March 21, 2023

The Top 5 Spin Classes in Chicago: A Guide to Finding the Best Cycling Studio

By Joshua K. Sigafus
The Top 5 Spin Classes in Chicago: A Guide to Finding the Best Cycling Studio

Spin classes offer nearly everything that’s required to get into shape, sculpt your body, improve your cardiovascular endurance, and take your fitness outcomes into overdrive. 

And thankfully, there are plenty of amazing spin classes in Chicago. 

With that being said, figuring out which classes to choose (and which gyms to visit) can be overwhelming in a place as big as Chi-town. 

In this blog post, you’re going to learn about the 5 best dedicated spin classes in Chicago. 

But more importantly, you're going to learn why spin classes alone aren’t necessarily going to maximize your results. 

The truth of the matter is that spin classes are an amazing part of a well-rounded, complete fitness routine. But you need aerobic exercise, strength training, and movement/stretching to truly dial in your health and wellness over the long term. 

So, in the second half of this article, we’re also going to point you to 2 classes that offer all the crucial workout components (a spin component, including exercises and workouts that normal spin classes don’t usually incorporate). These classes will give you everything you need to crush your fitness goals and get the results you want. 

If your goal is to get fit and healthy with spin classes in Chicago, this is the last guide you’ll ever need. 

Let’s dive into it.  

5 Best Spin Classes Offered In Chicago

1. SoulCycle - Signature Class 

SoulCycle is a classic spin class gym. When you arrive for a workout, you’ll set up your bike, prepare for the class, and join a group of other enthusiastic indoor cyclists for one of many different types of classes. You’ll enjoy the company and motivation of other cyclists, music pumping over the stereo system, and an enthusiastic instructor leading you onward toward a fantastic workout—every time. 

They have 2 locations in Chicago. One in Old Town, at 1225 North Wells Street, and one in The Loop at 111 West Wacker. 

Now, like most spin class gyms, SoulCycle offers several different types of spin classes. But when it comes to jumping in and getting started, our recommendation would be to try their Signature workout. 

This is a 45-minute full-body indoor cycling workout that includes rhythm-based choreography. 

Price: $20 per class for new riders, or $32 per class if you’ve attended before. You can also buy packages of multiple classes to get better deals on per-class pricing.  

2. Spynergy - The Ride

Spynergy is a spin-class studio that offers fitness, music, and community all in one place. Their mission is to inspire positivity through their classes, and to provide a safe space for everyone who wants to achieve personal fitness goals. 

They’re located at 1632b W Division St at Wicker Park. 

As far as classes go, they offer several different types of rides. But for those who are just dipping their toes in, we recommend The Ride—a 45-minute spin class that pairs high-intensity intervals and resistance climbs with energetic music. 

It’s a fun community-oriented class. It blends fun music into the mix and there’s an instructor to lead you and keep you motivated. 

Price: $32 per class, or you can buy multiple classes at a discount. 

3. CycleBar - Performance

CycleBar is a classic spin class gym with multiple locations, a cool vibe, and enthusiastic instructors. They’re probably most well known for their iconic workouts, their inspiring gym ambiance, and their proprietary CycleBeats music playlist. 

They operate a few different locations in and around the Chicago area, including locations at:

  • Fulton Market - 175 N Halsted Street in Chicago
  • River North - 720 North LaSalle Drive in Chicago
  • Oak Park/River Forest - 7513 Lake Street in River Forest

As far as classes go, they offer several awesome options. But for people who are thinking about diving into spin classes to get started, we’d recommend checking out their Performance class. This is a ride that motivates you with your minute-by-minute CycleStats during the workout, while also incorporating group challenges and even rider competitions to make it fun, engaging, and exciting.  

Price: $20 per ride (but prices also vary slightly by location and by the type of class you’re purchasing).

4. Bikettle - Cho-Ro-ograph

Bikettle is an indoor cycling boot camp where you’ll find all of the traditional, expected elements of an amazing spin class. Music, lights, indoor cycling, instructors, awesome high-energy classes—you’ll find it all at Bikettle. 

They also serve 2 locations in Chicago. There’s one on the Westside at 4024 W. North Ave, and there’s one on the Southside at 345 E. 75th St.

As far as classes go, for newcomers, we would recommend trying out their Cho-RO-ograph class, which is basically an entire workout based around ‘dancing to music’ while riding the bike. It’s super fun, but it also really works up a sweat. 

Price: You can buy a single bike ride for $20, or get unlimited rides for $119 per month. 

5. Push Indoor Cycling - Bootcamp

Push Indoor Cycling offers a wide variety of different types of spin classes—along with a beautiful indoor cycling gym and enthusiastic, knowledgeable instructors to lead the workouts. 

Just to give you a small taste of what they’re about, one of their recent Facebook posts said this:

“Our vibe is so fire and our instructors are so fierce, you won’t even mind the sweat!”

You can find them at 6315 South Central. 

As far as classes go, they offer a range of options—and all of them are suited to participants of any fitness level. But honestly, our favorite option for beginners is definitely the Bootcamp class. This class engages your muscles while you ride via circuit training. In this class, you can get fit and build muscle while cycling. 

Price: Drop in for one class for $15, or buy multiple classes at once to get lower per-class rates. 

Is There A Better Option Than Spin Classes?

So, spin classes are amazing. 

