Group Exercise ain’t so bad after all

My World changed yesterday.  Before I explain, a little history:

I’m a personal trainer.  A nitpicky hands on personal trainer in fact.  I’m proud of the study I’ve done and how I’ve been able to apply it with my amazing clients.  I only do private sessions and give them my full attention.  The hour is theirs and my job is to help them get better by paying close attention.

I think group exercise is the demon that needs to be excised from our industry.

Story #1 that shaped my view of group training

I love my walk to work.  It’s 11 minutes (13 if there’s snow) and takes me through a beautiful park.  It clears my head and, if I’m lucky, get to watch one of the high school sports team practicing.  Seeing youth training hard at the break of dawn makes me smile.  On a fall day the crunch of leaves under my feet soothes me and in the winter I love stepping on and breaking the thin cracked ice (kinda a kid that way).

On a bad day the sound of leaves crunching under my feet gets disturbed:

“Jump! 5 more hops!”

“Ok — uhhh, pushups 20.  GO!”

“Everybody take your resistance band and do biceps curls”

I keep walking as my lip starts to bleed from biting it so hard.

Story #2 that shaped my view of group training

2 years ago I trained a model (it’s a tough life sometimes).  She was a runway model who wanted to start doing bikini work and needed to “tone up”.  Malnutrition combined with daily at-home crunches left her with a sore back.  I took her on under the condition that she would not do any outside exercise until I gave the ok.

Every workout she asked to do more ‘core’ work.  I said we were doing tons.  She meant crunches.  I meant planks and bracing throughout the exercises.  Training progressed well and she made good progress for 3 months.  Her agent was ecstatic and booked her 2 shoots for very popular magazines.

Then I got the dreaded phone call:

Don’t hate me — I’m in the emergency room right now

She did a core blaster class at her local gym and put out her back.  It was diagnosed as a posterior disc buldge between the L4-L5 vertebrae.  She was bed-ridden for weeks, forced to take powerful anti-inflammatories and pain-killers, and her agent cancelled the shoots and fired her.

Group exercise ruined this girls modelling career.

Note: If you’re wondering.  I don’t hate her.  I hate core blaster classes with poor instructors.

Why Group Exercise it ain’t so bad after all

Yesterday made me reconsider my views.  I *gasp* did a group exercise class.

Actually, the class was considered small group training and there were 10 participants.  It was done at Bang Fitness owned by Geoff Girvitz in Toronto.  I got in touch with Geoff after reading his T-Nation article on posture.  (This was after I stopped hyperventilating into a bag upon learning T-Nation published a posture article.)

I first got the address wrong but a cute barista from a tea shop showed me the way *shwing* and I was off to meet Geoff for coffee before the class.  We didn’t sit in the coffee shop, instead he rushed back to the studio where an earlier class was ongoing.  Geoff wanted to speak to me on the floor as he monitored the group on the floor.  I counted 5 different times where he politely asked me to wait a minute so he could correct a participants form on the floor.  How many gym owners would do that?

It was finally time to get started in my group exercise class.  Funny enough it was being led by an old colleague of mine, Andy Dube.  He did an amazing job.

The Workout

Andy and Geoff first took the group through 10min of foam rolling and mobility focusing on hips.  I was particularly impressed with their cueing.  The workout itself consisted of 2 3-exercise circuits.  Each exercise was performed for 30s and the group got a 30s break after the 3 exercises were completed.  There were 3 rounds of each circuit.  The circuits were as follows:

Circuit 1

Kettlebell split squat –> 1 arm bent over Kettlebell row –> push ups

Circuit 2

Half-kneeling Kettlebell (or DB) single arm press –> Single leg plank –> Goblet squat isometric hold

Finisher

Looong tug of war battle.  5 on 5.

What’s so special?

The workout itself was pretty basic but how special did you expect it to be?  I did get the crap kicked out of me, I’ll tell you that much.  What struck me was how well the little things were done right.

I want to point out 5 things that Geoff and Andy did so well:

1.  Professionalism mixed with fun

This is really Geoff’s gym in a nutshell.  Take the motto “Train like an athlete, feel like a superhero”.  Outside the club there is a cutout akin to something you would see at an amusement park.

During the actual class the two were able to keep everybody on point while having fun.  My favorite line was:

If it hurts, stop and let us know.  If it’s hard, suck it up.  K? 15 seconds.

2.  Community

The instructors referred to everybody by name and the nature of the class encouraged cooperation.  I’ve never heard of a class where the participants introduce themselves to each other during 30s breaks.  It all starts with the instructor.

3.  Finish Him!!!

The tug of war game at the end was great.  5 on 5 and when one team started the win a tugger from that team was pulled off the rope and had to do 5 pushups.  This evened the score and the game was back on!  Proper pulling form was encouraged and it wiped both groups when it was done.  Still, everybody high fived everybody.

Note: Our team won.  No big deal

4.  Caring Owner

Geoff bounced around the club all morning helping anybody that needed it.  I mentioned earlier that during our meeting he stopped to help out exercises on the floor when they were struggling.  During Andy’s class Geoff also helped out people exercising on their own in the gym.  He acted as a floater the whole day.

5.  Progressions and Regressions

The biggest problem with group exercise is variance in skill levels.  Of the 10 participants there was myself, another trainer Chris Brown, a couple younger folks, and some older gen women.  With every exercise there was seamless introduction of progressions and regressions depending on skill level other than varying weight.  For example we were given 3 choices for the Kettlebell split squat in terms of where to hold the weight.  1) Goblet position 2) Rack Position 3) Locked overhead position

Andy and Geoff were prepared for the different levels and instructed them beautifully.  Nobody got hurt and everybody performed the exercises well.

Back to the drawing board

I’m actually a little pissed at the gang from Bang Fitness.  I despised group exercise and was comfortable in my belief, justified by my two stories above.  I didn’t realize how well a small group training class could be run.  It seems to me that with a mixture of professionalism and fun, community, a good finisher, caring owner, and proper progressions / regressions there may be something to this whole group exercise thing.

Maybe, just maybe, I need to go back to the drawing board.

 

If you’re in Toronto I highly encourage you to check out Bang Fitness.  It’s located at 610 Queen St. W (not 601, although if you go there say hi to the cute girl at the desk for me).  You can contact them via info@bangfitness.com or visiting their website.

Please share this if you’ve been tainted by a group exercise program and comment below with your experiences.  They’re not all bad…