Group fitness is a great way for people to get their daily workout in. You might notice that some people make more progress than others. Even though everyone is doing the same (or a very similar) workout, some people seem to get more out of that hour than others.
There are many factors not in our control that can determine how quickly we see the results we want. For instance, a newbie is going to see a lot quicker progress than someone who is 5 years into their training life. There’s no point in worrying about those things as we can’t control them.
There are, however, a lot of things that we can control that will contribute to our success in the gym. Each of these may be small by themselves, but when you’re doing all of them, it’s hard not to see the compounding effect. Let’s have a look at what we can do to improve our chances of being successful:
Turn up on time & be prepared – pretty simple, if you’re rushing around then your mindset isn’t likely in a good place to come in and crush it. Having the equipment you need and taking care of anything else that would affect your focus for that hour will help you put full focus into your session.
Know & understand the workout – it’s important to at least know what you’re doing that day. You can go into the session with a bit of a plan and you can think about what weights you used previously. A quick look 10min before can prep your mind for what is to come.
Log your workout – we take care of this for our members at Defy but logging your workouts is a powerful tool to start to understand what your body can do and what you need to do to get the most out of it.
Train, don’t exercise – training and exercising are NOT the same things. Training means you have a program that isn’t random and has clear progression throughout. Again, we take care of this at Defy, but doing random workouts every day will only get you so far. Your body is very capable and will adapt quickly.
Listen to coaches – it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been training for, you can always improve. It may be something small like adjusting your grip or something bigger that may take time to adjust to. It requires you to have a growth mindset rather than being fixed in your ways. If your coach is good, they should be able to give you something to improve on each time.
Put in the effort – showing up is definitely half the battle, but it’s not going to get you the best results. You have to be willing to work. Different workouts require different kinds of effort but you need to give everything that is needed for that day.
Make good choices outside the gym – if you go to the gym 3x week. That is 1.7% of weekly hours spent in the gym. Clearly what you do outside the gym will have a significant impact on your fitness goal. Sleep, nutrition/hydration, recovery and NEAT* will play huge roles in how your body responds to your workouts.
Even though a group may be following the same written workout, the results across the group can be very different. To get the most out of your training, you need to adopt as many of the above points as possible. What you do outside of the gym is arguably as important as what you do inside of the gym.
The final thing I will say is that you should try to train with people who do all of these things. The group environment can be hugely beneficial if you’re with a good group!
*NEAT – non exercise activity thermogenesis – this is any energy expenditure that isn’t directly related to your workouts. Someone who sits all day will have less NEAT than a construction worker for instance.