Christy Stevenson

Have you noticed the latest trend? Instructors are incorporating partner work to add intensity, motivation and a sense of community. Prepare your class for success by teaming people up during the warmup. Below are a few full-body exercises that hit the upper body, lower body and core in a coordinated movement pattern. Before you start, get everyone in the “sidekick spirit” with these tips:

Eager class participants want to tap into their highest potential, and group fitness instructors have been acknowledging this by offering workouts that are more explosive, more powerful and fuller in range than ever before. However, intense, dynamic workouts demand a warmup that truly prepares the body. Specifically, you must target the hips—hip flexors, piriformis, glutes and hip rotators—to avoid possible tweaks from all those lunges, squats and burpees (not to mention repetitive stress from cycling and running).

Many participants are showing up to class ready to be pushed hard. The challenge for you, as the instructor, is to keep programs form-focused and safe while providing the dynamic moves people crave. This workout—which mixes high-impact plyometrics with controlled, fluid strength moves—allows you to do both.

Because I grew up a “Navy brat,” I had to move around fairly often as a kid. Adulthood brought with it a few more moves as I navigated college and marriage. When I had my children and we’d finally settled into an area where most of our extended family also lived, I thought we were there to stay. I taught fitness classes regularly and helped to supervise the group fitness program. I had several personal training clients and led monthly fitness instructor certification courses. I even presented at the state fitness symposium.

Instructors tend to spend most of their creativity on the main body of the workout and forget to choreograph an equally inspiring warm-up. Instead of relying on ho-hum step-touches, hamstring curls and classic knee lifts, incorporate the stability ball for an unforgettable warm-up that limbers up the body in all planes of movement.

Running has long been a favorite fitness activity for millions of people. However, as more people catch the running bug, more also succumb to overuse injuries. Running tends to be high impact, it’s repetitive, and it occurs mostly in the sagittal plane. No wonder, then, that many runners fall prey to injury or imbalance.