. The bikes include a short built-in test for this. Without it, the console works from an estimate based on weight and self-rated fitness. That is a reasonable starting point, but not a calibrated one, and a regular rider working from an estimate is training to the wrong numbers. Our coaches now know to run the test with anyone using the studio consistently.
The first-timer problem
Most people walking into their first spin class worry about being the slowest in the room. In a workplace gym, that worry is a real barrier, and someone who leaves a class feeling exposed does not come back.
Coach By Color removes the shared benchmark. There is nothing to fall behind. The resistance stays under the rider's own hand throughout.
The competitive features sit under the instructor's control and can be switched off entirely. Knowing when to leave them off is a coaching judgement, not a setting, and it is one of the things the team worked through on the day.
Why they rode as members first
Riding from a member's saddle tells you things a demonstration cannot. Where the screen is hard to read from. Which cues land and which do not. How it feels to be new in the room when the numbers go up.
Our coaches now know how a session feels before they lead one.
Good equipment still needs good coaching
The system makes a class easier to follow and easier to measure. It does not read a room, notice someone struggling, or persuade a nervous first-timer to come back next week.
That part is still the coach's job. Which is why they spent a morning learning it properly.
Performance starts with people.
Thanks to Anoushka Moore and the team at Life Fitness and Hammer Strength for the session, and to McSport, who supplied and fitted the equipment and brought the training together.
Fitvision manages onsite gyms and wellbeing programmes for organisations across Ireland and the UK.
