The Right Tool for the Job
If you know much about CrossFit, you probably also know that group training is a big part of it. There are some amazing things about training hard in a group.
First, the biggest physiological changes happen at the edges of your limits. In other words, training harder will make bigger changes to your body than training easier. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people achieve new things, lift more weight, go faster, go farther, and overcome obstacles, all because there was a group of people there doing it alongside them. The added pressure of knowing that your effort is visible, combined with the support and cheers from other people who know what you’re going through because they’re going through it too, makes for impressive results.
Second, it’s fantastic for general fitness. “General fitness training” means stuff that will make almost anybody stronger, faster, and healthier. If you are just training to be better at life, or training to keep aging at bay, or training because your doctor said you should, or training because you’ve got to do something, but are limited on time, general fitness training is absolutely the best thing going. You probably don’t need to work Gunthar Rows and Panda Pulls and Single-arm Standing Flyes. You should squat some, hinge some, pull some, push some, carry some, and occasionally go fast. General fitness training will take care of it all.
Third, it’s amazing for building community and making friends. That’s not always easy to do as an adult who’s not in school anymore. It’s super undervalued. (Do a google search for “health risks of loneliness” if you need more justification for hanging out with people you like). Having a place where you belong that’s filled with people you enjoy being around on a regular basis does amazing things for you.
But group training is not the right tool for every job. It falls short in two places: first, where people actually don’t want to be around others. They may not feel comfortable, they may not feel confident, they may have all the friends they need.
The second place group training falls short is what we’ll focus on here, which is when it comes to specific goals.
If you really want to get your first pull-up, or your first muscle-up, or to improve your squat clean, or to figure out how to jump rope better, or grow your deltoids, or balance your upper and lower body muscle mass, or improve your mile time… general fitness training can help, but it’s almost certainly going to be less effective than specific fitness training, and it’s definitely going to be a lot slower than personal training. General fitness training happens in groups, and is designed to do a little bit of everything and to make you ok at all of it. But if you want to get better at running, running will do that better than squats and burpees. Specific training helps with specific goals. And personal training is where specific training happens.
Every single one of us really is a beautiful, unique snowflake. If you want to get your first pull-up, you can definitely make that happen in the context of a group class. But what would be way more effective (and a lot quicker) 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.
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.
I can’t imagine UPCF will ever not offer group training. We value being a community so much, and group sessions are a big part of how we build that community.
But the best tool for the job is the right one. And that’s why we continually build out our offerings.
And the good news is that you don’t have to choose! We have plenty of members who combine group training and personal training (or nutrition coaching or habit coaching) in a way that works for them.
Our job is to get you from where you are to where you want to be, and there are lots of tools we can use to do that.