Group Fitness Articles

Instructor By Catherine L. Tully Distinguish yourself as a professional. Crafting the Exercise Class Proposal You've reached a point in your career where you are comfortable with your knowledge, skills and ability to motivate. Everyone describes you as adaptable, outgoing and consistent. You've been around long enough to have your own style and, thanks to ideas you came up with while attending f...

Updating Your Cuing Repertoire Q: A: I feel stuck in a cuing rut. Although I really try to vary my teaching cues, they still sound boring and repetitive, especially the cues related to alignment and form. Fortunately, none of my participants have complained--so far! Then again, maybe they are not listening. It's so hard to tell. Any ideas and strategies to develop interesting, helpful new cues? ...

Make Progress With Breakdowns & Progressions By Amanda E. Vogel, MA A ll of us attending 2002 World Fitness IDEA...

Q:It seems I’m always a bridesmaid, never the bride. I am good enough to sub classes when one of my colleagues needs someone, but my supervisor still doesn’t give me my own class. I’m available, trained and ready; however, openings never come my way. Meanwhile, subbing requests come in regularly, so I must be doing something right. What can I do to “move to the altar” and get more classes of my own?

Q:A:Burnout: Old topic for many instructors, but new to me! What can I do to overcome the burned-out feeling I’ve had lately when teaching? I can’t afford to take a break from instructing fitness classes. Plus, my club is facing a real instructor shortage right now. So, what else can I do to get out of my blah rut and be excited again about my classes?

Why is it that while some participants love your class, others walk out in the first 15 minutes and never return? Is it your music? Your clothes? Your hygiene? Of course not. Odds are you simply didn’t cue these people in the mode in which they learn most quickly and easily. While you can’t please everyone, you can please most of the people most of the time when you recognize the three primary learning styles and know how to integrate them into your cuing.

Millions of people around the world participate in prechoreographed group fitness programs. The popularity of these classes can’t be ignored, and the instructors must be doing something right. A debate is currently waging as to which instructors are better—those leading the prechoreographed programs or the die-hard “freestylers.” While prechoreographed content may garner differences of opinion,...

High-quality group fitness classes invigorate participants, members and staff. However, as a fitness director, you know well-trained, motivating instructors can be hard to find. You may have thought about developing your own in-house program to recruit, train and mold future instructors. But how do you get started? The first step in developing a successful instructor-training pro...

If you are looking for a plateau buster to challenge your students, this class has been designed for you. It’s intended as an occasional class to help participants adapt to a higher level of strength and endurance through progressive overload. “Overload” is an amount of resistance (stimulus) necessary to further improve fitness; “progressive” refers to a gradual app...