Is Teaching Group Fitness an Individual Sport?
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Jeffrey Pinkerton
Group Fitness is an amazing way to build community and encourage connection. It has the power to create a team-like atmosphere for your members - a shared experience driven by the collective work and comradery of the group. However, with all its potential to connect and build community, teaching group fitness can be quite the individual sport. In the freestyle model, where instructors build their own workouts and choose their own music, they act more as a solopreneur, training and getting certified on their own, making up workouts, picking playlists and practicing alone, often managing and marketing the unique brand of their group fitness experience... alone. They are part of the group fitness team per se, but they don't actually practice, collaborate with or work with their teammates. Teaching group fitness in the freestyle model is an individual sport.
A Team Approach to Group Fitness
At MOSSA, we know group fitness is a team sport. We create group fitness programs for health clubs – high quality, field tested, professionally-developed workouts in every major category of exercise. We are the training partners, the playlist engineers, the workout architects, the exercise science research and development departments, and the instructor educators for the clubs that run our system. We are the creative ad agency, the social media consultants, the scheduling and strategy advisors. Our clients deliver high quality, consistent, group fitness experiences for their members... by a team of instructors.
And, a team, working out of the same playbook, training together, practicing together, getting regular coaching and feedback together, working and working out together, covering for and connecting with each other, can change the dynamics of how your club approaches group fitness. It changes the way you attract and recruit people to your team, the way you manage and mentor, and it puts the power of group into your group fitness instructor team.
Team Trainings
Most facilities that I talk to need more group fitness instructors. Over the years, escalated by the pandemic, instructors are retiring faster than they are being replaced. Maybe by happenchance, a miscellaneous instructor or two has been added to the team, maybe they provide a certification from a freestyle group fitness training module, maybe they are taken through an audition and interview process (scary version, maybe not), and then, they are added to the team. They're added to the email distribution list for group fitness with a "Welcome to the team" announcement, and that's it.
How do you recruit for this type of team? How would you attract new talent? Or, mentor someone? It's a nearly impossible situation and one that has left many Group Fitness Directors endlessly "searching for instructors," and predictably, not finding anyone.
In our system, each program is its own training event. For example, Group Power, our strength training program, is a three-day training – covering everything from details about the program brand, proper execution, coaching strategies, working with the music and all the components of creating a great group fitness experience. The three days are challenging, inspiring and encouraging.
Additionally, the training is an amazing team building event. It's a shared experience for your instructors that leads to launching a new program with new instructors on your team. And, it opens the door to do team-like things – team practices to learn workouts, team teaching for special events and covering one another's workouts as subs. The team is playing out of the same Group Power playbook, speaking the same language and even wearing a similar uniform (each program has a brand color).
Team Teaching
MOSSA instructors get new workouts each quarter for clubs to host launch events to create excitement and show appreciation to members. Quite simply, a special event helps your members feel special! And, one great way to up the energy is to have instructors team teach together. In preparation for these quarterly launches, we encourage instructors to get together for team practices – where the team can review the newest quarterly education, run through workouts together, practice their coaching, give constructive feedback to one another or even video the session so they can review their delivery and fine-tune everything. Ideally, the facility would have a team leader for each program. Think of it like a team captain on a sports team. So, for Group Power, there would be one "resident expert" of the program. They organize team practices, assign songs for launch events, help mentor new instructors and can even be a first point of contact for potential new recruits.
Team Recruiting
"Considering teaching Group Power? You should talk with Catherine! She is the Team Leader for our Group Power team. She teaches on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Why don't you go try one of her workouts and introduce yourself? I'll let her know that you'll be there and that you might be interested in going through training and joining the team!" This model for recruitment sets the pathway for new talent to truly join a team, not just an email distribution list.
Team Meetings
A team approach to Group Fitness opens the door to train your entire staff on your Group Fitness offerings. In the freestyle model, you couldn't possibly showcase everything on your schedule to your team. At best, you could encourage them to try a few, and at worse, you'd send them a copy of the schedule with so many class descriptions.
Or, your whole team – front desk, membership staff, personal trainers, HR, management – can attend a Group Power workout together. That's what our partners at Courthouse Club Fitness in Salem, Oregon do; they host an all-team lunchtime workout on the first Tuesday of each month. It's a team meeting and team product training, with all the benefits of the social connection and comradery your group fitness members experience. As a bonus, they have instructors team teach the workout.
And, I can say from personal experience, if you've never taught a Group Fitness workout with the entire team and the President of the company in the room, it will put a little extra pressure on you to bring your A game!
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At MOSSA, we believe that a team approach to group fitness is the best way to manage group fitness, train and mentor new instructors, and market the experience. If you'd like to learn more about how your team can build a better team, visit mossa.net/clubs-facilities/why-mossa.
