Danielle Devine-Baum is one of the best known FlyWheel instructors in the city and we were honored to get in off the waitlist for her Thursday morning class, which was full of regulars. Her years of experience created a really smooth FlyWheel class, which we felt went by in a flash and where we hit a new high power score. The studio is located in a complex that is boutique fitness heaven – FlyWheel and Flybarre each have their own floor, and the popular Fhitting Room and SLT have taken over the fourth and fifth floors of the building. The location is great unless you live far from the UES – try to seek out Dani’s class if you’re in the area!

RUNDOWN

WORKOUT

This was a deceptively difficult 45-minute class that left us feeling exhausted and sweaty but also refreshed relative to other FlyWheel classes we’ve taken.

The structure of the class was similar to most other cycling classes, with a two song warmup, and then several songs alternating between long hill climbs and faster-paced sprints. The beginning section of class went by really quickly as we found that Danielle used really long songs with a slower beat than we’ve seen in other spin classes. Yet she managed to keep us all cycling over the beat as we listened to some Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen. Later on in class, we listened to a few more recent pop hits and remixes, which mixed well with the tabata and tapbacks. The arms section of class was short and sweet as in all Fly45 classes, and we liked that Danielle didn’t let up on her instruction for our leg pressure throughout. We found ourselves sweating very hard and posting a pretty solid score for our arms song. When all was said and done with arms, we had two quick songs to finish off class, which was just enough time for us to engage in a couple of races. The pace of class and the length of songs was perfectly varied, letting us work out all of our energy without running low on steam before the finish line.

This class was a little late in the morning on a workday and we wouldn’t be surprised to learn that most of our fellow classmates are neighborhood locals, as the studio emptied out pretty quickly after class and there was shockingly no line for the four-stall shower.

INSTRUCTOR

Dani is a true pro – she clearly has a loyal following and we felt lucky to have this class with her after initially getting waitlisted. She knew some of the classgoers by name and called them out regularly and very clearly had a whole plan for how each section of class would go before she sat down – we love when an instructor has that aura of control over our workout. She used much lower-tempo songs than most spin instructors, and this suited the class very well. We definitely heard some classic rock mixed in with Beyonce and Rihanna. Some instructors seem to misjudge how long a song is and end up filling in time with extra rounds of tapbacks or sprints, but not Dani – the overall timing and pace of her class was well-controlled.

SPACE

FlyWheel UES is located on the third floor of a fitness hub – we’ll have to come back to try all 5 of the studios here, which all have amazing reputations. We’re pretty sure FlyWheel, which is more than 5 years old, is the original tenant, but we like what they’re doing with the space. You climb to the third floor and stroll through a narrow but breezy front desk area with lockers, racks of shoes, and shelves of water bottles all available. The studio itself felt a little smaller than some of the other spin studios we’ve seen but still fit about 50 bikes, and we never sneezed on our neighbors, so it worked out. After class, we had to ask at the front desk where the showers were and were informed we had to go down to the second floor FlyBarre studio to get there. This was a little inconvenient to lug our sweaty stuff downstairs and through several doors. However, we were thrilled to discover that these showers are both brand new and somewhat of a secret – there was no line to use them, and we really appreciated the Bliss shower products.