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Where fitness and outdoors meet. In this space we chat all things hiking, exercise, wellness, adventure, motherhood, and metabolic health from a female perspective! Get ready to learn + be inspired to live your fullest, most adventurous life!
Why Group Fitness Classes Won't get you Toned
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a long time fitness professional and midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. And combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for Hiking podcast. Hey guys, welcome back to the show. This is your host, Brady. Today we're going to be talking about group fitness classes. This is a topic that is very kind of close to my heart because I actually, uh, managed a fitness studio for five years when I was kind of just starting out. Before that, I was also teaching group classes at a ton of different places. So I am no stranger to the group fitness scene. And, um, what I have learned over the years through my own experience, through furthering my education, through helping so many women coming through the pipeline of like the group classes to like wanting to better their transformation pipeline is that group fitness is not really the key to getting a toned physique. If that is your goal. Okay, so first off, I want to just give the disclaimer that I understand not everybody is doing exercise for the sole goal of looking a certain way. There are so many other benefits to exercise such as mental health benefits, going in, socializing with your friends, getting a good cardio workout in right? Just having fun. Um, physical benefits, mental benefits. However, if if your goal is to actually get your best possible physique, to really transform, to get, you know, totally improve body composition, and you have been doing group fitness classes and you're not getting there. You've hit a plateau, you've hit a ceiling. Then you are who I'm talking to. Okay, if this is not your type of episode, that's totally fine. But this is who I'm talking to are the people who are like, I am working out all the time, yet not seeing the body composition transformation that you want. Because I've been there, I was you. I was not only doing these workouts. Six plus times a week, sometimes twice a day. I was also teaching them, um. And I love the environment, the energy, the pace. It's fun, right? But I was gaining weight instead of losing weight. I was extremely puffy. I was not great hormonally. There was a lot going on that I wasn't happy with when I should have been at my optimal health based on how much I was working out, based on the fact that I was in my mid to late 20s, I should have been in peak health, peak physical shape. However, I was not. Okay. So let's talk about why that is and what we can do differently, okay, because the common frustration that I see here is, you know, you're doing all the things, you're working out really, really hard, but not seeing muscle definition. Okay. So let's talk about what looking toned getting toned actually means, why a lot of group fitness concepts are falling short and what works instead. All right. So a lot of people hear the word toned or toning. And they think of it as a special type of exercise or a certain type of workout? Or maybe like fat burning workouts? Really, there is no physiological process of toning. There is no way to aka, you know, tone a muscle. There's only growing your muscles or shrinking your muscles, basically letting them atrophy. So either your muscles are growing because of the demand that you're putting on them through hypertrophy, or they are going to atrophy due to you not putting any demand on them, and you're losing that muscle mass. Okay. So there's no in-between. There's no like middle of the road where it's like, no, I'll just tone this muscle, okay. So it's really important to understand that because I think that's where a lot of times, um, crappy marketing and predatory marketing towards women talks about like certain workouts being for toning. That is just a bunch of crap. There's nothing that's going to tone your workouts versus build muscle. What they're talking about is building muscle. However, that type of marketing oftentimes does not appeal to women because we are so afraid of building muscles. So there's a lot that goes wrong there. And hopefully through this episode, you will no longer fear building muscle as a woman. So to look toned, you really need just two things. You need sufficient muscle mass, and you need low enough body fat to see the muscle. That's it. It's really very simple. We don't need to overcomplicate it or do these weird like toning workouts. Okay, so examples would be like you have visible shoulder muscles, you have defined arms, you have athletic looking legs that you can see some of the muscle endings. You have firm glutes okay. All of these require muscle development. You aren't going to be able to look toned simply from losing weight. And I've seen this many, many times. A lot of women coming into my program now have been on like the GLP ones or epic or things like that, or they've just undergone a big weight loss journey and they did not really do much to maintain muscle. And because of that, they are not happy with their body, even though they lost like 100 plus pounds because they don't look toned, they just kind of have a smaller version of the body that they had before. Okay, so if you actually want to see visible