Spinning Classes May Be Damaging Your Hearing

Spin Class Music

Spinning classes are always a lot of fun because the music is pumped up loud and is designed to be fast and uplifting to help you cycle faster.

However the downside to all this is that the music is often played so loud that it could potentially be damaging your hearing in the long run without you realizing it, particularly as the volume is generally turned up for the entire duration of the class.

This may come as a surprise, but a scientific study has come to this conclusion after analyzing the noise levels at 17 different spin classes in Boston.

The Results of the Study

After using the SoundMeter Pro app to record sound levels on users’ iPhones and iPod devices, it was found that the average noise exposure for a 45-minute class was 8.95 times the recommended noise exposure for an entire 8-hour workday.

Admittedly, the maximum sound recorded in all of the classes was 116.7 dBA (A-weighted decibels), which is below the NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) instantaneous exposure guideline of 140 dBA, but the music was found to be in excess of 100 dBA for an average of 31.6 minutes, which is more than the NIOSH maximum recommended exposure of 15 minutes or less at 100 dBA per day.

Subsequently, the conclusion of this study was that:

“Preliminary data shows that randomly sampled cycling classes may have noise levels with a potential for noise-induced hearing loss.”

(source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lary.26331)

How To Prevent Hearing Loss

If you are concerned about these findings and are worried that the loud music from your spinning class may be affecting your hearing, you might want to use the SoundMeter Pro app yourself and record the sound levels during your next spin class to see how they compare with the NIOSH guidelines.

It is worth noting that although spin classes were the subject of this study, other cycling and fitness classes may be just as damaging to your hearing if they are blasting out loud music all the time.

So what options do you have if you are serious about preventing any hearing loss?

Well the obvious solution is to stop attending these classes, and maybe consider joining a different one that doesn’t play music so loud.

However a less drastic solution is to simply ask the instructor to turn the music down a little bit after showing them the results of the study, and remind them that they are exposed to loud music even more than their students. This might be enough to encourage them to take action.

Alternatively, you could simply choose to buy your own spin bike and perform all of your workouts at home. Then you can obviously choose your own playlist, control the volume of the music and ensure that you are not damaging your eardrums by blasting it out too loud.

It is really easy to do cycling workouts at home nowadays because many of the indoor cycling bikes that are available are strong and durable enough for seated and standing workouts, and there is no shortage of workout options because there are lots of indoor cycling workouts that you can follow along to on YouTube.

Therefore although the findings of this study are quite alarming, it is still possible to enjoy all of the health, fitness and weight loss benefits of these intense workouts without damaging your hearing.