The Science of Fitness Podcast

EP 7 The Solo Series - A Five-Point Quality Assurance Checklist of a Group Fitness Program w/ Kieran Maguire

• Science of Fitness

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Embark on a transformative fitness journey with us as we reveal a foolproof five-point checklist to sift through the multitude of group fitness programs vying for your attention. Ever wondered if a fitness class is truly worth your time and effort? We provide the blueprint to distinguish top-tier programs from those that might leave you more injured than inspired. Tune in to learn how to identify programs that prioritize safety, regular assessments, and effective planning, ultimately leading to superior results and a more rewarding fitness experience. 

Discover the critical importance of personalizing your fitness routine for success, considering essential factors like energy levels and physical limitations. Our conversation highlights the benefits of incorporating recovery strategies, including yoga and breath work, and how they can profoundly impact your performance. We also dive into the game-changing role of understanding the menstrual cycle in fitness planning. By focusing on impeccable technique and individual needs, you'll unlock the secrets to long-term health benefits. Get ready to prioritize programs that ensure safe, regular participation, setting you on a path to sustained health and vitality.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Science of Fitness podcast, where we aim to inspire you to live a healthier and more fulfilling life, as we share evidence and anecdotes on all things relating to health, fitness, performance, business and wellness. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, back to the Science of Fitness podcast, and in today's solo series episode, we're going to be talking about your five-point quality assurance checklist of a group fitness program. Group fitness is one of the fastest growing markets within the exercise and health industry. The group fitness industry in Australia has experienced significant growth over recent years, driven by increasing demand for health and wellness services years driven by increasing demand for health and wellness services. Between 2014 and 2019, the fitness sector saw a growth of 4.9 percent and is projected to continue to expand at an annual rate of 3.7 percent through to 2024. Australians spend an estimated estimated 8.5 billion and annually on fitness, with 3 billion coming directly from the fitness industry and group fitness. This growth has led to a rise in employment, with an expected 16% increase in fitness-related jobs by 2024. And if you were to drive down any main street or sort of centralize yourself in any sort of buzzing or up-and-coming suburb within Australia, if you just look within a five kilometer radius, there would be upwards of 10, 15, 20 fitness related businesses and studios available for you, as the consumer, to access, and the point of this episode is to allow you, the consumer, to have a toolkit that you can apply to filter out good from bad quality fitness programs and, in particular, group fitness programs, boutique fitness studios and group-based exercise and, in particular, group fitness programs. Boutique fitness studios and group-based exercise programs in particular, have become very popular, but attracting younger generations, millennials and Gen Z who value the personalized and social fitness experiences that are made available by these companies. Unfortunately and I say this with all respect to the practitioners attempting to do the right thing out there the industry is still lacking in quality, and what I mean by that is not enough practitioners are put through enough time in terms of education and upskilling to consider all the variable factors that contribute to a effective overall program, and so, for you as the consumer, the main thing that you can do is choose a high quality program that's going to get you the best results that you possibly can imagine hopefully even exceed the results you hope to achieve so that you can live a longer, healthier and happier life.

Speaker 1:

At Science of Fitness, we've run group fitness since the inauguration of the business In 2012,. The boys started the company in a park doing boot camps before an F45 or any other major fitness group fitness brand existed besides CrossFit. And gradually, as we've gone and we've seen the industry ebb and flow, with group fitness brands and different companies come and go we've learned a few things along the way. Our priority as a business is to bring high quality exercise science to the everyday person. We want to take the information used and is available to the elite of the elite athletes and make it available to you, the consumer, so that you can get better outcomes in a line with things that you want to achieve when it comes to your fitness, your exercise regime and, ultimately, your health and life.

Speaker 1:

And so what are the five key pillars that are required in terms of measuring a good quality group fitness program in particular? First, it doesn't cause injury. Second, it's measured and assessed frequently. Third, it's programmed and periodized and planned. Fourth, it takes you into account. And fifth, the delivery focus is on how you're doing the program, not just what you're doing in the program.

Speaker 1:

So let's dive into the detail of each one of these points. Number one it doesn't cause injury. There's nothing worse than being injured, particularly if it's in an attempt to get yourself fit and healthy, and for a number of the people listening to this, you've probably experienced an injury at some point in an attempt to get fit and healthy, be it a tendinopathy in your Achilles, a sore knee from running as you're trying to get that half marathon training underway. Maybe you've hurt your lower back in lifting weights. Maybe you've had a shoulder, labrum bursitis, rotator cuff issue. Maybe you've had migraines and neck issues, and all of this induced by exercise. I've discussed this topic frequently on this podcast.

