Group Fitness Articles

Monetary benefits aside, not every personal trainer should create a small group-centered program. Perhaps your instructional strengths lie with the dynamics of large boot camps, or with one-on-one training. Plus, some clients with complex biomechanical or medical needs require a level of personal attention that is best met in one-on-one sessions.

The University of Florida Department of Recreational Sports gets executive with its class descriptions for Upper Management and Lower Management. Both classes focus on building core strength, but the former is all about arms, chest, shoulders and upper back, while the latter homes in on the legs and glutes.

Whether you teach one indoor cycling class or provide individual training to 40 clients per week, as a fitness professional and business owner you are a leader in your community. Leaders inspire change in their clients, their colleagues, their employees and their community. By developing your leadership skillsregardless of your role in the fitness industryyou can inspire others to lead as well, and take action to improve the world around you. newsletter_teaser: Whether you teach one indoor cycling class or provide individual training to 40 clients per week, as a fitness professional and business owner you are a leader in your community.

Three years ago, Hayley Hollander was an in-demand personal trainer with a jam-packed schedule, a waiting list and a problem: Like many experienced trainers, she’d maxed out her hours and hit the wall. “I was reaching burn-out, training 55–70 hours a week, and making just around $100,000 a year. But I was literally killing myself to make that kind of money,” recalls Hollander, who charged, on average, $57 per one-on-one session.newsletter_teaser: Three years ago, Hayley Hollander was an in-demand personal trainer with a jam-packed schedule, a waiting list and a problem: Like many experienced trainers, she’d maxed out her hours and hit the wall.

Fitness is an exciting industry filled with passionate people. Yet personal training itself is frequently a dollars-for-hours trade with inherent income limits and a high rate of burnout. The solution? Convert to a small group–dominant business model, where one trainer works with up to a dozen clients at the same time (see www.ideafit.com/fitness-library/small-group-secrets-the-start-up-plan).newsletter_teaser: Fitness is an exciting industry filled with passionate people. Yet personal training itself is frequently a dollars-for-hours trade with inherent income limits and a high rate of burnout.

Almost every role and function within the fitness industry involves marketing. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fitness director promoting a group exercise program, a manager preparing for a membership drive or a personal trainer attracting new clientele—baseline knowledge of marketing is vital.

Mountain Fitness: Guide Training, offered by Discover Outdoors in New York City, is specifically designed to train the outdoor adventurer. The company’s philosophy is that form and fitness should follow function. Mountain Fitness: Guide Training uses rocks, logs and outdoor equipment to give participants a 90-minute, nontraditional workout.

During the past decade, the term functional training has been used to describe programs that mirror everyday activities. Functional exercises are sometimes referred to as multiplanar movements that require coordination of two or more limbs, muscle groups, joints or areas of the body. There is another simpler way to define functional movement: pushing, pulling, bending, twisting, squatting and lunging! Look closely at these gross motor patterns that humans perform daily and you see an easy formula and library of movement patterns for a strength training class.

Want to help your client get the most out of her exercise session? Get her a partner, says new research. The purpose of the study, published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine (2012; 44, 151–59), was to see if there was an ideal scenario for motivating exercisers to intensify their workouts. To determine this, the researchers randomly divided 58 female subjects among three scenarios: solo exercise; coactive (exercising independently alongside another person); or conjunctive (exercising with a partner perceived to possess greater capability).