I knew enough, at least, to place myself toward the back of the room. At SoulCycle classes, as in other temples of worship, proximity to the teacher is a sign of status. As the position of your bike really depends on how early you reserve a space in the class, those in the front row are thus proven to be dedicated, disciplined, ready for commitment—and also confident enough to show the instructor their face and their, uh, obverse to the class behind them.

I had no such confidence, and no such obverse. But my friend and coworker Ann had started to go to SoulCycle in order to get in bridal form for her upcoming wedding, and she invited me to come along and try it.

“Isn’t that a weird cult?”

“It’s a little culty, sure,” said Ann, the single most sensible, grounded person I know. “But I like it mainly because it kicks my ass.”

I had heard strange rumors about SoulCycle—It’s a miracle! It’s brainwashing!—and seen it parodied on All About RunDisney 2025, and kept asking myself the same question: “But…it’s just a spin class, right?”

Because that, indeed, is what SoulCycle is: a spin class. Each location offers only one kind of workout, and one small studio specially built for it. Each such studio has around 50 bikes tightly packed in narrowly spaced rows, like the terra-cotta soldiers of XI’an, all facing a platform in the center of the mirrored front wall. Around that altar—I mean platform—candles burn, scenting the room and giving it the atmosphere of a quiet spa or shrine. The room is kept dark, with minimal lighting and black paint covered with white inspirational sayings and action verbs: WARRIOR, ATHLETE, STRIVE, BLISS.

By class time—12:15 on a Friday afternoon—the front rows were filled with intensely athletic and athletically intense women, all bedecked in tight, high-end workout wear, a surprising portion of them sporting the SoulCycle logo. (Surprising only because gray workout pants cost $20 at Target but $78 at SoulCycle.) Behind them, less confident women in baggier clothing, and, near me, most of the 10 or so men attending the class. They apparently had made the same complex strategizing I had about being back far enough so as not to attract notice, yet close enough to get a good view. Of the instructor, I mean. (A number of people accused me of attending the class just to check out the SoulCycle Babes, which apparently is a thing.)

Everybody was clipped into their bikes with cleated bicycle shoes, their own or rented, and everybody was slowly pedaling their bikes, the men looking around warily at the competition. Here and there, attendants walked the rows, adjusting the bikes, laying complimentary towels on handlebars. If I were being readied for human sacrifice, I could not ask for more solicitous attention.

A petite, energetic woman walked into the room, adjusted her wireless headset mike, and introduced herself as our instructor, Aya. She asked newcomers to raise our hands to receive her hearty welcome, and then told us to say hello to the people to our sides, in fellowship. Much like church. I said hello to the woman on my right, and she said hello back, and gave me a look that said if I so much as breathed another word to her she’d ride me down and crush me beneath her flywheel.

Aya explained for us newcomers that we’d be riding our bikes to the beat of very loud music and that we shouldn’t feel bad about not being able to keep up, or do everything she did. “It’s your ride,” she said, which struck me as odd in that usually a “ride” means you’re going somewhere, and for the next 45 minutes, we wouldn’t be leaving this room. She turned off the lights, plunging us into a darkness relieved almost solely by the candles around her.

A Renewed Relationship With Running.

SoulCycle’s origins are traced to Manhattan’s Upper West Side and then the Hamptons, where women who wouldn’t be caught dead on the roads in anything more modest than a BMW SUV, let alone a bicycle, showed up in droves to pump stationary bikes in an old barn. It went from there to Miami, was purchased by the fitness chain Equinox, then sprung up in L.A. and San Francisco and now is spreading its spandex gospel faster than Islam in the 7th century.

This is surprising, if only because SoulCycle charges $30 a class (less if you buy packages), which for three classes a week amounts to $360 a month, almost three times the cost of an Equinox membership. And of course SoulCycle offers only one kind of class and one kind of exercise. There’s no pool, basketball court, or free weights, just a common room with lockers and benches and shower rooms for men and women. And a spin class. Which, to get back to the moment in question, was proving a hell of a lot harder than I expected.

The beat was oppressive, thumping, and loud. Just seconds after cranking up the music, Aya was shouting for us to turn up the resistance, get up out of our seats, and pedal! “Push! Push!” she shouted, like the world’s most enthusiastic midwife. We rocked from side to side. We moved from the front handlebar extensions to the center handle. And then, as she flicked a button on her controls, the volume increased and the beat sped up, and she yelled, “You ready to dance?!?”

And the entire class fell into a rhythmic choreography, pedaling, standing, sitting, stretching forward. The music boomed, the bass throbbed, and Aya shouted encouragement, which I couldn’t make out but which seemed positive. And so I pedaled, stood, sat, and pumped up and down in a crude but sincere imitation of the more fluid riders around me. It wasn’t a class, it was a rave. And I was caught up in it.

Expecting goo-goo invocations of the spirit, I had primed my cynicism, but this was less spiritual and more dance party, and my lower brain was taking over. I pushed at the pedals even when my legs pleaded with me to stop and do something easy like run 10 miles. Quitting was as unthinkable as it would be to sit down in the middle of a dance floor. No one could see me well, and I could only see a few shadowy shapes around the glowing Aya, but I couldn’t imagine being left behind—even as we went nowhere.

So, in the end, yes, SoulCycle is just a spin class, a $30 spin class, which, when many gyms offer spin classes with regular membership, is ridiculous. But it is not just any spin class—it is a hell of a spin class. By the end I was sweaty, exhausted, and, yes, in Aya’s words, I had “found my own hill to climb” and “taken the day” and yes, damn it, I felt empowered.

Obviously the class was created by women, with its language of personal journey and growth, and the emphasis on doing it together. Women are blessed with the ability to join in group athletics and not be overwhelmed by the urge to beat each other. A men’s SoulCycle might be taught by a drill sergeant, shouting at the class that if they pedaled hard enough, they’d be able to catch something and kill it.

But however goo-goo SoulCycle is, for 45 minutes (and a 10-minute cooldown), I bought it. In the dark of a Chicago winter, when the only way to get a decent cardio workout is to either shuffle miserably through the slush or, God help us all, endure a treadmill while enduring Morning Joe, there are worse things than joining a group of true believers in their intense, energetic, joyful ride to nowhere. We were making this journey together! We were heroes, warriors, celebrating the strength of our spirit! Girly bromides, maybe, but without them I couldn’t have kept up with the girls.

“So what do you think?” gasped Ann, who had been furiously cranking two bikes over. “Is it a cult or not?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But man, did it kick my ass!”

* * *

Peter Sagal is a 3:09 marathoner and the host of NPR’s Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! For more, click here.