Speaker 1:

Exercise does not need to hurt you, does not need to cause an injury, and it should be prioritized that you are executing the technical elements of a movement, any movement, any type of exercise so that you don't hurt yourself or at least we can mitigate the risk of hurting yourself as much as possible. Accidents happen. People do accidentally hurt themselves or get things wrong when it comes to their training, but if the program that you're participating in does not prioritize safety and you hopefully not hurting yourself or mitigating the risk for accidents, then it's time you consider one that does, because unfortunately, one injury can lead to a long period of recovery or maybe inability to lean back in on the exercise, trainings and goals that you want to achieve. Knowing what you're doing as a practitioner involves being able to reduce the associated risk when it comes to exercise and, as I said, if your current program does not control for those risks, does not control for what might be causing or aggravating underlying issues, you should start to shop around for one that can. And this brings us to our second point how can we understand, how can we control, how can we look for the risk associated in terms of mitigating injuries related to exercise?

Speaker 1:

Well, it's measured and assessed frequently the training that you're doing, and there's two sort of cornerstones to this. The first one is well, you're not. If you're measured, we can actually check for musculoskeletal imbalances, movement imbalances, and identify where there might be an increased risk in association with certain movements. For example, when you run, you might have a poor foot strike on one side or one leg and in doing so that might cause a leakage of force into the knee or the hip or the other ankle or whatever it might be. A good practitioner, a well-versed and educated practitioner, will be able to identify that and mitigate that for you. And the same thing can be said when you look at a little bit more of the objective access we have to objective data, and Vauld Performance as a company have made high quality biomechanical strength assessment tools available to the general public, and in my opinion those products should be in place across the board for any group fitness program.

Speaker 1:

Things like a force plate, a Nord board, a dynamo, give you the opportunity to assess your strength and your movement and identify any imbalances with how you're generating forces, and in doing so, the practitioner can then advise little things you need to do technically when you're training to mitigate the risk that comes with those imbalances and most of us have them, particularly if we've been active and we've had a previous injury, or if we're working lots and we're stuck in chairs and we don't get to move as often as we like. We need to be able to identify where there's risk and mitigate for it before it causes a problem. The second side to measuring and assessing is to actually know if what you're doing is working, and a big part of our programming as it's evolved is it went from writing the workouts and plans to writing a full-blown annualized plan with which, every three months, we test and measure our members, to then actually allowing our members to log in their weights, to log in their loads when it comes to their training so they can progress the outcomes of their training performance. They can see that two years ago I was squatting maybe my body weight. Now I'm squatting 1.5 my body weight for three or four reps and that understanding of progression and improvement and strength and whatever else you might be measuring is a really valuable tool because it's going to help you adhere and keep you motivated. It's going to sort of light, that little bit of a competitive spark. It's going to get you to that training session when you don't really feel like it because you know you're chipping away at a big block and those are all the little things that actually get you better outcomes. Doing the program is the most important thing you can prioritize when it comes to any form of exercise and if you're measuring what you're doing, you're going to be more motivated particularly if you see improvement to keep doing that program.

Speaker 1:

Coincidentally, if you're measuring and writing weights and logging in your outputs when it comes to maybe you're running or you work on a cardiovascular machine and you're not improving, you then have an opportunity to sit and assess why not? Are you doing too much training. Do you need to have a little bit more recovery prioritized in your program? Are you asking too much of yourself? Are you not training hard enough? What are the mechanisms that may not be helping? And that's where you then get to lean on the professionals supporting you in your group fitness program to get better outcomes. And so if there's no data collected, if there's no logging of weights, if there's no objective assessments, you're kind of guessing. If you're not assessing, you're guessing. It's a classic exercise, science based, little catchphrase. And you don't want to be guessing when you're investing money and when you're investing time in something that you're hoping to get better and fitter and healthier at. So we highly recommend looking for programs that are measured and assessed regularly and if they are not, go and find one. That is To our third point, and I've already talked about this in that second point. It's programmed and periodized. It's programmed and periodized Just like recording weights, doing a program that speaks across multiple layers of training.

Speaker 1:

Stress is essential for long-term success. Ultimately, physical exercise needs to be considered as stress and if you just keep jamming that stress into the system, at some point that system is going to break. A well-programmed and well-planned program increases your stress and then deliberately has a deload, increases deload, and this is a concept that we call periodization, a planned exercise program, and in the exercise science world, in the high performance sport world, this sits as the cornerstone for everything people are doing from a high performance At the elite world. They're measuring all components, from sleep to mood, to hydration levels, to mood to hydration levels, to amount of running, to amount of weight lifted, etc. Etc. To understand the amount of work and stress that is being applied on the body so that they can pull on the reins when they need the athlete to recover, so they can then perform better at the next moment when they need them to. You need to be considering this. Your body the same.

Speaker 1:

If you just keep redlining things, training all the time, trying to get better, get better and better and better and better and better, at some point the system breaks, and that breakage is either your body gives out and you end up hurting yourself, or you just get bored, you stop adhering, and so that's where leaning into a program that has structure, has plan, has deload and that's the important point does have a week with which you do a little bit less training, where you just take a step back. You still train. You don't stop training entirely, but you take a small step back and then reintroduce new stimulus, new load, new training, stresses, deload weeks, change the rep schemes, change the stimulus and exercises, and they're all critical components of a successful exercise program. Have a plan to get you what you want so you can achieve the results you want, so that you're not simply punching in the dark by turning up and just redlining every single time you train Again. If the program you're doing, if the group fitness sessions and training you're doing is not according to a longitudinal plan, you're missing out, because there's a bunch of companies and brands out there that have applied the exercise sciences so that you can be a bit more measured and a bit more successful in achieving the long-term outcomes.

