ABSTRACT
Emerging from a broader ethnographic study that explored women’s embodied experiences of using gyms, within this chapter Amy explores the ‘sensuousness’ of her experiences of instructing and participating in indoor cycling classes known as ‘spinning’. Using theoretical architecture that informs an embodied way of knowing, she first reflects on the ethnographic vignette of the spin room as a mechanism to reveal how her body is feeling whilst spinning and what senses are heightened within this time and space as she assumes the role of ‘instructor’. After critically discussing her journey into spinning, Amy concentrates her analysis on the embodied experiences of other women and how engaging in indoor cycling can: i) influence the performances and negotiations of physical capital, ii) generate alternative forms of fitness knowledge, and iii) provide joyous, pleasurable, emotional and empowering physical movement within a likeminded feminist fitness ‘community’. Reflections are offered that demonstrate how women engage in positive expressions of gender within the context of spinning whilst at the same time being complicit with dominant forms of (repressive) gender ideology.