muscle tone, look and feel strong, you need to understand that you cannot tone a muscle without first building it. You cannot look toned without having sufficient muscle mass. So that right there, if you're someone who's afraid of muscle, can I please just encourage you? I've been there, I was you, I was so afraid of looking bulkier because I already felt bulky. I thought it was just my build. I thought that I was the exception. I'm the only one who does. You know these types of workouts and gets bulky? No, I promise you, it was just the style of workout that I was doing was not actually improving my body composition and eating in too much of surplus, having way too much inflammation going on in my body from overall stress. Okay, it's not because of muscle. It's not because you're too muscular. All right, so let's talk about the biggest problems with group fitness classes. Most classes are going to be prioritizing calories burned, getting your heart rate up, sweating and honestly just feeling worked. Like you just feel exhausted and it's a satisfying feeling. That's why it hooks you because you're like, oh my gosh, that kicked my ass. Like, I am so tired after that workout, I feel drained. That was so good. I'm burning. Maybe like feel that muscle burn from doing a lot of lightweight pulses and things like that. However, muscle growth requires progressively overloading your muscles, so that means adding more weight, more weight bearing to your muscles every single time that you are lifting weights. So that's not just doing things quickly. That's not just getting the heart rate up. That's not just burning calories. It's actually loading your muscles adequately. On top of that, you need adequate recovery. So just jumping from one thing to the next isn't going to allow you to really load up your muscles properly because you're going to be too winded, right? You're going to be like doing a cardio workout while trying to also lift weights. You're not going to be able to do either. Well, it also requires you to increase. The resistance that you're using over time. So you're not just using the exact same weights on the same lifts every single week. If you're always grabbing eights for your bicep curls, if you're always using a £15 dumbbell for your squats or whatever that looks like for you, you're going to struggle to actually see body recomposition muscle gain. Okay, so that is where a lot of classes are going to fall short. They're chasing a feeling. They're more so chasing like how does this feel. Hard. Yes. Doing 100 burpees feels hard. Does it actually change your body composition? No. That's why you will never see me put burpees in my clients workouts. Because I'm never just going to give people exercises that feel hard mentally. You're like, oh crap, that really sucked. I must have been working really hard. That's not how it works. Trust me. I did all of the crappy feeling workouts, the burpees, the hill sprints, the battle ropes, all of that crap for years and years and just kept gaining weight. Okay, suffering does not equate to body recomposition, okay? So asking yourself instead of just like, did I burn a lot of calories? Did I sweat a lot? Did you actually lift heavier this month than last month? On your lips, are you tracking the weights that you're using? Are you going slow enough that you can actually get good range of motion? Are you resting between your exercises instead of doing a big circuit where you're just going boom, boom, boom, one right to the next? Do you know if you're actually stronger than 12 weeks ago? A lot of people don't. And that's not something that you can really track very easily in group fitness classes. Another shortcoming is that typically its random trainers, every time, they don't know what you did yesterday in your class. They don't know that you already did a million squats. So then you're going to do squats again. So then there's imbalances. So instead of doing enough backside of the body, posterior chain, hamstrings and glutes you're just going to hammer the front side of the body okay. So there's not a lot of strategic smart planning with group fitness. Of course there are exceptions. There are studios that do this really well. They actually have a master program. They are very, very smart with their programming. They are working on progressive overload. But I would say like 98% of group fitness is just about burning calories, sweating and having a really fun, energetic experience. So the result is that you get better at surviving workouts. You maybe have a good sweat, you have fun, but you're not really changing your body. You're just exhausting yourself and not seeing the changes, not building muscle. So here's what you got to understand here. More sweat does not equal better results. The fitness industry sells exhaustion really well okay. So people often believe if you're really sore. It was effective. If you're sweaty, it was productive. If you're exhausted, then you're going to get the best results. If it was miserable and you feel like you're going to puke, then you're definitely going to get good results. But sweat measures cooling, not fat loss. Some people are just big sweaters because your body gets really hot. You produce more sweat to cool it off. That's not necessarily meaning that you are burning fat. Okay? Soreness does not equate to muscle growth. Being tired is not going to actually help you with anything. It's not going to actually give you any