Speaker 1:

Onto our fourth point. It takes you into account. Gone are the days of generalized. Everybody needs to do a hundred burpees to get fitter. We can be a bit more nuanced and for one person, a hundred burpees might be the worst thing they can do for a wash up of bit more nuanced, and for one person, 100 burpees might be the worst thing they can do for a wash up of a back injury and for another person, it might be the best thing they can do, and being able to consider that is really important. On top of this, this also relates to the program and periodized point, in that some people are a little bit better suited to lift weights, or maybe they want to get a result that is, a bit more muscle mass and strength improving. Other people might want to be a little bit more cardiovascular focused and lose weight. Other people might be struggling with a stressful career with a lot of workload or family, and they have time commitments and restraints.

Speaker 1:

Being able to pull on the levers in terms of calming down your nervous system and having yoga, breath work and recovery strategies available in your program is incredibly important. And when it comes to your health and your performance, yes, we can use generalized numbers and generalized rules, but you are the person that is in charge and you need to consider the factors that apply to you as an individual. If you have any physical limitations, be it pain, injury or simply energy levels, you need to be able to speak to whoever is delivering the program and modify things accordingly. Something that we've run in our women's health program recently is discussed the influence on the menstrual cycle and just general training and energy levels. There's emerging evidence in this space to say maybe we should consider decreasing load during certain phase where energy is low motivation is low and then increasing load when certain parts of the cycle the female menstrual cycle energy is higher, and we've got a couple of topics and a couple of experts that we've already discussed and we've got a couple more coming on to this podcast in the near future with which we're going to talk about that information a little bit more.

Speaker 1:

If you are just redlining every week, day in, day out, and not taking into account just those micro factors, you're just missing out an opportunity, and good quality exercise and and group fitness programs are starting to consider these things. Gone are the days of everyone lying around on the floor and flicking their legs around at the same time, hoping for the same result. Genetics are a critical factor that we need to consider when it comes to exercise and performance in general. We now know what's required to get the most out of training and you know your body when it needs to be pushed and when it needs to be rested and relaxed upon Working with people and professionals that are prepared to listen and modify according to what you want to achieve is the most important thing you can look for when deciding where to do your group fitness program, and so making sure you're asking the questions and looking for the right information as a consumer is going to set you up for success so you can train more, be healthier and enjoy your life more, because ultimately, that's what we want to achieve from our fitness and from our exercise.

Speaker 1:

And the final point, from a filtration perspective in terms of what's good and what's not good, where is quality and where are we lacking? Quality when it comes to group fitness is the delivery of the training is focused on how you are executing the programmed movements, not just what you're doing. And unfortunately, we live in a world where the next cool thing, the next trick on the reformer, the next you know, hard wad is programmed and prioritized, and what is not considered is programmed and prioritized, and what is not considered is the mechanical execution of your squat at a necessary quality. Are you putting your knee, your back, at risk in executing that movement, and can the practitioner that you're working with teach you how to do it safely and properly so you can maximize the benefits that come from whatever is programmed in whatever situation? The most important point you should consider is that 20%, the final 20% of the execution mechanically of the exercise, 80% of the value in that exercise lies in that final 20%.

Speaker 1:

There is a huge difference between doing a push-up or a chin-up at a mediocre sort of quality rep and doing it 100% properly. The health of your shoulder, your scap, your spine, even your hips, in those movements come into factor when you execute them properly. And taking the time to learn how to do proper mechanical movement with practitioners that are prepared to teach you should be what you prioritize when it comes to your group fitness program. Teaching you technique, disregarding the vibe, the weight or the volume or the work or the speed with which you're doing, and ensuring quality sets you up for success, and any program that doesn't prioritize that is not worth your time because ultimately at some point you're going to cause an issue in terms of injury or adherence and the priority is to get you doing the exercise program, the group fitness program, as regularly as possible for as long as possible so you can enjoy the benefits associated with it. So those are five simple points, simple filter points, for you to consider when it comes to your exercise program, and we are now, particularly in Australia, spoiled for choice when it comes to your exercise program, and we are now, particularly in Australia, spoiled for choice when it comes to quality of programs available. You need to prioritize One, it does not cause you injury.

Speaker 1:

Two, it's measured and assessed frequently. Three, it's programmed and it's periodized. Four, it takes you into account and you're heard as the consumer and as the individual. And then five, the delivery focus is on the technical execution of what is programmed, not just what you're doing for the sake of it. They prioritize the technique so that you can then maximize the benefits associated and intended with that program. So next time you go into your group fitness class, next time you're looking for a group fitness gym or what to try out, think about those five points. Look for the quality that you deserve as the consumer and get the more out of your training. Thanks for listening to today's episode. For more regular insights into soft, be sure to check us out on instagram or facebook or visit our website at scienceoffitnesscomau. Once again, we thank you for tuning in to the Science of Fitness podcast.