Group workout classes are certainly nothing new. A lot of us remember Richard Simmons “sweatin’ to the oldies” in shorts that were just a little too short, back in the 80s. The formats and the music have changed plenty since then, and the fads around them have come and gone, but the group class itself has held its place in gyms for four decades. Staying power like that usually means something underneath is working. Let’s examine what that something is, and whether a class is a good fit for you.
Group Classes vs. Solo Workouts
If we’re going to talk about the benefits of group fitness classes, we need a point of comparison, and that comparison is the solo workout. So let me say this plainly: solo workouts are not bad. Anything that gets you moving is great with me. Training alone gives you solitude, time to think, and a session that runs entirely on your schedule. Some of us who lean introverted find that hour alone is the best hour of the day. If that’s you, keep doing what works for you.
What Solo Training Gives You
Full control of your schedule · Time alone with your thoughts · A pace that is entirely yours · No coordination with anyone else · A way to decompress and escape
What a Group Class Adds
People who expect to see you · A coach running every session · Built-in workout accountability · Training partners with goals like yours · Shared cost of professional guidance
With that respect paid, a group class layers some distinct benefits on top of the exercise itself, and they deserve a close look, especially if showing up consistently has been the hard part for you.
The Confidence Effect
This one might seem counterintuitive at first. If you don’t consider yourself an “exercise person,” you might assume that working out in front of other people would hurt your confidence rather than help it. That can happen, if you choose a class full of people far more fit than you. It works the other way when you exercise with people who share your goals and ability level. And people naturally gravitate toward classes filled with folks who feel like their people, so most classes sort themselves this way on their own.
The benefit of being in a room with your people, especially when you’re new to exercise, is that you get to watch people just like you doing the things you doubt you can do yet. Psychologists who study motivation and self-efficacy call these vicarious experiences, and research shows that seeing someone like you perform an activity you’re unsure about raises your own confidence, self-efficacy, and motivation to try it.
In other words, the room makes an argument no pep talk can. If she can do it, and she started where I started, then I can probably do it too.
The Social Benefits of Exercise
Social connection is critically important to health, and medicine has come around to naming the problem directly. The U.S. Surgeon General has declared an epidemic of loneliness, and researchers studying longevity report that a lack of social connection can take years off your life. Naming the problem has proven easier than fixing it. Screens have replaced rooms for much of our social lives, and as we age our circles tend to shrink right when we need them most.
A workout class addresses both halves at once. You get the exercise, which protects your health, and you get the connection, which protects it further. For an hour, everyone around you is working toward the same thing you are, and that hour repeats every single week. Very few habits deliver the social benefits of exercise and the physical ones in the same block of time, which is exactly what makes group fitness such an efficient dose of good medicine.
The Cost Advantage
If you want structure and guidance from an exercise professional, a group setting delivers it for a fraction of what one-on-one coaching costs. Personal training can run upwards of $100 per session in most areas. Group workout classes are often included in the cost of a membership, and even the most expensive boutique classes rarely exceed $25 to $30. The coaching is shared, and so is the bill.
To be fair to one-on-one work, it still earns its price in specific situations: a program built around an injury, a highly specific performance goal, or a schedule no class can match. For most people who simply want consistent, professionally coached exercise, the class delivers most of the value at a fraction of the cost.
Picking the Right Class
Everything above only holds if you pick a class that fits you. The wrong room can undo every benefit on this page, so it pays to be a little demanding. At AFS, every class is run by a degreed, certified exercise professional who can adapt the workout to the people in front of them, and we’d encourage you to expect the same standard anywhere you train.
Run any class you’re considering, ours included, through these five checks.
Check Every Statement That Is True of the Class
Your score tells you whether you’ve found your room.
Sign up. And bring a friend if you can; you now know exactly why that helps.
A good gym will happily answer questions about credentials, modifications, and scheduling. Hesitation to answer is itself an answer.
A class that fails most of these checks puts the benefits in this article out of reach, and it can put your confidence, or your body, at risk. You deserve a better room.
Take Home Message
Solo training works, and if it’s working for you, carry on with my full endorsement. What a group class offers is everything the workout alone can’t: social support that gets you through the door on your worst days, confidence borrowed from people who started where you started, connection that protects your health in its own right, and professional coaching at a price one-on-one sessions can’t touch.
Movement is some of the most powerful medicine available to you. Taken with other people, it covers even more of what ails us.
If a class sounds worth trying, take a look at our exercise class variations and schedule a free consultation with one of our coaches. We’ll help you figure out which class is right for you. And we’ll save you a spot.
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Social Support & Accountability
The biggest benefit of a group workout class is that you’re usually exercising with people who are like you. They have similar goals, wrestle with similar challenges, and want roughly the same things from their time in the gym. Sometimes these people start out as your friends, because you brought them or they brought you. Just as often, they become your friends because you keep landing in the same room at the same time every week. Either way, they turn into a dependable source of motivation and support.
That support shows up in more ways than one.
Three Ways the Group Carries You
Select one to see how support works before, during, and beyond the workout.
On days when you have zero interest in exercising, you usually still have interest in seeing your friends. The easiest way to see your workout friends is to go to the class they’re in, so your motivation to see them becomes motivation to move. That is workout accountability in its most pleasant form: nobody is scolding you, someone is simply saving you a spot.
When the person next to you keeps going, you tend to keep going too. A coach sets the pace and the room helps you hold it, including on the days your own drive would have quit a few minutes early. Most people work a little harder in good company than they ever would alone.
When you show up struggling with something, in the gym or outside of it, workout friends offer a listening ear, some advice, or maybe just a hug or a high five. Because they tend to be people at a similar stage of life, odds are good they’ve faced the same challenge and can offer real insight.
This is why working out with friends beats willpower over the long run. Willpower has bad days. A standing appointment with people you like has far fewer. One of our members at Applied Fitness Solutions put it better than I ever could:
“It’s just a feeling of family and a feeling of home.” — an AFS member, on her workout class