Did you know that Small Group Training is one of the Top Fitness Trends for 2019? It has been around in the US for a long time and is only now starting to take off here in the UK.
I find that most British people I come across have been perfectly happy attending large, cheaper exercise classes up until now. Thinking that what they were doing would be sufficient to get them by.
Now people are being educated via books, magazines, social media and TV and are being to know better! Firstly recent research is telling us that exercise is THE magic bullet for disease control and prevention and secondly people are catching on that exercise technique IS important if we want to get long lasting results. Not only that but people are learning that poor technique not only leads to poor results, but also that it leads to injury – often learnt the hard way!
I have taught group exercise for over 30 years and whilst I love the buzz of large groups, I do not love the fact that most people in a large class (over 10 persons) are not doing the exercises correctly and even to the point of doing more harm than good to their bodies.
Having suffered an injury through exercise myself, I am well aware of how quickly and easily this can happen. You may not notice the damage to muscles, ligaments or tendons immediately – sometimes it can take 24 hours, sometimes longer…..up to years!
When I partially tore both my achilles tendons whilst undergoing my very first instructor training back in 1985 (!!) it wasn’t until the next day when I put weight on my feet getting out of bed and fell to the ground in pain that I discovered what I had done. The cause? Jumping up and down on a concrete floor. I had no idea at the time that I had injured myself so badly. It took several painful years (both physically and mentally) to recover from this injury and so I am very conscious of what can happen. I am also aware of how an injury can happen in a split second when we are not paying attention and can have long lasting effects. Here I am recollecting how I broke my leg and dislocated my ankle in 2016 whilst running (yes, you read that right – running!) down a mountain in the French Alps. I stepped off the main rocky path onto a grassy shortcut – not realising that the grass was wet and poof, crack, ouch in a blink of an eye my foot collided with a hidden rock – careless, mindless, unlucky!
As an exercise professional committed to helping people improve their health, fitness and wellbeing, I began to find it unacceptable to my values and life purpose that people could be injuring themselves during class without realising it at the time.
I now dedicate myself to teaching Small Group Training (max 5 persons) and Personal Training in my Sale Pilates Studio.
Want to come and try my Small Group classes?
Sign up to my Wellbeing Easter Retreat in Cumbria where I have limited the group to ten people so that all attendees can have the best experience possible from a Nordic Walking, Pilates and Workshop Retreat.
To avoid disappointment SIGN UP HERE TODAY as doors are closing TOMORROW at 8pm – Monday, 25th February!