Hardest parts of the job

People think the hardest things about being a group exercise instructor is learning choreography or talking at the same time as moving or always thinking one step ahead so you can cue what is coming next.

These things are tough at first but I think there are harder things we face, here’s a few:

Morning classes – Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching morning classes, they set you up for the day. But if something goes wrong first thing you’re stuck! Wake up ill, train cancelled, anything like that and there’s nothing you can do to avoid cancelling the class. The centre often won’t be open for you to let them know far enough in advance to warn members and you’ll be unlikely to find cover awake and ready to go that early on.
Getting sick – In my day job a little cold is something I can work through, much harder to teach when you feel ill though, and I think fitness instructors are more prone to catching things. One, we are physically moving at high intensity more often than, say, a PT on the gym floor is, so our immune system is likely to be lower, plus we spend a lot of time in close proximity to a lot of people sweating away (think of the close proximity of bikes in a spin studio and how sweaty the room gets), is it any wonder we seem to catch everything going?
Cover- I personally have been pretty lucky when covering and never had any terrible experiences with members, although it’s a nightmare when you go somewhere new and nobody seems to be able to show you how the stereo system works! Finding cover however can be a nightmare, especially post Pandemic. I get it, I am pretty much at my perfect balance of classes so not really looking to take on cover and tend to only do it as a favour now, but it does make trying to take time off hard.
Lack of equipment – Those times when classes are full but some bikes are broken, or there’s not enough weights / steps to go around. Trying to find solutions to allow everyone to participate when members who’ve booked on are, quite rightly, annoyed by these challenges is tough at times ad it feels awful when there is no option but to disappoint someone.
No air con – Nobody enjoys this, members or instructor, and it’s tough to stay positive and keep people moving knowing that everyone is struggling in the heat.

Trying Group Exercise

Have you ever wanted to try an exercise class but been too nervous? Maybe you think you’re not fit enough or the opposite and it will be too easy. Will you be coordinated enough? Will you be able to keep up? What if everyone else knows what to do?

Classes are how I started exercising and I remember the nerves I felt going to my first class. A few classes later I loved it, over time I tried more and more different types of classes and found a confidence to train that led to me becoming a group exercise instructor myself.

What people don’t realise about classes is that they can be pretty much whatever you want them to be. Yes, you are training in a group and doing the same thing as everyone else, but you also always have the opportunity to approach the class as best suits you. If you want to go as hard as possible and push yourself you can do, equally if you want to train for the mood boost, enjoyment, to feel good or even just take a break from life you can use the class for that. As instructors we are there to push people of course, but we know that people train for many different reasons and can tailor how we teach you to that effect. We know that because we also train for lots of different reasons, depending on the day, our mood, our energy levels.

The other thing to know about classes is they are a great chance to meet new people. You won’t be made to talk to people, you can keep yourself to yourself, but you will over time get to recognise people and get to know them. Classes are friendly environments where we all tend to chat before and after and you can get to know people from a wide range of backgrounds, and make some really great friends too. Above all, they are a lot more welcoming than you might at first imagine.

You can be super fit or brand new to exercise and you will be able to do a class. You can make them part of an existing training regime or just do classes, you can take things at your own pace and build up and there are always alternatives to exercises available for whatever reason you need.

Finally, I think it’s also good to recognise that there are lots of different ways to train. Some will tell you that you shouldn’t be doing classes, they are a waste of time, weights only would be better and so on. The truth is though that each individual will find the best results with different types of training, different combinations, routines, amount of training. Doing what works for someone else won’t necessarily get you the results. So if you think classes might motivate you, if the style of training or working in a group or to music does motivate you then ignore those people and do what you can and will stick with. Like me you may find that other time you mix other training in with classes or you may find you don’t, if you’re moving and happy with what you’re doing that doesn’t really matter.

Your First Group Cycle Class

Group Cycle, often known as spin. There are other variations such as Les Millls RPM too. One of the most inclusive classes in a gym. Also the one that in my experience people are most scared to try. I can see why- it looks tough (for good reason – it is) and everyone looks like they know what they’re doing (they don’t, honest) and it looks technical (you have to set up a bike – this was my biggest fear at first).

So if you’ve ever wondered about trying a class but aren’t sure if it’s for you here’s the low down (from my perspective) for first timers on how to get the most out of the class.

