FlyWheel Sports – Stadium Cycling – Dupont Circle

In the world of cycling, there are really two camps. The dance-y, fun and sometimes spiritual brand that you’ll find at SoulCycle, and the gritty and athletic version that you’ll find at FlyWheel. Depending on our mood, we may be more into one than the other. But when we want a good dose of performance-driven cycling, Flywheel is the best of the best. The Dupont location is large with 63 bikes in the studio, but the bike monitor with our individual stats made us get a good sweat without needing a front row bike. Solid amenities and complimentary clip-ins make Flywheel Dupont one of our go-to studios from top to bottom.

RUNDOWN

WORKOUT

In line with Flywheel’s athletic focus, POWER 45 takes Flywheel’s typical structure and kicks it up a notch. Similar to the METHOD 45 class, a screen on our bike helped us to monitor our RPM and torq. However, POWER 45 focused much less on the torqboard, only showing our stats a few times throughout, and relied less heavily on timed races. With this shifted focus, we could go hard with our HEAVY ride. The only time we saw resistance levels below 20 were for some particularly short recovery sprints. The ride itself felt much more like a challenging outdoor ride; we did a lot of climbs and saw many a rolling hill. We loved that we didn’t have to break up our ride with an arms song and that instead of doing any choreography on the bike we spent more time focusing on our form. This class is not for the beginner and though we walked out feeling very strong, it’s a bit less fun that the typical Flywheel class. For the days that you want to feel like a strong athlete, POWER 45 is your move.

INSTRUCTOR

HO-LY FORM WORK. Richard might have offered the best form instruction that we’ve seen in a spin class. Beginning by walking us through the POWER 45 structure, he pushed us over the course of our ride acting as our fearless leader. Richard used a lot of descriptive visualization to make this indoor cycling ride feel like a challenging group ride outside. For a class that is meant to be a stronger version of Flywheel’s typical structure, Richard was the ideal instructor with his focus on keeping our power number high rather than heavily coaching on RPM numbers. Our only feedback was a result of feeling like we were just putting in the work instead of having a fun 45 minutes; we wanted Richard to amp us up a little more amidst the thorough instruction. After class ended, Richard even gave us clear form correction to get the most out of out stretch. For your most affordable personal-training-level of cueing, go see Richard at FlyWheel Dupont stat.

SPACE

With a large storefront space in Dupont, the studio provides the amenities found at all Flywheel locations. We’re talking complimentary shoes, towels (for class and our shower after), and post-ride fruit. There are four showers with Malin + Goetz shower goodies, but don’t take too long before work or you’ll hear the grumbles from the long line of sweaty bystanders. The showers are always clean, and though the locker room can get crazy in the morning before work, dry shampoo, blow dryers, and deodorant allow Flywheel to be an easy stop on your way to work. Dupont’s space can get crazy between classes, especially when you have 60 sweaty people trying to leave the studio as 60 people in their business causal best are walking in. We recommend changing into your spin wear before getting to Flywheel unless you’re into waiting in long bathroom lines pre-class.