Ten Things You Need to Know About Becoming a Group Fitness Instructor
Before moving to Italy in 2014, I taught sixteen classes a week at various 24-Hour Fitness gyms in Houston, Texas.
Sixteen.
For years, I did this. Often, I’d pick up classes for other instructors, which turned my usual daily three-class schedule into a four-or-five-class schedule. As fit as I was, after five hours of hardcore weight-lifting, Yoga, and Pilates, all I could do was stagger out to my car and power-nap before making the drive home. I was sore, bleary-eyed, delirious … and happy.
The secret to my longevity in that business is that I loved teaching. If you don’t love teaching--and more importantly, love it for the right reasons--you’re never going to survive. It takes know-how, charisma, confidence, skill, and above all, a thick skin to get a group of adults to do the thing they came to the gym to get you to make them do, which is exercise.
To be sure, I hated P.E. class in junior high and high school. I’m no jock. Sports bored me. To get out of P.E., I personally set the record for having the longest menstrual cycle in modern history. Considering how much time I spent on the bench, you’d have thought someone might ask me why I hadn’t hemorrhaged to death.
Our P.E. teacher, Coach Ross, had back hair, halitosis, and a jawbone like a rhino. His abuse of the English language was such that I found myself preemptively cringing every time he opened his mouth. About one thing, though, Coach Ross was right. Working out is best done in groups. Left to our own devices, we will always default to what’s easiest to do, and skip what’s not.
To get really fit, you need a trainer, or better still, a group fitness class. Why a group fitness class? Because if you see an over-forty, non-athletic-looking woman like me righteously kicking your ass--indeed, everybody else’s ass--your natural instinct isn’t going to be to tuck tail and run. Not in a group where everybody can see you. No, you’re going to save face and keep lifting.
That’s the power of a group dynamic.
This is both a humbling and incentivizing experience for those few, brave men who possess the intestinal fortitude to try group fitness. Their progression is always the same: first, disbelief that these women are pounding out more reps at heavier weights; second, shame and humiliation that they’re struggling so badly; third, a grudging respect that the human body, including the female body, can be trained to do some pretty remarkable feats of strength.
An average weight-lifting class for us included at least 150 squats, but there were times when we did nearly 500. In Pilates, we often tossed off at least that many squats, sometimes one-legged. Each of my students had an ass you could bounce a quarter off.
Our motto, always: throw down or throw up.
Speaking of which ….
When my son was sixteen, he came to class with me one summer morning. The entire ride to the gym, he talked smack about how he was going to show “those ladies” how it was done. “Y’all don’t know what a real workout is,” he bragged. “Your class is just a bunch of ladies who lunch.”
Ten minutes into our first set of squats, he bolted to the bathroom to throw up.
My son called me the “John Gotti of fitness” because everywhere we went, we’d run into somebody who either took my class or had heard of my class. It was like being a celebrity. I had a reputation for teaching the toughest classes, but that had never been the goal; rather, we progressed there together, my students and I. They brought the perspiration; I brought the inspiration. And I brought it with love.
The upside of being a popular fitness instructor is that you are seen as cool upon cool, with complimentary mojo. The downside is that you are doing blue-collar work at sub-minimum wages. I paid a high price for maintaining that kind of grueling schedule, especially at my geriatric age. Both shoulders blew about a month after I retired, first the right one, then the left. I was in agony for a year. Be sure to factor in “wear and tear on the body” before signing on to teach fitness for a living.
If you’re still determined to do it, here’s what you need to know.
Don’t dumb it down. People want to be challenged. New instructors are often afraid to go all out, mostly because they want to keep their attendance numbers high and their attrition rates low. That’s a mistake. If you expect people to make time in their busy schedules to come to your class, you must command their respect, and we don’t respect the ones who make it easy on us. That’s just human nature. We respect--and are willing to be led by--people who inspire us to do our best. Respect is earned, and it’s earned over a long period of time. There are no shortcuts.
Never ask your students to do exercises you aren’t doing yourself. When I was first coming up as a fitness instructor, the prescribed method for teaching was to demonstrate the exercise, and then walk the floor to help anybody who might have been struggling. This could work for some, but it never worked for me. To exercise at the highest level, you have to truly lead, and that means doing every rep of every exercise. Your students need to know that what you’re asking them to do is actually possible, and the only way to convince them of that is to get out there and work.