But here’s the problem. 

By themselves, they’re not a total and complete workout solution. 

As a general rule, there are 3 important types of exercise that one should engage in to maximize their health and wellness outcomes. These include:

  1. Cardio/Aerobic exercise
  2. Strength training
  3. Movement/Stretching

Here at Fit Results, we love spin classes. In fact, we offer classes that include cycling as an aerobic element, a beautiful indoor gym experience, awesome music, etc. 

In other words, we offer everything that you would typically find in a spin class—except we also combine the cycling component with strength and stretching to make the workouts as effective as possible. 

More specifically, we do this in 2 of our most popular classes: 

(Which are offered at both of our locations: In South Loop at 731 S. Plymouth, and in Logan Square at 3430 W Diversey Ave floor 1.)

Why is this important?

Because the science is pretty clear about the fact that you need all three for optimal health and wellness outcomes. 

Cardiovascular/Aerobic Exercise

The main goal of cardiovascular exercise is to improve overall health and wellbeing by improving heart health, mental health, mood, sleep, metabolism, and weight regulation. It also helps you to burn calories, sculpt the body aesthetically, and tone up your major muscle groups (mostly through fat burning and light resistance).

More specifically, when you engage in aerobic and/or cardiovascular exercise (and spin classes fit perfectly into this category), you give your heart a workout by getting it pumping harder and faster. 

And as a result, the heart becomes a more efficient organ. As it gets into better shape, it gets better at pumping blood through your body. Aerobic activity also makes the lungs more effective at bringing oxygen into the body. 

The science is pretty clear. 

Cardiovascular activity helps to decrease cardiovascular mortality and your risk for cardiovascular disease. 

But that’s not the only part of the equation to consider. 

Weight/Resistance Training

Weight training and resistance training are also crucial to overall positive health and fitness outcomes. 

Spin classes offer a very limited form of resistance training. And some of them even incorporate strength training into the mix (to a very limited extent). 

But the problem with a lot of traditional spin classes is that they just don’t offer enough weight-based training on their own. 

And with people being so busy nowadays, most gym-goers who sign up for spin classes aren’t necessarily going to be able to take extra time to lift weights somewhere else. 

According to experts, strength training is a serious contender for being the best type of exercise you can engage in to improve your health. 

The goal of strength training is to use one or more of your primary muscle groups to lift weights or push/pull against resistance—thus empowering you to build muscle, increase muscular endurance, regulate body weight, burn more calories, and tone/sculpt the body aesthetically. 

There’s also plenty of science to back up the fact that weight training helps to decrease abdominal fat, lower your risk for injury, improve heart health, and even improve brain health. 

Movement/Stretching

Let’s also not forget about movement and stretching-type exercises. 

The goal of stretching is to keep the muscles strong, flexible, and healthy—and to maintain a healthy range of motion in the joints. 

Even strength training and aerobic exercises fall short of complete and total maximum health outcomes when they’re not combined with at least a few basic stretching/movement exercises. 

For example, according to studies, there’s a huge range of benefits to stretching—including an increase in your overall range of motion (ROM) which can be effective for not only increasing gains before workouts, but also for preventing and rehabilitating injuries.

Thus, we can pretty easily conclude that the very best spin class workouts would be workouts that also intentionally combined aerobic exercise with strength training and stretching as well.  

The 2 Best Classes That Incorporate Aerobic, Strength, And Stretching Exercises

Now, we here at Fit Results love these classes—so we may be just a little bit biased. 

But here’s the truth. 

Both of these classes contain elements of all 3 of the essential types of exercise that the human body needs: aerobic movement, strength training, and stretching. 

First, there’s Fit Camp. This is a fitness boot camp that gets you fit and strong, while also being fun, engaging, and group-oriented. It’s an hour-long strength and conditioning workout designed to help you build muscle and burn fat. You’ll use kettlebells, weights, ropes, and your own body weight to really push it to the maximum to get the best results possible. 

Then, there’s Triple 20. This workout is designed to torch calories by integrating rowing, cycling, and functional training (both resistance and calisthenics) to enhance endurance, boost weight loss, and maximize your calorie burn. 

These classes are simple, yet effective solutions to the biggest problems associated with most spin classes. And our clients have found them to be more fun and engaging, especially for those who want to really maximize their results and get into shape. 

Conclusion

Here’s the important thing to understand about spin classes. 

As one part of a larger, overarching fitness strategy, they’re awesome. But as we’ve demonstrated in this article, they tend to fall short of giving you everything needed to maximize your health and wellness outcomes. 

This is why our workouts incorporate different types of exercise—to make sure that all the bases are covered. 

If you have any questions about Fit Camp, Triple 20, or any of our other workouts here at Fit Results, please don’t hesitate to contact us today and let us know. 

We’re committed to getting real people real results. Our expertly coached fitness classes are designed to build community, kick butt, and get everyone into great shape as efficiently (and with as much fun) as possible. 

So stop by and check us out sometime! We’d love to have you. 

By Joshua K. Sigafus

Joshua K. Sigafus is a writer, author, blogger, and podcaster who's passionate about all things health and fitness related. A firm believer in the mantra "level up mind, body, and spirit to become 1% better every day," he enjoys throwing 'heavy stuff' around at the gym, long summer runs, working out with a punching bag, and dialing in his diet for maximum performance.

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