Advantages (and Disadvantages) of Group Fitness Classes
SoulCycle, Barre, Zumba, BodyPump … There seems to be a new group fitness class every month, and with it cult followers who swear by its effectiveness. But it’s also possible that your fitness addiction may be hiding a deeper problem.
Group activities can help you motivate …
First, if you are the type of person who is afraid to exhaust themselves on an elliptical trainer for half an hour (and let’s be honest who is not), classes can bring much needed variety to your program. Whether it’s BodyPump, kickboxing or something else, each activity has its own unique flavor, which can make exercise fun enough for you to get positive feedback .
Movement variety also has the added benefit of helping you achieve a more versatile fitness profile. While crushing it on a treadmill can help cardiovascular benefits, it will really only help you burn calories and possibly improve your quads. On the other hand, group sessions develop a range of skills: yoga trains flexibility, kickboxing improves agility, Pilates works your core strength, and SoulCycle, I’m sure, does something .
Group exercises are also great if you’re just starting out and don’t know what to do. A group meeting with a trained instructor is very rewarding for those still in the gym and can give you the much needed knowledge and confidence before you head out to do your own thing.
… As long as this is the right type of motivation
However, there are several superficial reasons not to attend fitness classes. With so many participants, it can be difficult for the instructor to give each individual enough individual attention to ensure that the exercises are performed correctly. And without the right form, exercise is much less effective and can even cause injury.
It is also a rather ineffective way of achieving your goals. There are things you can do with a much higher ROI (return on investment), like fixing your diet if your goal is to lose weight, or a program that includes progression, like Couch, up to 5k to improve your cardiovascular ability . Classes are designed to be of maximum benefit to most people, but because they are based on the average needs of all combined, they don’t allow you to push your boundaries beyond that.
But the bigger reason to reconsider your commitments is that you motivate yourself with fear. I’ve met many gym goers who force themselves to do intense group cardio workouts for one main reason: they know they’ll be too embarrassed if they quit halfway through. And sometimes it’s just a case of toughing it out, but the threat of humiliation may not be the only thing pushing you forward, and this extends to other areas of fitness as well.
This does not mean that all fears are bad . There is nothing black or white about fitness. If you were anything like me (that is, if you grew up fat with terrible self-esteem and did not remember anything else), a sense of urgency – and that means some fear – might be the only thing you started with.
But fear can only push you this far. This turns the exercise into a kind of punishment. This is the path to training because you hate your body, not because you love them and want to get better. The former almost always fails.
So if you find yourself joining a class because you know the group environment will push you through, or you stick to your diet just because you’re afraid of how you might look otherwise, reconsider your thinking . You should change your perspective to empower yourself to make the right decisions because you want them for yourself, and not be afraid of what might happen if you don’t. At the end of the day, you must make self-improvement choices over punishment in order to build a healthier lifestyle.