You’re going to suck horribly before you suck less. I can’t begin to tell you how bad I was at the beginning of my career. I thought I knew what I was doing, but I was just so wrong. The first class I taught was Step, which is a massively difficult class to lead. At the beginning of the class, I had about forty people. By the end of the class, only five were left. I spent an hour in my car crying. The problem was, nobody bothered telling me that a full year of merciless suckage is usually required before you get even remotely competent. Yes, it takes all that time to learn how to teach, and one of the most fiendish things you’ll need to do is get comfortable with the 8-count.
Learning the 8-count is one of the hardest parts of being a group fitness instructor. What most group fitness enthusiasts don’t realize when they take a class is that the music they’re listening to is specifically designed for fitness professionals. Every song has a strong, clearly defined 8-count beat, including the segues--and unless you trained as a dancer or musician, it takes for-freaking-ever to consistently hear it. A seasoned pro makes it look effortless. Yet every set of exercises is performed according to the 8-count, and just learning how to cue the exercise, dive into the music at the right time, and then stop at the end of the phrase, takes months to master. You must reach a state of unconscious competence. Hearing the 8-count should come so naturally to you, you can’t not hear it. Even now, just listening to Radio Subasio at the grocery store, I can’t help but count down the beats to every awful Italian pop song, 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1.
It’s not about you. It’s about them. As fitness instructors, we are there to serve the needs of our students. Full stop. My students weren’t there to worship me; I was there to lead and inspire them. It’s an intense bond you form with the ones you work and sweat and share a room with. But it’s never ever about you. You bring your best for them, these amazing people who make time in their busy lives to come to your classes. Never forget that. And never let your ego get in the way of being what they need you to be, which is an instructor that cares deeply about their welfare.
Change it up. Every. Single. Week. I realize that many instructors feel more comfortable working with scripted exercise protocols, like those provided by Les Mills, but I was never one of those instructors. I did new exercises targeting different muscle groups each week. Yes, this requires having a huge vocabulary of exercises and an understanding of what they do and how to put them together. But cranking out the same exercises week in and week out leads to muscle adaptation, not muscle growth. The reason my students looked like walking billboards for group fitness was because we built our bodies by constantly changing the routine. Go online. Get some books. Take instructor training. Your students will thank you for it.
Know your craft. Remember that old chestnut about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing? Never is that more true than in a gym. I’ve taken classes with instructors who had no functional understanding of the exercises they were telling us to do. You must always demonstrate perfect form. Failure to do so will not only cut your own career short, you will injure your students, and that kind of ignorance is unforgivable. If you don’t understand the hows and whys of an exercise, don’t do it. You are undertaking an enormous responsibility when you teach fitness. If you don’t take it seriously, you will never get the following you are looking for.
Everyone in the front row wants your job. This is super-insider stuff , but in a group fitness room, there is rigid hierarchy. Slackers usually keep to the back. The uber-fit show ponies make sure they’re in front. And the ones who are really just there to work out and keep their mouths shut stay somewhere in the middle. The ponies want your job--or at least, they fantasize about having it. They’re watching everything you do (and don’t do) and judging you accordingly. Bring your A-game if you don’t want them packing up their equipment and storming off.
Schedule at least fifteen minutes after class to answer questions. Remember that part where we must always be of service to our students? Well, students have questions, and it’s your job to make yourself available to answer them. If there’s another class after yours, gather your things and then take questions outside the studio. But you need to be friendly and approachable at all times--unless someone is being sexually inappropriate with you, which does happen. Then you need to inform a manager who is trained to handle it.
Fitness instructors tend to attract people who are most like themselves. I was told about this strange phenomenon back in the beginning, but I didn’t believe it until I subbed a Step class for a notorious prima donna who, in a classic instance of psychological projection, used to call me “Hollywood.” Sure enough, every single one of his students was just as haughty as he was. It’s true that birds of a feather flock together, and my particular birds were just like me: hardworking, conscientious, and committed.
When I turned forty, my students gave me a tiny tiara
The world needs good instructors. Maybe now that Covid restrictions are lifting, we will see a new influx of talent in our group fitness classes across the country. With that in mind, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I will help you any way I can. Although I’m glad to have moved on to this next chapter in my life where I’m not killing myself at the gym every day, I miss my students, and I miss the work. Those were good times. I’m very glad I was able to share them with some truly remarkable people.
Do you have a favorite group fitness class--or story? If so, I want to hear all about it. Please leave your comments below.
You were a real gift to all of us, Stacey. Your classes were the highlight of my week.
I miss your classes and didn’t realize that for 2 years I was in mourning after you left. I would love it if you did YouTube workout videos. Fitness instructors are zooming their classes or training clients. One friend from Houston was in Italy for 2 year stint. When she returned, she still works out with her Italian trainer.