Everyone is welcome- all fitness levels. Yes it will be hard but you really can go at your own pace
Every instructor’s class is different. So if you don’t like mine try someone elses – there will be a style you like / format you enjoy / class with music you love out there- shop around! I sometimes teach rides where we work along to the music other times I teach HIIT style tabatta, some people do races and competitions. I won’t be offended if you try my class then I see you at someone elses next week!
One thing to note, trade marked classes such as Les Mills RPM will be similar in every gym / with every instructor. They are pre- choreographed and so you will always get the same format – even if you go to a class in a different country. This really suits some people, especially if you like routine.
Get there 10 minutes early and say hi to the instructor. Tell them you are new, tell them you are nervous. They will be nice, they will look out for you and they will show you how to set up your bike.
There will normally be modifications or different levels you can work at and the instructor will always offer these different options throughout the class- take the ones that suit you. Never tell yourself you are doing the easy option. They are just different and people take different options for all sorts of different reasons.
Put some resistance on the bike – going too light sounds like a good idea (especially when you feel like you are going to die half way through!) but it will mean you bounce – this will hurt your bottom, believe me. After my first class I walked like a cowboy for a week.
Always make sure your feet are strapped in – loose straps are dangerous. Dangerous is bad.
There is normally a brake on the resistance button. Normally by pressing down on it you can stop the feet dead. It’s useful to remember just in case! The instructor will tell you about the bike if you introduce yourself at the start.
Don’t be afraid to add resistance when asked to. If you add too much you can always take it off. You’re there to get fitter – challenging yourself is the way to do this. Noone will laugh if you get stuck!
Take water – you will sweat, you will get thirsty.
Maybe take a towel- I refer you back to the sweat!
Taking recoveries is fine. You are meant to work hard- if you push so hard you need to take a moment then well done. The instructor won’t shout at you – just sit on the bike, keep the legs spinning and come back in when you are ready.
When you are new it can seem like everyone else is faster and fitter than you. Remember they may have been doing this a long time and have conditioned themselves to last the full class. They will not have been like that in their first class so don’t beat yourself up. Try your best, try and enjoy it and just focus on giving your best effort. Nobody is there to compete with anyone else so just work at a level right for you. Nobody is going to judge you.
Cycle classes are meant to be hard- the great thing is as you get fitter you can go faster and at a heavier resistance so it stays effective and never gets to the point it feels ‘easy’
Above all Group exercise is meant to be fun so relax and smile – the music and other people make it more interesting than just sitting on a bike in the gym!

I’m Back!

This week, after a break over the summer due to personal reasons, I’ve come back to my full Group Exercise teaching schedule (around my day job so not actual full time teaching).

Immediately after my first class I remembered how much I love teaching and classes. Do I feel like I need to get fitter still- yes, did that matter much? Not at all. The connection with people and being able to coach and encourage people to feel like they worked hard and enjoyed it makes it one of the best jobs you can do. My favourite feedback was that was hard but I enjoyed it, because that’s exactly how it should be, we aren’t training for the Olympics so it should be enjoyable and make you feel good (even if at the time you’re swearing under your breath!).

What I also realised is I’m effectively starting back and with that need to take my own advice and ease myself in. I need to teach all my classes of course so I can’t just do a couple this wee and build up (or leave early) as members can. What I can do is plan my week accordingly. As such I made sure at the weekend that I’d done a food shop, meal prepped, got clothes ready for the week. I’ve kept my diary as clear as possible so in between work and classes I can chill and recover as I knew I’d be more tired than usual this week.

Sometimes you need to acknowledge how much you can reasonably take on and succeed with and whilst it’s good to challenge yourself, doing so to a degree where you’re likely to feel rubbish or like you’ve achieved nothing because you burnt yourself out is counter productive.

We Are Back

Today we head back to indoor classes. That means more than just doing classes again, it means a change to routine, sleep patterns, activity levels, how I plan my week.

I think we have all wondered over the last few weeks about our fitness levels, how we would feel in the first few classes back. We’ve all looked forward to seeing people again after such a long time.

Remember this week however, if you are back in the gym doing classes, whether as an instructor or participant, that fitness levels will improve. It is however bound to feel a bit tough at first, but that’s ok, because it will feel like that for all of us.

What I think we need to focus on this week, instead of ‘getting back to where we were before’, is making sure we don’t over do it and making time to recover as well.

