Kickstart the new year with a critical look at group fitness training! Kevin unpacks the challenges of group training environments, from repetitive programming to technical missteps that lead to injuries. With real-life examples and insights, he discusses how to identify red flags, protect your body, and maintain your fitness intentions without falling into the trap of overtraining or poor coaching practices.
Kickstart the new year with a critical look at group fitness training! Kevin unpacks the challenges of group training environments, from repetitive programming to technical missteps that lead to injuries. With real-life examples and insights, he discusses how to identify red flags, protect your body, and maintain your fitness intentions without falling into the trap of overtraining or poor coaching practices.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hello listeners, I hope everyone had a great New Years and I wish everyone good health for the upcoming year.
I am going to start off this year by talking about something I have spoken about many times before. However, it’s always good to hear things again as a reminder and there are also new listeners coming online all the time and they have not yet listened to the back catalogue. So, let’s talk about intentionality and psychology in fitness training.
As usual, this has some element of something that I recently experienced, so here is the story: A few days ago I was chatting on WhatsApp with a friend that I haven’t spoken to in a long time, maybe a few years. I asked her if she was still training in the sport she was doing previously. She told me that she had recently taken up CrossFit and then told me the gym she was training at and how wonderful it is. I asked her where that was and it just so happened that I taught a two day seminar at this gym in 2017.
Now, the future does not resemble the past, BUT there were some things that happened after I was at this gym that I found to be ‘red flags’. The first was that I spent 2 days explaining why to do certain lifts one way and not another, had a sea of coaches nodding at me in agreement and vigorously taking notes. Post seminar, they told me how much they learned. Literally one week later, I saw a video on their social media of them just continuing to do the same exact things they were doing BEFORE the seminar. This led me to ask some questions to myself. Questions like: why would a gym pay me to fly over and spend 2 days on coach education, only for things to change in absolutely no way whatsoever? I know that for myself, when I get new information, I am keen to implement it. Secondly: it may very well be the case that they didn’t agree with what I was saying, but why not ask me at the seminar so I can clarify the ‘why’? Whats the point in nodding vigorously in agreement with me and yet actually secretly disagreeing? I saw this at University recently where one of my tutors who I knew didn’t agree with what was being said, was nodding up and down so much with what was being said that I was concerned her head might fall off her shoulders. When I asked her about it, she said ‘oh thats good my masking was working.’ Maybe its my aspergers, but I just don’t understand why people agree when they actually disagree. It undermines my ability to trust anything anyone says. If you can lie so convincingly in situation A, then I have to question your commitment to situation B, since your outward enthusiasm is identical.
So, the whole: I will come to a seminar, learn how to do things better and then not bother my ass to do things better was red flag number one. Red flag number two was that not long after, the gym advertised they were running a seminar and guess what? IT was all the same topics I had covered in my seminar! SO, in other words, they were ripping my content off. Not ok!
So, anyway this is the gym my friend now tells me she is training at. She then goes on to tell me that she might need to go to a physio or sports massage because she has shoulder pain because yesterday and today the program had the EXACT SAME lift. Now, this is why I just can’t with group training. The number of times I have seen coaches making a program up on the fly because they were on vacation and forgot, were out last night and didn’t have time and so on. And as a paying client, I make the assumption that I am paying for a program that will be better than the one I could make up myself at the local planet fitness. I’m sorry, but if you are charging people 200 bucks a month and the main USP is that you have a coach designed program, but that program is then the same two days in a row or has movements that are very similar or use the same body part, this is a big issue.
So I said ok thats interesting, send me the workouts. So she sent them over and yup, the exact same lift, the clean and jerk on Saturday and then on Sunday. You can’t do this. I also have to say that cleans are technical, I don’t think they should be a part of a workout because when you get tired, technique is the first thing out the window. In the clean, people usually start to bicep curl the weight up instead of powering it with the hips. So I ask her: is your shoulder pain on the front of the shoulder in the area between the bony part of the shoulder and the top of the bicep? Yes, it is. Now, this doesn’t surprise me, because the structures in there are the bicep tendons. So, by doing cleans under fatigue, she will have started to use the biceps and then she was given this movement two days in a row, so now there is a high chance she has bicep tendon inflammation.
So, I explain to her why this is bad. And since it has been a while since I have coached in a gym, I had forgotten how clients work the same way as anyone in a toxic relationship: excuses and denial. Her first response was to say: oh its not a bit deal, its just a niggle, I probably need to get stronger. Now, in my book, it’s like this: if you walk into the gym pain free, perform a movement and walk out in pain, you have an INJURY. If you developed that injury because of the volume or load of the movement that injured you being too high, then it is the fault of the coach, literally no one else. Gaslighting yourself that it is your fault that you got injured doing what someone else told you to do is a sign you are in a toxic relationship with your training. Your coach being a nice guy or the gym being close to your house aren’t arguments that can defeat the argument that you got injured due to poor coaching.
She then said she doesn’t blame him because it must be really hard to write programs. Now, I have to push back on that. Is it hard if you have no idea what you are doing and it is not your profession to do so? Yeah, I can make that claim. But is it hard if it is your full time job? No. Furthermore, I would argue that you do not need to be a seasoned expert to know that if I do a ton of squats today, that I don’t do a ton of squats tomorrow. I rest legs and do upper body perhaps. I think that anyone could analyse that with no special knowledge. In fact, the very fact that she has told me about this situation means she knows it’s unusual, otherwise she wouldn’t be messaging me about it. But just like in a toxic relationship, where you vent to your friends about it, when they give their advice about it, you don’t like the advice. It’s the training version of Stockholm syndrome. So what happens today when she goes to the gym? If it’s anything involving bicep tendon, then this is a recipe for disaster. But in a group training scenario, what are you going to do about this? You can’t show up to a restaurant for a set menu and then start making a la carte requests. Similarly, you can’t show up to a group class and start asking for personal training.
But this is why I just can’t recommend group training, unless it’s a group training thing where there are low skill movements involved. A few weeks ago I made an episode about the efficacy of training with others and how the fun and enjoyment helps with the stickability. I should at that time have added the caveat that this should be in a low skill environment or in one where if it is repetitive, you don’t do it every day. As a karate guy, I wouldn’t recommend anyone to go to karate everyday because it is very likely you will do kicking everyday and this could be an overtraining situation for knee extension.
I think I have only mentioned it once or twice in the over two years I have been hosting this show, but if you think you would like a bespoke program and coach feedback to keep you honouring your training intentions and staying away from overuse and overtraining, then please reach out to me on the email at the end of the show. I do always wonder about why I have only ever had two enquiries about training in over two years. I am also definitely looking for a couple of new remote coaching clients because frankly, I am at university full time and I am a poor student!
Happy New Year everyone!
If you have any questions or would like to just say ‘hi’, please email me at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com
Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, the director of podcasts Brannan Goetschius and Davina Tomlin. I’m your host, Kevin Don. If you have a question for me, leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104 or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com. For more information about the show, visit quickanddirtytips.com, or check out the shownotes in your podcast app.