Unlike what personal trainers who are squeezing the lemon for more clients will tell you, there is NO SUCH THING as group personal training. It's either a group or it's personal; those things are mutually exclusive.
What's better, classes or one-on-one coaching? Coach Kevin Don explains the difference between these scenarios to find out what's best for your training goals.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hi, it’s Coach Kevin Don here, bringing you some facts rather than fallacies and helping you to unlock higher order, objective thought processes that allow you to “hard pass” on the latest fitness fads.
Ok, so one of the biggest arguments in the fitness industry is: are classes or one on one training better? It probably won't surprise you that personal trainers say individual program design is best and that class-based gyms will say classes are best. So let's have a more objective look, with a healthy sprinkling of my own anecdotes.
Like everything I discuss here on the show, there is a TON of nuance. So, is individual design better? Well, I don't know. Maybe. It all comes down to INTENT.
There are 3 categories of program design or training scenario:
Unlike what personal trainers who are squeezing the lemon for more clients will tell you, there is NO SUCH THING as group personal training. It's either a group or it's personal, those things are mutually exclusive.
Now, before we circle back to the differences between group and individual, I will give you a little anecdotal evidence from my life recently. I have mentioned before on the show that I joined an adult gymnastics class. Recently the class has been getting busier; the numbers increased from 5-6 people per class to 20-22 people. Unfortunately, the number of coaches has remained the same. The situation turned from a coached class to what looked like disaster management.
People are left to do their own warm-ups, and the coaches can't control or coach such a large group, so now it’s become “supervised open gym” where each person decides what they want to train and the coach tries to work round the group. Sadly, this has meant that in the past 4 classes, I haven’t had any coaching. The coach hasn’t had the time to make it round to me and I am not getting any technical corrections. So I’ve stopped going to these sessions.
Fortunately, I found another gymnastics facility the same week I decided I couldn’t keep spending money to drive to the gym to coach myself. This new place has gymnasts providing one-on-one tuition. In the first session, I made more progress than I had in 14 sessions in the group.
Why is that? Well, groups are set up to fail in a coaching scenario. In my first episode of Get-Fit Guy, I defined coaching as taking someone on a journey from the point of current ability to a point of intended physical outcome. Because the group program is either written to the coaches teaching strengths (a.k.a. teaching bias) or it's written for the needs of the many and not the few, it's impossible to reach a specific intent. It's the lowest order of training; it's moving for the sake of moving.
Short term it's probably fun—but long term you don't get anywhere. I mean, it might well be that your goal is exactly that, in which case it's fine. But I don't think if you were satisfied with moving without a goal that you’d be listening to this podcast and looking for fitness learnings! Other examples of group training you might be familiar with are a HIIT class at the local gym, an online class like Peloton, or a bootcamp in the local park.
Next up we have group individual design. Now I said that you can't have group personal training. You can't. But you CAN individualize the group. I think of this like going to buy a new suit off the rack and then having it altered. It fits better than it would straight off the peg, but it won’t fit as well as bespoke tailoring.
In an individualized group, everyone follows the same program, but the coach makes changes to each person's technique or provides a more simple (or more complex) variation of a movement. Good examples of this would be a CrossFit/functional fitness gym or even a martial arts class, where there are belt levels denoting skill and a progression plan in place.
Finally, we have individual design. As I mentioned, this is now where we are dealing with a bespoke level of programming and service. There will be a consultation to help both the client and the coach to understand long-term goals and where current capacity lies. You may be looking to:
So, now that you have an understanding of the differences between the three styles of training and program design, you can make a more informed decision about what you prefer and would want to invest your time and money into. Just like with clothing, some people will be able to really rock clothes off the peg, but others will want a more bespoke and tailored plan. It's all about your intent. If the intent is to have fun and listen to good tunes with your friends and your favorite instructor, then body pump at the local gym might be your jam. But if it's to respect and validate the individual, you might want to pull the trigger on finding a coach.