The real reason why group fitness studios fail - how to get your dream physique without doing a single burpee

I have been a personal trainer now for 4 years. In my time, I have changed from being an employee at a once renowned group fitness studio, to being a contractor in a box gym, to now being fortunate to own and run my own private studio.

In my time as a personal trainer, there have been several franchises that reached the peak of success, to have promptly dropped off. 

Speaking from my experience with group fitness, there are positives to these gyms which I will give credit to, but there are also negatives. These negatives are why I believe these studios fail and how they do not help their clientele achieve their fitness goals.

Winding back the clock 4 years, being fresh into a university semester deferral, I started looking for jobs in the fitness industry. Coaching was something I had wanted to do so that I could help people in the same way that the gym helped me.

I was an overweight kid who was looking for some way to feel better about himself. 

So, in attempting to do that, I joined a little local group fitness boxing studio at age 14. This sparked my passion for all things training-related. This love of training then led me into the weight room at age 17. 

In transitioning to the weight room I learned that weightlifting offered me something different that the group sessions did not. Order and structure. A method of training based on principles rather than sheer effort. 

Through this, I had fallen into my niche of strength training. In my mind, if I followed specific principles, then I was bound to get a return from training. Following these principles allowed me to achieve success in my training, even reaching my dream of a 300kg Deadlift.

Since my primary focus was on my studies at the time, I did not want to do the typical rental/contractor arrangement that some of the big box gyms offered. I just wanted a job in the industry where I could show up and do what I love and get paid for it. Fortunately, I found myself exactly this.

I remember walking into the interview at this specific group fitness franchise, trying to pretend that I knew what it was about. 

I frowned upon group fitness. I had been lifting weights in the local gym as my primary means of exercise. Even going into the job interview, I knew it failed basic programming principles that I spent so much time learning. But, I wanted experience and a job in the industry, so I agreed to work at this group fitness studio.

What started with skepticism, did become a beneficial experience that formed the basis of the coach I am today. I am forever grateful for my time in that little group fitness studio because my boss at the time (and what I would consider a friend) taught me a lot and shaped me into the coach I am today. 

Writing this makes me fearful of tarnishing that friendship. But for the sake of education, I will continue onwards. 

Spending countless hours in that studio did teach me a lot. I still maintained my skepticism due to my science and traditional programming background, although I continued to coach the classes and started to see the value of the group setting. 

I quickly gained experience coaching a range of different clients with all sorts of different injuries, training histories, and ages. This gave me the experience and confidence I needed to be successful in the industry. 

My boss also pulled me up on all sorts of different idiosyncrasies and put forward a standard of coaching which I try to live up to today. It is this standard which is what made his studio the most successful studio in the area. 

But beyond the benefits it had to me as a coach, it was good being able to see all the familiar faces every day. Myself and everyone in the regularly scheduled classes formed bonds which made each session enjoyable. 

The fact that there were so many people fostered a sense of comradery and energy to work hard, and it also kept people accountable to show up because of their commitments to each other. This coupled with coaches who would push people to levels of discomfort which they would not do on their own made each session difficult. 

That difficulty fostered a sigh of relief for the clients at the end knowing that the physical activity component of their day had been completed. It was often reported to me that people appreciated coming in and not having to think about what they had to do. Come in, do the work, and leave. 

The vibe in those busy classes was nothing short of electric. 

Still, despite this, as time continued, the issues which I had foreseen started to ring true...

Some people who joined the gym progressed, and some people did not. Though even the progress of the former slowed or eventually ceased. 

I could see the frustration of people who were putting in their all to be disappointed by the results. Grinding through sessions, day after day but their performance did not demonstrate a change beyond the initial response to training. 

Further to this, the 8-week challenges became the grounds for individuals to work hard for a short period to achieve some results, but then a majority of individuals would enter a subsequent challenge in the same condition or if not a worse condition as they started in the previous.

Overuse injuries were also quite common from being pushed perhaps beyond their physical limits. The issues started to resonate with me and became the primary reasons why I eventually decided to leave to move to traditional 1-on-1 personal training. 

