Test Drive: Buckhead’s Cycmode Fitness aims to make cycling more immersive

A massive curved screen offers an immersive experience at this Buckhead cycling studio

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Cycmode
Cycmode

Photograph courtesy of Cycmode

One of the chief complaints about indoor cycling is that it’s an exercise in futility—you pedal furiously without going anywhere. Stationary bikes with interactive screens can help, providing the rider with, say, a first-person view of the Tour de France’s Stage 15. But that still requires some significant suspension of disbelief. Buckhead’s Cycmode, however, makes indoor cycling an immersive experience, thanks to an enormous curved screen, the likes of which you normally see only in IMAX theaters. For 45 minutes ($15 for the first visit), “The Trip” will take you through space, or a kaleidoscopic fever dream, or the innards of a video game. Choose one of the bikes that leans when you lean, and you might actually believe you’re on a shiny highway in Morocco, weaving between Islamic domes and past men in kaffiyehs. If you love roller coasters and those nature movies that drop you from the sky into the Grand Canyon, you’ll love Cycmode.

This article appears in our January 2022 issue.

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