There is bound to be a bit of an urge to go for it, and for instructors, you’ve no choice but to teach all your classes. I think it’s worth remembering however that when we fist started doing classes we probably built up to the levels we were at when Lockdown hit. Since then there’s been over a year of upheaval and it will take a bit of time to ease back in to feeling ok with our previous levels of activity. You might have noticed if you’ve gone from working from home to back into the office, just that change to your day can actually be pretty knackering.

Enjoy your classes this week, but rest and recover too.

Are you ready for classes?

Who’s slightly nervous to get back to classes?

I’m really excited to get back to teaching and to see everyone again and move to music (I find it so much more motivating than working out alone) but I’m also a bit apprehensive about how hard it’s going to feel in those first few classes.

The truth is, no matter how much I prepare in the gym I know that doing a full on group cycle class for 45 minutes or a HIIT class is going to feel really tough. I remember after the first lockdown when I taught my first class I was beetroot after. Like redder and more sweaty and out of breath than I think I’ve ever been. Sitting on a bike had never felt so uncomfortable (three classes in 24 hours when you haven’t sat on a bike for a while is an experience let me tell you).

Of course that makes me a little nervous, but I keep reminding myself that everyone else is coming back from the same break. If I struggle a little during a class I’m likely to be feeling the same as many of the class members and together we will all get used to training again and gradually rebuild our endurance levels.

Ultimately I know none of that will really matter because as soon as we start and the music starts playing it will feel so good to get back to it any tiredness will be totally worth it.

So if you’re nervous about your fitness or whether you’ll be able to get through a class when we re-start, don’t be, fitness is a never ending journey and we will always have periods where our fitness peaks and troughs and at least this time many of us will all be in the same boat and the same time.

How ae you prepping for the big gym reopening?

Gyms in England reopen on 12th April (hopefully), classes can start back from 17th May (hopefully). There is hope restrictions will be largely lifted around 21st June. The rest of the UK is likely to be around about the same I’d guess. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard I need to lose my Lockdown weight before June or I need to get my fitness back ready for when gyms reopen.

To be fair many people have covered the first of those statements. Very quickly, you don’t need to be any size or shape come June. Come June you can enjoy seeing people and going places and generally not being stuck indoors whether you have stayed the same weight, put on half a stone or five stone during Lockdown. If you want to lose weight go for it, but it doesn’t need to be by the specified time.

Getting fit to return to a place where you go to get fit baffles me. Will you need to build back up to pre Lockdown weights or endurance levels if the access to equipment you have had has been limited these last few months? Of course. Does that matter? Not really, you’ll still be allowed in the gym, there are no pre requisites before you’re allowed access. Of course what we are really worried about is being judged. Turning up and being the only one feeling less fit or more out of shape than this time last year. It won’t be the case, I can almost guarantee 90% of people feel the same as you.

When I think back to last summer when I went back to teaching after several months in Lockdown. Was it tough? Hell yes. Weights felt heavy, sitting on a spin bike was less comfortable than it was, I was beetroot red at the end of classes. So was everyone else. As the instructor I had to ease back into it, all my regular class members did too. There was no judgement, either of each other or of me as an instructor. We all laughed about it, shared tips and compared progress as the weeks went on and we got into our routine again.

I’m all for building yourself back up now, I kind of don’t want to feel completely dead after my first class back when I need to teach a few hours later, so I want to start to increase my activity levels now. It’s still going to be a shock when I get back to the gym though and that is fine.

We haven’t had a choice about this enforced absence from the gym so we don’t need to make ourselves feel bad about it or put so much pressure on ourselves. Instead I’m looking forward to seeing people again, and being with them in finding it a bit tough to start with but getting through it together with my classes.

Ever wanted to try a class?

Finally, you can be super fit or brand new to exercise and you will be able to do a class. You can make them part of an existing training regime or just do classes, you can take things at your own pace and build up and there are always alternatives to exercises available for whatever reason you need.

