It seems like a crazy statement to make. For if you are improving your fitness surely you are improving your health, right? What people fail to understand is that Health & Fitness are two different things. To truly become fit, you must become health first. In that order. You cannot effectively use fitness methods to get healthy. And unfortunately this is what most Group Training programs are all about. It is all about trying to do endless push ups, burpees, running and other more endurance type training activities to get people to "feel the burn" and be exhausted after every workout. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against group training as it can be great fun and give people a strong bonding that individual training cannot. As long as it is used correctly, people are evaluated before starting and has a way of slowly teaching you how to progress safely and efficiently into more difficult exercises and programs it is awesome. The strange thing is people want to have the look of an elite athlete, in particular a sprinter that you would see at the Olympic Games, yet the training methods, exercises and even the nutrition and recovery methods are nothing like that of a sprinter! Not even close to doing what a sprinter does. That is the same as telling me 1+1=15. When 1+1=2. Today I am going to share with you why most group training programs are causing more problems than they solve, how to find a good group program to join and lastly what things you must be able to do, before joining a fitness based program. There are many good programs out there, you just need to know what to look for.
Be sure to watch the following video where we delve into women's group fitness and group training and what you need to know to get results. Check out the second video where we take a look inside our AFL Active group class.
Fitness Is Not The Same Thing As Health
You will find many times I will say this on our website here and for a good reason. It is true! Don't get me wrong I love the fact more people recognize the need to do exercise and in particular strength training. The problem is that people do not understand that exercise is a Stress to the body, no different to any other form of stress. Exercise can be good, but it can be bad too. If you do nothing and sit on the couch this is also stress. But if you do Iron Mans or marathons this is stressful to the body very similar to sitting on the couch! You will be better off than sitting on the couch due to increase muscle and cardio vascular efficiency but many endurance athletes suffer with illness and injury a lot of the time as the body is under constant barraged and dealing with damage from too much training. You must understand that this extreme fitness is not healthy. The two extremes will both produce side effects of poor health, just in different ways.
If you are subjected to too much stress, or if you do not have enough reserve to handle it, you will end up either sick or injured. Now it is fair to say most people joining a group fitness program are beginners and are doing so because they recognize they have let themselves go. They possibly have gained weight, maybe suffer with some aches or pains, even sustained an injury, feel weak and lacking in energy and do not eat as good as they should. This person's body is already under a lot of stress. All of these symptoms are placing the body under stress. To get out of stress you need to reduce the factors with a step by step approach, not a sledgehammer! The sledgehammer is what group training is all about and often it ignores many of the factors that need to be addressed.
I like to use the analogy of saving money to buy an expensive car. To buy the latest Ferrari (fitness) you need a lot of money (health). To save money you need to eat better, get to bed on time, strengthen muscles, move correctly, reduce your stress. This is where you activate the anabolic process where the body goes into building and repairing. If you do this for long enough you can build enough money that you can spend a bit and it won't take your balance into the red. The Ferarri would be taking on extreme fitness campaign such as Iron Man training or Crossfit Games. You can compete in these for you have saved enough money to spend, which is why I am not saying group training is bad for everyone. If you did 10 Iron Mans in one year or competed at too many Crossfit competitions however you will end up injured, sick or both because you are spending more than you have saved!
Again elite athletes understand this concept and carefully choose their competitions and training calendar to ensure they achieve optimal performance. They know they cannot get the best out of their body if they push the limits all 52 weeks of the year in every training session. Recovery, nutrition and keeping stress is just as important as the training for without this they will not be able to compete.
You have to earn the right to do Fitness training!
How does this relate to the specifics of group training?
Firstly when you join a group there is already many people who have been doing this for some time, and they know and understand their body, the exercises extremely well. The intensity of the class is not lowered because today is your first day. You straight away have to rise to a level well beyond your skill and capability. While some will see this as a challenge it is just not logical to do that in any case. Imagine me dropping you into a course for SAS soldiers tomorrow and wanting you to be as good as them!
Secondly injuries need to be worked around, not addressed. It would be impossible to run a group class that caters for every person's specific needs and injuries. What tends to happen is that the trainer will say "do this instead if it hurts". Basically using an exercise alternative that does not cause pain, and keeps you moving so you feel either puffed or the burn! This is equivalent to sweeping the problems under the carpet. As long as we don't see it, it does not exist. If you have good movement skills, understanding of your body and know what exercise you need to do or how to adjust the exercise the class will be okay. But the problem is you are a beginner and do not have these skills or knowledge. And how can you get it when you are trying to rush things to music or to the number on the clock!
Thirdly technique is often sacrificed to just do more! The stupidity mentality of more is better or go hard go home is possibly the worst trait within group training. Again if you are very experienced, have a decent amount of strength and fitness you can get away with a few bad exercises or reps for you have some reserves to fall back on. As a beginner you do not have these reserves. All that is likely to happen is you get injured or learn a terrible way to do exercises that will eventually lead to getting injured! NEVER, EVER sacrifice technique for more reps!
