by Michael Plank
We LOVE group fitness sessions. It’s where friendships are made. It’s where people find belonging. It’s where relationships are born and formed and strengthened. The whole reason we even opened our gym ten years ago is that we wanted to build a community of meaning for people.
We work massively hard to make those sessions fun and welcoming. And we work massively hard to be sure that the programming will make anyone who does it more fit overall. I can’t imagine group fitness ever being anything less than one of our absolute core offerings.
But…
Although group training is a good tool (and even the best tool) for many, many things, it is not the best tool for everything. One of the areas it falls short is with hyper-specific goals.
Every single one of us really is a beautiful, unique snowflake. Group training is great at general fitness for the general population. But if you want to get your first pull-up, what would be even better would be to have someone watch you and be able to figure out where exactly in the range of motion you struggle; to be able to figure out where you could develop some more strength; to figure out where your range of motion might be limited; to help you talk through a timeline for your goal; to be able to develop a training plan tailored specifically for you and your own snowflake needs, and (maybe most importantly) to hold you to that plan and to adjust as needed as you progress.
That’s beyond the scope of even the best group training. But luckily it’s exactly what happens in Personal Training. And we offer that too.
Personal Training can be great for general fitness, but where it really shines is with specific goals. It is the best way there is to break through plateaus, achieve new things, and overcome the most frustrating fitness struggles you run into.
You can get great results without it. But the people I can think of over the last few years that have had the most dramatic results – the ones where everyone asks them their secret, where people start saying they want to be like them, where people start talking about “this woman at my gym,” “this guy I workout with,” – those people… without exception… have included 1-on-1 coaching as part of their plan. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.
It’s about as close to a magic bullet as there is.