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Work We Do: Roland Walker, Spin Instructor

My name is Roland Walker and I’m a certified BeatBoss indoor cycling instructor.

I currently teach at three different fitness centers. One is located in East Quogue called Sportime. The other one is JABS Riverhead and the third location is JABS Cutchogue. 

My day starts off with teaching usually two classes in the morning and one or two at night.

I teach over 500 classes a year.

I became a police officer in 1984 for the New York State Park Police. I did that service for 31 years. I started teaching fitness back in 1995 because I was overweight from sitting in the police car. I started teaching step, aerobics and boxing. In 1998, spinning came to Long Island. I decided to start teaching indoor cycling around 2001, and in 2009 I went strictly to just indoor cycling and I gave up kickboxing and aerobics.

I have my own mixing board and I take music and change it around.

One of my favorite things, someone sends me a text, “What version of that song did you use today?”
And I say, I use my own version of it. I get a kick out of doing that, changing music.

My favorite parts about teaching indoor cycling classes are the people, the energy that comes into the room. I feel like I save a lot of people’s lives with their fitness and their health.

Back in 2012, I was contacted by the owner of JABS. She asked if I would come on board and teach spin for her, and I said, ‘Well, North Fork spinning … I don’t know.’ So I said let’s figure out one day for me to come teach and we’ll see what happens. It was so busy that we had to add on a second class. So since then, we’ve been spinning away on the North Fork. I felt like that is the home of my indoor biking.

I love when they come up to me after class and say, ‘What song was that?’, ‘You made my day,’ ‘You’re my favorite thing to do each day, each week.’

“The Work We Do” is a Riverhead News-Review multimedia project profiling workers on the North Fork. It is made possible by Peconic Landing. See more photos on Instagram @riverheadnewsreview.