Covid-19 Observations of a Les Mills Fitness Instructor

Doing a class at home is a hundred times harder than teaching a class in a gym.
It’s also really hard to not just stop half way through a session at home and start doing random household tasks… like dusting your lightshades!
You may find yourself randomly looking around the room and randomly smiling at nobody as you do a class at home.
You’re probably already wondering if you’ll remember how to teach when gyms reopen.
When gyms closed you thought to yourself I’m going to have all this time to learn the new releases, I may even script.
Two weeks in you haven’t touched them and have realised you’ll still probably leave it until the week before to learn them.
Logging into a quarterly webinar and not being able to talk or be seen on camera seems weird now we are all Zoom experts.
You’ve listened to so many different explanations of why we can’t use the music to teach classes online you should be a PPL PRS music licencing expert but actually you still don’t really understand because Zumba don’t seem to be having the same problem.
You have however strangely enjoyed doing a bit of freestyle teaching or body weight training.
You’ve probably taken up running.
And if you were already a runner you’re now shocked by the number of runners you now see out each day. Like really, I used to be able to run in my park without passing a soul now it’s like the Great Manchester Run out there!
You are now coming to the realisation that you can’t eat like you normally do because now you’re not always on the move. You miss classes and members of course but secretly this is why you really want to gt back to teaching as soon as possible.
You’re worried your chocolate consumption may mean you won’t be able to jump when we return.
You’ve actually wondered if Smart Start also applies to the instructor.
You’re already starting to dread the DOMs you will feel after that first class back.
And the saddle soreness!
You don’t need to wear gym kit every day now but you still do. Because that’s all you own.
You still randomly instinctively put batteries in your basket at the supermarket and you will have a battery stockpile by the time you return to teaching.
Listening to other music is a revelation.
You miss you class members and realise that teaching is really only about the people, the rest of it is all just pointless stress if you take a step back and look logically. In the last week before gyms closed and we knew every class could be the last for a while nobody cared if you got things wrong or your coaching wasn’t perfect, we all jut moved and enjoyed it and went for it because it served a benefit to all of us at a stressful time. We stress far too much about silly things normally and when we return we should all remember this.

Why a spin class is a lot like life

One of the hardest things as a fitness professional is trying to get a message across about the mindset of ‘fitness’ but knowing that some parts of that message will sound completely contradictory to people. I know that that’s because everyone is different and different people will face different mental challenges when working towards their goals. Yet I also know it may mean sometimes what i write or discuss on podcasts has potential to confuse.

For instance I did a podcast last week where I said in a nutshell – you can do whatever suits you to work towards your goals, there’s no set right or wrong BUT if you want to change where you’re at you do have to make changes. If your head says but I am doing what makes me happy that’s fine but also means you need to accept you probably won’t see the changes you’d like.

Now that rule applies across the board but the message is probably more relevant to those who want change but haven’t yet accepted wanting isn’t enough you also have to apply. For many who listen to my podcast / read this you are already active, have made or are in the process of making changes. The thing I observe most about people who are already actively trying to make improvements is they undervalue what they are already doing and when they hear messages such as that feel bad and like they need to do more. Then you get to an opposite problem, where everything gets overwhelming and you almost feel like a failure for not doing more.

Fitness is like life. It’s a balancing act of ambition and having the drive to work towards your goals and actively do things that will assist that and knowing when you need to rest, go easy on yourself, allow yourself to drop a few of the less important balls.

I teach a lot of spin (sorry group cycle). I rarely teach to a beat or specific resistance and coach using the RPE (rate of perceived exertion) scale. I encourage people to go heavy – for them, or fast – for them. I say that by the end their legs should feel heavy, their breathing laboured, they should finish feeling they have worked as hard as they can. They could be going slower than someone else in the class but giving their all. That faster person could be giving 75%- in which case the slower person will see greater results over a period of time. What I try and teach my regulars is that they have to self regulate their efforts – when it starts to feel easy they need to recognise that and adjust an element of their ride to increase the intensity, equally if it starts to feel like they can’t carry on they again have the autonomy to adjust. They also understand that day to day their energy levels will be different, sometimes a class feels harder or better- that is’t they’ve lost fitness, it’s how their week has been, if they’ve been ill, perhaps they are hungry or slept badly. As the instructor I can look and say ‘you can put more resistance on ‘you can go faster’ but I’m not riding their bike and only they know if i’m right or wrong in my assertion.

I think a group cycle class is a great analogy for your fitness routine as a whole. Learn to recognise when you are pulling back a bit and need to make changes if you want to reach a goal, but also learn to recognise when you’re being hard on yourself. Take advice, but don’t just do it without question – understand why and how coaches suggests you make changes so as time goes on you find it easier to manage your mindset to your health. Be kind to yourself but honest with it.