Group Fitness Classes continually lure many women (and men) into their ranks, despite the fact that this form of exercise yields almost zero significant benefits.

There are many, many incarnations of the group fitness class, with a variety of creative names.   So many different fun names, so many different options, so widely available, and so wildly ineffective at getting people in shape.  Despite their cure-all claims and clever brand names, group fitness classes fail.

The best thing that Group Fitness Classes, including “Group Strength & Conditioning Classes”, could ever aspire to be is…

(wait for it)

CARDIO.

And cardio (alone) is not going to get you to your goals.  You could literally train for a marathon and end up fatter (higher bodyfat percentage) by doing all that cardio (research study).

Don’t misunderstand me, cardiovascular conditioning (“cardio”, “aerobics”, or “aerobics work”) is truly valuable for general health, but it will not, by itself, positively affect body composition, or even maintain muscle mass.  In other words, cardio, or cardio equivalents, alone will not lower your bodyfat percentage significantly in the long term.  However, if you combine group classes with a semi-starvation diet, you might be able to become a smaller, fat(ter) person.

Some Group Fitness Classes may not even qualify as effective CARDIO.  When you have “coaches”, “fitness professionals”, “certified personal trainers”, dance instructors, or fitness facility owners with zero real qualifications attempting to teach effective exercise, the inevitable result is nobody wins.  It is a tragic waste of time, energy, and money, both on the side of the client, and the health professional.  This problem has exploded because of social media.  Everyone with an Instagram or Tik-Tok account is now suddenly an expert on diet and exercise?  It’s all a big joke, and the unfortunate punchline is, you’re still fat and out of shape.

There are whole franchises built on the premise of exercise concepts that simply DO NOT WORK.  The super trendy exercise concept of super-setting a bodyweight or dumbbell “strength training” exercises with “active recovery” bouts of hopping on a rower, bike, or treadmill for a set time or distance is utter garbage.  You’re hoping that this format will yield both strength and cardio gains, but you’re actually getting neither.  What you’re actually getting is injured and fatter.

Personally, I see a lot of hopeful people out there foolishly jumping around trying to “burn calories”, “get in shape”, and eventually quitting because of zero results and then they blame it all on diet.  If asked, I would say, “it’s the training, not the diet”.

“How do I just get abs?”, or a version of that is probably the number one question I get as a coach.  The answer is that “getting abs” requires you properly resolve the following hierarchy:

1. Training
2. Diet
3. Rest and Recovery

Without properly programmed training, the best diet in the world will not do much.  Without proper training and diet, all the rest and recovery in the world won’t make a difference.

In the context of this article, I am trying to help you resolve the primary consideration,  the “Training”.

And, by the way, contrary to popular opinion, you CAN “out-train a bad diet”.  If you know how to train.

Here are the FIVE (5) BIG REASONS GROUP FITNESS CLASSES FAIL.

1.  IT’S STILL JUST CARDIO

Practically all Group Fitness Classes are making the same fundamental mistake: attempting to turn strength training into cardiovascular conditioning (“cardio”), and/or turn cardio into strength training.  Strength training is not cardio.  And cardio is not strength training.  They are two distinct, and very different, exercise options.  You CANNOT train both at the same time and expect results.

The critical difference between cardio and strength training is… CARDIO DOES NOT BUILD MUSCLE.  Trying to combine strength training and cardio within the same “efficient, effective 30-45 minute high intensity workout” fails to deliver the true benefits of either one.   You would get a better effect by spending the same amount of time and energy on cleaning your house, or landscaping your yard, because then at least you would have something to show for all that effort and sweat.

2.  INSUFFICIENT INTENSITY LEVEL

Intensity is a mathematical calculation, not a feeling.

When we talk about exercise in general, “intensity” is meant to express the percentage of maximal exertion (strength) at which you are working.  Intensity is not a measure of how much you sweat, or your rate of perceived exertion, but rather a percentage of your muscular effort relative to your maximal strength level.  For example, if the maximum weight you can barbell back squat with is 100 pounds for one repetition, then when you are performing squats with 50 pounds you are working at 50% intensity.

