Are exercise classes doing you more harm than good?

                Many people are doing large group exercise classes;  a lot of these classes are focused on lifting weights or other high impact exercise.  I have had a number of clients come to me who do “body pump” or similar classes and they have resulted in very serious injuries.  I’ve even had instructors come to me over the years because they’ve hurt themselves from teaching these types of classes.  Yes that’s right the people who are suppose to be teaching you proper technique often do get hurt from doing the routines they’re teaching......think about that for a second.  Are you having back, knee, or shoulder pain or you just don’t feel great after completing these classes?

                When I used to work in a large chain fitness club I would watch people who participated in these classes and I would see them using horrible technique, without being corrected.  Seeing them exercise like this would actually make me cringe because the chance of injury was almost inevitable.  Even a lot of the instructors were using the same bad technique while instructing the participants. 

                Another problem with these classes is that many participants feel the need to exercise at an intensity that they’re not ready for because they feel uncomfortable in that setting and don’t want to look out of shape.  This feeling of social pressure can cause many to push themselves beyond their bodies capacity, which can lead to injury or to be sore for a days or even a week.  Have you ever felt sore for days after a class? This is actually a really bad sign.

                And you could actually be creating a hormonal response that is stopping you from losing weight.  A person should only do intense exercise for shorter bouts of time, I’m talking 10-40 minutes.  Most people will respond best in my experience to intense exercise in the 10-30 minute range unless they have a high level of conditioning.  Most of these classes last an hour, and have people going all out as hard as they can for almost the entire class.  What happens is once you have exercise for too prolonged a period of time for what your body is ready to handle it causes you to release glucocorticoid hormones, yeah big words make me feel really smart ;).  All you need to know is that these hormones actually signal your body to store fat.......yes that’s right when you exercise at too high of intensity for too long a period of time you actually wind up storing fat.  This is why so many people who participate in these classes see little to no change in their body’s shape.

                If you’re struggling to lose weight check out our free resource section of our website http://www.peak-personaltraining.com/resources.html to learn all about what you need to do to start getting serious fat loss results or download a free copy of our manual “P.E.A.K. Fat Loss” at http://www.peak-personaltraining.com/freefatlossmanual.html.