Barry’s Brings Its Intensity to Lower-Impact Cardio with RIDE, Its Newest Cycling Workout
The popular HIIT workout has replaced its treadmill segment with indoor cycling in its newest class, RIDE, available at Barry’s NYC Chelsea location
Barry’s, founded in 1998 in Los Angeles, is beloved for its high intensity strength and cardio workouts. With RIDE, the company has created a lower-impact offering to replace its treadmill running segment, without losing any of Barry’s intensity. RIDE was originally launched in February 2020 as a pop up, and was met with sold-out classes and excitement. It officially launched in September 2022 in the NYC Chelsea location, with similar consumer enthusiasm. The RIDE x LIFT studio has 21 bikes and corresponding floor set-ups for a total of 42 spots per class. The studio offers Shimano cycling shoes that support both the bike and floor portion of the workout for a seamless transition between each segment.
RIDE is a reminder of the irreplaceable nature of in-person workouts, particularly with indoor cycling. Similar to its original HIIT experience, RIDE divides each class in half, with participants either starting on the cycling or the strength segment. In Barry’s iconic Red Room, with energizing music, invigorating lights, and charismatic instructors, RIDE offers many of the benefits of its original experience to a larger consumer demographic, like those avoiding the high-impact treadmill. There are fewer transitions in RIDE compared to the HIIT experience, with only one switch from the cycling to the strength segment. Between the two halves of the class on the bikes and the mats, the instructor balances providing personal motivation and guidance to both halves simultaneously.
“Simply put, there is no other fitness experience like [RIDE] at scale,” commented Joey Gonzalez, Barry’s Global CEO, to Athletech News. “It is a lower-impact cardio offering that retains our signature strength training programming and is equally as energizing and efficient as our signature RUN x LIFT class. It offers a cardio modality for those who do not want to or cannot run – and has become a gateway for them to our brand generally.”
RIDE is part of a larger strategy for Barry’s, which has been expanding its class offerings. Since the pandemic, Barry’s has expanded its original workouts to include LIFT (a 50-minute class focusing on strength), Barry’s X, a digital fitness community with Live and On-Demand classes, and, most recently, RIDE. Gonzalez stated, “Barry’s RIDE has been a part of the long-term vision for quite some time. In fact, one of the first leases I signed back in 2010 had architectural renderings for a second studio featuring bikes and benches. We are consistently researching and developing ways to broaden our audience and have a larger impact, delivering on our brand promise of “transforming lives worldwide.”
Barry’s RIDE classes begin at $38/class in New York City, with packages also available.