Effective strength training occurs when you are using resistance between approximately 60% and 100%  intensity.  Because strength is measured in time, we also know how long a set of repetitions in strength training should last.  Conveniently, all the math has already been done here and I can summarize by telling you that if your set of repetitions, or training event, lasts longer than 70 seconds, it is NOT strength training, it is cardiovascular conditioning (cardio).

Cardio, by definition, is the act of doing very little (low intensity) over a long period of time.  There is no such thing as “high intensity” cardio.

3.  CATERING TO THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR AND INSUFFICIENTLY ADDRESSING INDIVIDUAL NEEDS

You cannot work out at the level of the weakest and least coordinated person in the class and still make personal progress.  Additionally, if you have an injury, or specific body issue, that needs to be addressed, that would take the number one priority spot in your program, and your program would need to be adjusted precisely toward rehabilitation of injury.  It’s likely you have a nagging injury due to participating in group fitness classes in the first place.  “Working through it” and hoping it goes away is not a strategy with a high success rate.

4.  LACK OF EXERCISE SPECIFICITY

When you are trying to cause the body to adapt to a stimulus such as exercise, you need to treat your body like it has the attention span of a three-year-old.  If I tell a three-year-old to 1. go “pee-pee on the potty”, 2. pick up his clothes on the floor of his bedroom and put them in the hamper, and then 3. come downstairs for breakfast, he is likely to respond to only one (if at all!) of those requests.  Because I overwhelmed him with too many requests, he may not comply with any requests.  That’s how your body reacts to your group fitness classes.

When you perform that long list of nonsense exercises, strung together in some arbitrary way, you are saying, “adapt to this long list of non-specific exercises done in this random format”, instead of saying, “concentrate, perform, and adapt to this one exercise”.  What is the training effect of stringing together a bunch of nonsense postures and movements and dancing around like a monkey?  There is no training effect.

5.  HIGH INJURY RATE

Jumping

You’re most likely taking group fitness classes because you are moderately, to severely, overweight.  Is jumping around, or jumping up on a box, really a smart move?   Think about it.

Olympic Lifts: Snatches, Cleans, and Jerks

Some exercises are not suited for high reps, or “reps to infinity”.  Olympic lifts, for example, have never been suited for high repetitions.  The technical component is too demanding to be sustained for long duration.  If you are performing variations of the Olympic lifts for more than 5 reps, you are begging for an injury, because your nervous system and your form, checked out somewhere within the first 20 seconds of the set.

Lunges

Lunges is another in a long list of classically misapplied exercises, mostly promoted by dance instructors posing as strength coaches.  Most fitness enthusiasts have no business doing lunges.  And if you are doing them with any consistency, your knees hurt, you have a knee injury, or you are about to.  There is a prerequisite strength level for safely doing lunges so you do not blow up your knees.  Here it is.  Double bodyweight on the bar for a full Olympic style squat.  That means if you are a 150 pound woman, or a 220 pound man, you better be squatting (no half squats!) 300 pounds, or 440 pounds, respectively.  If you can’t do that, you have no business doing lunges.

Variations of the Squat

There are over 140 legitimate ways to squat in effective strength training.  All these weird squat and lunge-type, “pivot”, “reverse”, “cursty”, single leg alternating  exercises are NOT included on the list of effective squat variations.  Also, alternating lower-limb exercises like this have practically zero training value.

I guess I should just be thankful that the burpees-for-everything trend seems to have finally died.

Overhead presses

Do you have any idea how many injuries I have seen among people who have dropped out of group fitness classes?  MANY.  About 20% of them include shoulder injuries.  Almost all of these shoulder injuries have come from pressing overhead at a vector (a line with horizontal and vertical component), rather than a plumb line.  If you have no idea what that means, you probably have no business doing overhead presses in a group fitness class.

Few things annoy me more than wasted time.

I am incredibly lazy at the gym in the sense that I refuse to waste time and energy on stuff that does not give me a training effect.  If Group Fitness Classes had any value whatsoever, I would participate.  I am lucky in the sense that I began exercising very consistently at a very young age (12 years old).  Lots of painful trial and error yielded me the knowledge and experience I now benefit from.  I like to joke with clients sometimes and say, “I have wasted my life in the gym, so you don’t have to”, but, even though it’s meant to be funny, there is much truth to that.

Thank you for reading.