i have a confession… you’ve been lied to (group fitness vs training)
You've been lied to.
I've thought about saying this out loud for a long time. Since March of 2018, to be exact. I couldn't though, because I thought that if I did, nobody would come to my classes anymore, or worse... I'd get fired. But I'd rather tell you the truth than sit here and wonder what if.
Here's the thing.
I don't believe in working out.
I believe in training.
Further, and more to the point, I think the world of group fitness is built on a fallacy. I think it is categorically the wrong way to do things.
And that's because group fitness is all about working out. You go into a class, lights down low, music flowing. You sweat hard, you jump up and down, and by the end of it you're beat red, out of breath, and not sure where your legs are, so you roll out of the room, stumble home, and sit on your couch till the next time you walk into another studio and repeat the process.
(Remember, I've been thinking about this email for a long time. Substitute out the whole real-life walking down the street thing for turning on Zoom or Youtube for a group workout class, and you've got Group Fitness 2.0: a Virtual Smorgas Board of Jumping Jacks and Situps--it's all the same).
Why is this a problem? Well...
You haven't learned anything about your body. Nobody pointed out to you what your compensations are, and you didn't get to ask the teacher why one position hurts you, how to do it in such a way that it doesn't hurt you, and most importantly, how to address the underlying issues that are causing it to hurt in the first place.
You don't know what kind of workout you'll do the next time you walk into a group fitness studio, because you have no idea what class you'll take, who will be teaching, and what kind of fun they have planned for you that day.
When you finally do find a great instructor, and go to the same class every week, and know basically what you'll be doing, the instructor tries their best to get you to understand what you're doing and how to change it, but at the end of the day, the instructor can't. The world of group fitness is simply not built for improvement.
So you continue to jump from class to class, studio to studio, "modifying to work around your injuries." You're wondering why you aren't getting out of pain, why you aren't getting stronger, and why you aren't seeing the change you want to see in your body. Worse yet, and probably all the more common: you've just accepted that there's nothing you can do about it; living with pain, chronic tightness, and the inability to change your relationship to your body is just the way it is. That's not your fault--for most people, that is just the way it is.
And that's because most people don't train.
When a person trains, they are doing a specific set of exercises to elicit a specific, desired outcome. Training is simple. It is difficult. It can be painstakingly boring, especially if you're addicted to the high you get from thrashing your body around in a bootcamp, or spinning yourself to obliteration. When a person trains, they are intellectually engaged with their body.
The goal is not to get so tired they can't walk home, so there isn't an inordinate amount of time throwing their body around the room into positions they haven't yet mastered. They do a set of exercises they have progressively built up to. They have spent months (months!) working on the same thing every single day (every single day!) so that now, they can confidently execute a movement with a solid base of understanding and control.
They are on a program that has a number of exercises assigned to fit their specific needs, sequenced to build their strength, mobility, and flexibility. They know how many repetitions they did last week, how many they will do today, and have an idea of how they will progress next week.
If something is causing pain, they stop. They figure out why it's causing pain, what they did to make the pain occur, and finally, what they did to get out of pain so that it doesn't happen again.
They build a scientific and rational approach to working in their bodies. They begin to understand what muscles work when, how their joints operate, and how to change a lifetime of habitual movement patterns that are causing more harm than good.
When a person trains, they don't guess. They don't accept the status quo. They may get frustrated, it might not come easy, and trust me, problems do still arise. But at the end of the day, they commit to engaging in a process of learning, questioning, and digging.
The people who came to my group fitness classes for years saw improvements in the first 3 months of training with me that they had never seen before in their lives. The change didn't come from doing the same chattarunga day after day after day in my group fitness class (They already tried that. It didn't work). Rather, they have seen their physical practice grow through the focus and dedication that training inspires. (At the risk of this post becoming a full-out novel, I'm going to quickly add that I lump yoga classes into the same category as group fitness, even though they can be slower and "more mindful").
I'm glad to report that I'm not the only one who believes in this training. My students tell their friends. Their family. They tell the bankers they meet randomly when checking on their accounts and the neighbor across the street over a socially-distanced-porch-dinner.
All that said: everything in its time, dessert isn't evil (you will NEVER take my Levain cookies away from me), and we gotta let our hair down once in a while and dance (remember dancing? ugh!!!!). My students help me remember this when I forget. So, while we spend our time training our tucheses off, once a week on Friday, I teach one of my signature yoga group fitness style classes. We don't stop a ton, there's no anatomy lecture, we don't go over every detail, and I'm not such a stickler. Because after years of training with me and diving deep, a little group flow hits differently. We're just clear on the ratio: 90% training like a boss, 10% working out and flowing. When done in moderation, on a plate of mostly excellent training, a taste of just moving a la group fitness isn't the worst thing in the world, and is psychologically necessary for a lot of people.
Still, I'm going to guess that you aren't here because you want to settle for "just moving" and "not the worst thing in the world." I'm guessing that you have unknowingly settled for an entire plateful of "just moving" throughout your fitness journey, and you're curious to know what lies beyond that familiar territory.
When you're ready to join us, reach out. Try a group training session on zoom. Then, step it up, and come back daily, Monday-Thursday evening to see what group training is all about. If the pace of learning in a group doesn't suit you (it is, at the end of the day, slower than all eyes on you), let’s talk about one on one.
The title of this was "you've been lied to." I didn't speak to that directly in what I said above, so I wonder... do you see why I said that now?
-Steven