Greccia Clausen, a Manhattan accountant, approaches her quest for a front-row bike at SoulCycle like the numbers game it is. Every Monday at noon, when the booking window opens, she and a friend each try to grab two front-row bikes. Then they compare notes and choose the two best placed, preferably front and center.  There, Ms. Clausen can’t be stuck, never mind slowed down, with a view of any rhythm-challenged, hungover or just not-quite-so-fit riders.  “When there’s people in front of me, it gets in the way of my workout,” she said on a recent Sunday morning in SoHo, after an hourlong Soul Survivor class and the purchase of a $54 white tank that read “FRONT ROW.” “I won’t ride if I don’t get the front row.” (Of the shirt, she said, “It’s a little obnoxious, but I’m a crazy front-row person.”)  As the New Year’s resolute join (or return to) gyms everywhere, pleased to log even the most desultory of workouts, a subset of people will have practically broken a sweat before class even starts in its efforts to land a front-row spot. For classes where those places can’t be bought or reserved, these die-hards arrive 20 minutes early to hover by the studio door, ready to throw down a water bottle to claim a spot.  The scramble happens only in the most sought-after classes, where a place up front is a status symbol, akin to sitting front row at a concert or fashion show. It shows you’re fit enough to keep up and confident in your ability to lead a class — or to laugh it off if you miss a beat. (Because of studio design, not all classes have front rows. At Barry’s Bootcamp, for example, treadmills line the walls and no single one is visible to the whole class, though there are ones where it is easier to hide from the instructor.)  Lauren Boggi Goldenberg, the founder of Lithe Method, a Philadelphia cardio cheerleading workout that has a cult following, said that front-row denizens “are Type A, and they want to work as hard as humanly possible.” These Tracy Flicks of exercise class, Ms. Goldenberg said, tend to be “dressed head to toe in the hottest brands,” all but beg to be called out in class for their A-plus performance, and preen when that happens.  “You can tell it’s what they want,” she said. “So you say things like: ‘Look at Betsy. Look how low she’s getting. I want you to mirror her.’ ”  Anna Kaiser, the founder of AKT in Motion, an of-the-moment dance cardio workout, used to bring the back row to the front to change things up during class. That made some clients so reluctant that she has since amended to instructing them to switch sides of the room, something they are “more willing to do because they can maintain their coveted row,” she wrote in an email.  Many of Ms. Kaiser’s clients had little or no dance experience when they first set foot in her studio, she said, so their places in the front are to be celebrated — something she plans to do this quarter by selling a tank top that reads “Front Line.”  Priya Rao, a freelance writer, said that it took her a couple of months to make her way to the front of AKT but that it was worth it. “It forces you to master the class at a quicker speed,” she said. “You get a better workout. You have to try to be as good as the instructor.”  Pirkko Markula, a professor of sociocultural studies of physical activity at the University of Alberta, said that this is all straight out of Michel Foucault.  “As Foucault would say, ‘the gaze,’ even if imaginary, makes us disciplined to work harder,” Ms. Markula said. “Based on my own research, the front-row people are the ones who believe that they possess the ability to follow the instructor, but have also built the perfect bodies.”  At a sold-out and wait-listed New Year’s Day morning class at Flywheel Sports in the Flatiron district, the instructor Jesse Alexander urged those in front to pick up the pace. “You go faster, we go faster,” yelled Mr. Alexander, one of the studio’s top draws. “This is the foundation for your year.”  Tara Farwana, who scored a front-row bike from a rider still wearing a red plastic wristband and traces of eye makeup from the previous night’s revelry, said that she liked the accountability of the front row, even if on New Year’s Day it was “painful.”  “I’d rather be 100 percent in it for 45 minutes, and it’s done for the day,” said Ms. Farwana, who began riding front row about a year ago after an instructor whose class she attended consistently suggested she make the leap.  At SoulCycle, which calls its workout “dancing on the bike” and encourages moving in unison, the sanctity of the front row is enshrined in the rules, painted on the wall of the studios. No. 5, titled “The Pack”: “There is a direct correlation between your energy and your neighbor’s ride. If you want to do your own thing, please don’t ride in the front row.”  If that sounds elitist, well, many SoulCyclers (of all rows) support it.  “When the person in front of you is off, you have to be a meditative guru not to be bothered by it,” said Tula Karras, a writer and editor who prefers to ride second row, center. She has braved the front row a couple of times, an adrenaline rush she likens to “going off the high dive for the first time,” and said it was her goal to ride there regularly.  Many SoulCycle instructors insist on preapproval of their front rows, with new clients being asked whether they’d like to take a back seat. In the minutes before class, the SoulCycle staff consults the “move list” and considers front-row hopefuls. Occasionally, if no one makes the cut, “staff will come in and ride because it sets the tone for the whole class,” said Gabby Etrog Cohen, a spokeswoman.  At a SoulCycle class on the Upper East Side on Sunday, when two women made the rare move of leaving class — and their front-row bikes — 10 minutes early (class had started late), the instructor hollered for them to come back, then recruited two staff members to come finish in their places. Minutes later, congratulating the class on a steep climb, he said admiringly, “You’re all front-row riders.”  Meg D’Incecco, a public relations executive, remembers down to the bike number (4) the first time she braved the front row there two years ago, in a class taught by an instructor who wasn’t yet in demand. Soon after, she put herself on the “move list,” hoping to ride front row in a sellout class.  “I remember seeing the front-desk staff confer with the instructor, and he glanced over at me and then looked back at them and nodded,” she said. “I was so honored and excited that he recognized me as a strong rider.” (She’s still starry-eyed about it: “I kept looking at myself in the mirror during class, thinking, ‘I feel strong and beautiful.’ ”)  Not everyone’s front-row experience is such a marquee moment. Sam Zafar, who works in health care communications, booked a bike in the front because it happened to be the only one available with a SoulCycle instructor she wanted to try, but then she struggled to keep up.  “She would call out, ‘Sam, left foot,’ multiple times, and she didn’t even remove her mike,” Ms. Zafar said of the instructor, who at the end of class told Ms. Zafar with a smile that she needed more practice to ride in the front.  Though she said she hasn’t seen that level of pressure at any of the other studios she’s tried, Ms. Zafar now avoids the front row everywhere.  “It’s the one hour of the day when I can decompress, so I don’t want to be stressed about following or worrying about people silently hating me,” she said.  Patricia Moreno, who teaches Equinox’s popular IntenSati class, which fuses martial arts with mantras, asks the occasional newbie in the front row, “Do you mind if I switch you so you’re less pressured?”  Ms. Moreno moves around the class a lot, leaving her front row de facto in charge. “I need people in the front row who can carry the choreography when I’m gone,” said Ms. Moreno, whose following is rabid enough that fans know their front-row chances are best at Equinox’s 19th Street location, where the longer, narrower group-exercise studios offer a longer front row.  For those for whom the front row isn’t V.I.P. enough, SoulCycle has a new badge of honor: riding the podium, a.k.a. the instructor’s bike, or roughly the gym equivalent of being Courteney Cox pulled onstage to dance with Bruce Springsteen.  Ms. D’Incecco, who started out as a back-row rider, was recently invited up. She said she is not the selfie-taking type, but after class she nonetheless took one and shared it on Facebook, where it became her most-liked picture of 2014.  “You can see the joy and pride in that picture,” Ms. D’Incecco said. “It’s like, ‘I was chosen.’ ”
Like fashion shows, gyms have their status-symbol front rows, too, and the scramble is on for those coveted spots.