I found that the benefits of group fitness did not necessarily outweigh the costs. A lot of the problems could have been avoided in a smaller group setting with simply proper programming and education. 

I was begining to find the endless stream of sessions seem monotonous and pointless. I was craving more.

It was the case of giving a man a fish and he will eat for a day or teaching a man to fish and he will eat for life. 

I rather have educated principles. Being like a teacher or a driving instructor, a service someone hires to learn and get the benefit from, although the eventual idea is that our paths shall eventually fork. The idea is that you gain the tools to navigate the world of your own accord.

So, after 2 years of service, I left and started my business.

I still have not found any group fitness studio that has done it properly. All of them seem to encounter the same problems. 

I truly believe it is mainly due to greed rather than an altruistic want to help more people. All of the problems that I found occur in group fitness settings occur due to the sheer volume of people. 

Simply put, because there are so many people, a very general program must be utilised that appeals to everyone. This general program then fails the basic tenets of programming which is specificity of training. 

Your training must be specific for a specific outcome. 

You can have ‘general strength’ or ‘general fitness’, but at a certain point, the ‘general programs’ stop working because they are as the title implies, general. 

The success that most people see when they start going to a group fitness studio comes from just engaging in some form of exercise at all, not from what the group fitness studio is making you do. This is why successful training needs to be individualised.

Further to this, the idea that every session should be a grind and maximal effort should be applied is just wrong. 

Working maximally every session is the recipe for failure and injury. 

The human body has only so much capacity to repair and recover. Pushing past your comfort zone is good. Going to failure every time is not good. More is not always better. 

I could not share the experience of the clients that I trained, they were doing endless streams of jumping lunges or burpees till they were going to pass out, and although they were perhaps a bit more cardiovascularly inclined than me or some of my other 1-on-1 clients, my personal clients could outlift any of them. Even against the ones that regularly did the general weights classes. 

Even comparing it to my experience training in the weight room. My sessions were tough, but I was not going to pass out. Every session had a specifically applied load and amount of work to be done. There is a tolerable amount of work that everyone can do, and working at that level and not beyond yields the best results. Going further than that only leads to injury.

Lastly, going back to the example of giving a man a fish or teaching a man to fish, the 8-week challenges often yielded returning participants. This was because they could work hard for some time to achieve a desired outcome (typically weight loss), but none of them knew how to keep it off. 

The way you lose weight is the way that you keep it off. 

Grinding through sessions every day is not sustainable. So at the end of the challenge, not only do they not have the tools to maintain their progress because they were not educated properly about how to do so, but they also cannot ‘will’ themselves to do the thing that helped them lose the weight in the first place any longer putting them right back to square one. 

This is why, like the driving instructor example, I’d rather give you the tools to get to the place you want to be rather than push you through to get there just because I said so. 

Hypothetically, if your coach got you there, and they are no longer around, what does that mean for your progress? You should learn ‘to drive’ on your own using methods that you can sustainably do for life. Ultimately this journey is a lifelong journey and not an 8-week destination.

All of the other benefits I mentioned earlier about regularly scheduled classes, having coaches that would push past levels of discomfort making sessions difficult as well as not having to think about what the session is but coming in and just doing it is not an inherent benefit of group fitness, but is just a benefit of going to buy a service that coaches you, whether that is in a group setting or as an individual. The only benefit that is hard to replicate in 1-on-1 settings is the vibe and accountability of having other people during the session which is the primary appeal of the group fitness.

There are many benefits to group fitness. If you are just starting, I would even say it is a good place to start. I would estimate that it is where most people begin their fitness journey. However, eventually, it does begin to wane. 

As a coach, it was very beneficial to me and I am forever grateful for the experience. However, what is beneficial for a coach is not what is beneficial for the clients. 

The whole business should not be modeled around just what is beneficial for the owner and the coaches but what is truly beneficial for the clients, even if that means less monetary success. The coaches that are in it for the benefit of their clients give genuine support, encouragement, and education and work with their clients to an individual level. 

It is for these reasons that I do not enjoy group coaching anymore and why group fitness probably won't get you to your goals.