Lastly nutrition is often a one size fits all, with a strong focus on calorie counting, which by the way does not work. If it was that easy then there would not be over 70,000 different diet books and nutrition plans. We are all different and a food plan that works for you takes time to implement. Even if you know what to do you cannot do it all at once. To learn how to implement the necessary changes for long term success you need to do this slowly. Cutting corners to get short term gains set you up for long term problems. This is what extreme programs like Jenny Craig rely on so you have to keep coming back and doing the program again and again. This is also why 12 week challenges are not great if they are promoted as this is all you need to do.
You cannot cut corners when it comes to health. A true health program will in fact make you very fit and strong. A fitness program will not achieve the same thing for it spends more than you have saved!
What You Need To Do Before Starting A Group Program
You need to identify your individual weaknesses. Whether that is with movements, flexibility, nutrition and lifestyle factors it does not matter. You MUST find what your body needs to address before getting stuck straight into hard stuff. To do this you will need an expert to guide you which is why we recommend all new clients do one on one sessions to begin with. There is cases where someone may be a beginner, but they have no injuries, basically eat quite well as they are a good weight range and have their stress under control. They just need to add some muscle and get some overall fitness. This person's weakness will be learning techniques and understanding how to move correctly. This might only take a few individual sessions with a Personal Trainer before they are well on the way.
However if you have an injury, aches pains, are overweight or suffer with any health problem you will need to have a rehabilitation plan that with help www.health-canada-pharmacy.com/products.html finds the cause of your problems and corrects it. This may take a bit longer before you get straight into the hard stuff but will be well worth the effort. You will still need to do everything that the previous example did but you now need extra individual focus to address your health weaknesses. If you don't you are sweeping your problems under the carpet, and trust me you will pay for that later!
Always remember this - YOU ARE ONLY EVER AS STRONG AS YOUR WEAKEST LINK.
By spending the time to find what you need to do and then allowing enough time to put this plan in place you will be able to transition to classes effectively without it costing your health. You will have much more fun and enjoy the long lasting effects of health and fitness.
What To Look For When Searching For A Group Fitness Program
Find a place that talks about health concepts a lot. Nutrition must be a high priority but most importantly they have either a beginner coaching program or different levels of classes so a beginner can transition into advanced training over time. As mentioned we put all new clients through a one on one coaching program but we also run easier levels of Group Classes. We have a specific class we use for beginners and also people working with injuries called Core Essentials to learn the fundamentals of exercise and how to correct their movement dysfunction and muscle imbalance. After approximately 6-10 weeks they are ready to progress to the more intense fitness classes.For older adults we provide a Stronger For Longer program and for disease management and more severe cases we provide Lift For Life. As you can see we cater for all different types of clients and tailor our program design accordingly. There is no one size fits all.
Next make sure they have a strong focus on teaching perfect technique and do not use machines or abuse exercises like push ups or burpees in order to get the burn. Machine training is one of the worst types of exercise you can do sp whatever you do avoid a group program involving machines. Click here to read why. Many people fail to realize that training with endless endurance will make you slow. Remember I said at the start that elite sprinters do not train this way at all. For they know they need more muscle and efficiency of movement from lifting heavy loads or moving extremely fast. Long slow boring cardio type training which unfortunately is what most group training classes are, only serves to make you everything you do not want.
Why? It has a lot to with hormones. I suggest reading this article How To Control Hormones and even downloading our Free Report to understand this concept better. People who performed intense cardio suffered from decreased T3 hormone production. T3 is the hormone produced by your thyroid to burn fat. When you do cardio, your body reacts to the stress by suppressing this fat burning hormone. This means your body starts gaining fat immediately. Why? Because your body needs the fat to function. Doing cardio also puts massive amounts of stress on your body as this type of training increases the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol is associated with heart disease, cancer and visceral belly fat. That’s the kind of fat that hangs around your waist and gives you that disgusting pear shape. You also now have the problem of needing to eat more as your appetite also increases in order to replace the energy it has lost and restore blood sugar levels back to normal.
Conclusion
Group Fitness Training while it has great intentions in mind, is in many cases doomed from the beginning. Sure there are many that do very well but I would suggest they would be even better if they adopted a more individual program that focused on their weakness and really tried to make them fast and strong instead of long and slow. The reason that so many group programs do not offer this is mainly because of poor knowledge and laziness. From both the Fitness industry itself and the fact that many people find exercise a chore and boring. They know they are cutting corners but do not care. When something goes wrong they will see a health practitioner to fix them or get surgery to put it back together. Leaders in the Fitness industry must be better than that. We must start teaching people health concepts like adding muscle, getting rid of sugar, reducing stress etc. Just doing 100 push ups and stacks of burpees three times per week is a waste of time if the real reasons you are lacking health are not addressed. The go hard go home style of training is over. Let's be smarter than that and teach people how to be the best they can be by using health principles.
Remember - Health is not Fitness.
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