Fitness Friday #46: 5 Things I’ve Learned Teaching Group Fitness

I love being a group fitness instructor. I’ve been teaching since May 2009 when I received my first fitness license for Zumba.

Like any other job, it has highs and lows, but at the end of the day, this is my jam. I love teaching. I love wellness. I love learning new moves and sharing them. I love that AHA moment when someone nails a move or figures out how to make a move work for their day/body.

I love that it’s a never-ending spiral of learning, too. I’m always learning. For fun, I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned teaching fitness classes.

5 Things I’ve Learned Teaching Group Fitness:

1. Energy is contagious. It really is! If you come into class and giggle and smile, I’ll giggle and smile, then be bouncy for the rest of the time. If I bounce into class and giggle and chat, there’s an air of excitement that spreads to all the participants. This is one of the reasons I only teach formats with rockin’ music – high energy music radiates through people, too. It’s hard to be grumpy when Selena Gomez and Meghan Trainor are singing. Right?
2. Everything looks better after a workout. One of the BEST things about group fitness classes – you get to escape from life for a little while. No matter what is happening in your day, you can come, chit chat with classmates, lose all the sweat, do all the squats/push-ups/burpees, and get lost in the moment. After all of that, the day looks a little (or a lot) better!
3. Many times, the students are the ‘teachers.’ I’ve learned SO much by teaching live classes. Even though I study regressions and progressions, everyone’s body moves so differently and students come up with great variations on their own. I love learning from them and using that to improve and fine-tune my classes.
4. Teaching is HARD work. And it’s our job to make it look effortless. Or, something like that. There’s a ton of prep that goes into putting together a class: choosing the music, placement of beats/movements in the class, figuring out variations for moves, and keeping on top of fitness council recommendations and rules. And that’s just BEFORE class starts.
5. Nothing is comparable to making a difference in one person’s life. Truly. It makes my DAY, my WEEK, when someone tells me this class or that move or that comment made all the difference in their workout/day. Teaching is hard (see #4), but I love, love, love it, especially when you know it’s improving someone’s life.