New cycling studio concept arrives in the UK

Following huge success in Singapore and Sydney, Athlete Lab, a revolutionary indoor cycling studio, has chosen London as its first European location.

Athlete Lab is the only indoor cycling centre to offer training on REAL bikes rather than spin bikes - the best way to mimic cycling on the open road. With the same technology used to train Olympic athletes and a wealth of expertise on tap, including Team Sky legend Shane Sutton, UK indoor cycling training has stepped up a gear.

Until now indoor cycling training has been limited to spin bikes, which although a great cardio workout, doesn’t utilise the right muscle groups for road cycling - meaning ineffective training. By using real bikes, with everything you would expect from a road bike – the same gears, pedals, cranks and handlebars - an Athlete Lab workout provides a safe indoor training environment which works the body in exactly the same way as if out on the open road. 

Plus, with no freewheeling, no traffic and no bad weather to contend with, one hour in Athlete Lab equates to two hours on the road giving cyclists a much more efficient workout – ideal for cyclists and triathletes who want to get their mid-week rides done in a lunch break or immediately after work. 

Such is the impressive and unique offering of Athlete Lab, that Shane Sutton – the man responsible for Tour de France glory with Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome – is now a partner in the business and his training DNA is spread through the whole offering with the Shane Sutton Method.  

Shane says, “I feel very passionate about Athlete Lab and was immediately attracted to the vision of providing real bikes in state of the art City centre locations along with structured, scientific, training sets and realtime performance data. It’s by far the most effective indoor cycling training available and offers all level of cyclists access to the type of training previously only available to elite athletes. I have been coaching cyclists with some success over the last 20 years so the chance to make that system of improvement available to a wide audience is exciting.”

The bikes are housed in a high-tech environment which allows users to monitor their workout with real-time data. Choose from the basics such as calories burnt or distance travelled, or go all out and measure elements such as cadence, power and speed. User data will be logged and recorded for each session making it easy to track progress.

The concept of Athlete Lab was created by two Brits, Michael Flynn and Neil Franks, who are both keen cyclists and triathletes. Both with busy City jobs, they were frustrated by the lack of options for effective mid-week training so came up with the concept of Athlete Lab – the rest is cycling history.

Michael Flynn, Athlete Lab Co-Founder says, “We are really excited to launch Athlete Lab in London. With cycling becoming more and more popular there is a real need for a safe, efficient and effective way to train in the city - whether a beginner or training for the next triathlon. With cutting edge technology and Shane Sutton on board developing training programmes we hope to help fellow busy city professionals get the most out of their sport.”

Athlete Lab opens at 110 Cannon Street, London EC4 on 31 March 2014.