sort of fitness results. All right. So example, someone who is doing like a hit class on a Monday, a spin class on a Tuesday, a boot camp on Wednesday, a cardio dance on Thursday, and then a circuit a like a weight circuit at the gym on Friday. That sounds fun, right? But they are never progressively strengthening any of their muscles. They're just doing these kind of random, hard feeling workouts so you can still be incredibly fit. You can work on your fitness, you can be in great cardiovascular shape from all of the spinning. You can be really quick with your hip movements. You can even be like somewhat strong. And you really don't like the way that you look. I talk to women all of the time, and I was this way to where I was like pretty strong. I was really fit. I talked to women like this a lot that are like, I'm actually strong. I'm seeing strength gains, but I don't like how my body looks. My body does not reflect how hard I'm working and how strong I am. Okay, so you can be incredibly fit. Still not look the way that you want. It's important to understand that. All right. So why do women especially get stuck when it comes to group fitness? Because many women have been taught to lift lightweights. Because we don't want to get huge. We don't want to get bulky. We want to do high rep counts with the lightweights, focus on burning calories, pulsing and burning your muscles, feeling the burn all for the goal of long, lean muscles. Again, it's not like you can actually elongate your muscles, right? Your muscles are are what they are. You have a fixed, fixed joints, right? You're not going to be able to magically create longer limbs. So that's again kind of just really good marketing towards women. The reality is building noticeable muscle is going to take years of intentional training. It's not going to happen because you do like some heavier weights than last week. Trust me, I have been lifting weights intentionally with the goal now of building muscle for years, and I have realized that it is much harder than you would think. You could probably look at me and maybe be like, yeah, she looks pretty fit. A lot of people probably would not look at me and be like, she lifts heavy weights because I don't look bulky, I don't look super muscular because it's really, really hard for women to gain a ton of muscle. When you remove the body fat, you realize you're not actually bulky because of muscle, you're bulky because of body fat and inflammation. Okay, so what actually is going to create that shape that you want is having like strong glutes develop shoulders, strong back muscles, defined legs. And these do come from resistance training not endless cardio circuits Pilates or running. Okay. So again I'm not saying that these modalities of exercise are wrong. Please don't misunderstand me because there is so much benefit to any type of exercise that you enjoy, right? But if you are going for the goal of body recomposition getting your dream body, then it's important to understand that not all modes of training are created equal for fat loss and toning. Okay. So the missing ingredient is progressive strength training consistently for years. Okay, I know that that is not the sexy answer. When I say years, people are probably like, oh my gosh, what? I don't want to have to do this for years. But that is the reality is if you want to transform your body, it's not going to happen in 30 days. You can absolutely see progress. You can see some fat loss, you can see body comp starting to take shape, but you're not going to necessarily build your dream body in one month. Okay, so what does progressive strength look like? It looks like tracking your weights, repeating key movements week after week, month after month, year after year. I do these same exact lifts with a little bit of variance, a little bit of variety, mixing it up slightly from time to time. I've been doing the exact same lifts for like six years. You guys. Six years. Okay, it is not that exciting, but it works. You have to go with what works versus what just feels fun, exciting, new novel, hard, all of those things. Okay, if you go based on your feelings, you're probably not going to like your results too much. Okay, so go with the science. Go with what works. Go with what's proven, gradually increasing load okay within those key movements, and then prioritizing recovery, not burning yourself out, not doing two days like I used to. Okay, so examples of this is that you're always going to want to be including some squat variations. Deadlift variations. Step up. Step downs. Single leg split, squats, lunges, things like that. You're always going to want to be doing some upper body pole work. So in the form of rows, lat pull downs, bicep curls, you're always going to be wanting to do some upper body presses like chest press, chest flies, push ups, shoulder press, um, tricep extensions, things like that. Okay, so it is very important to always be factoring in the smart exercises, not just what you see on Instagram or TikTok, not just things that look flashy, but the things that are proven to work and actually build shape in your body. Okay, the body is going to adapt to challenges. That's why adding new stimuli and like actually pushing yourself with the weights that you're using is what's going to cause it to adapt and change equaling body recommit. Okay, so the challenge never really is increasing over time. You're just kind of sweating a lot and throwing your body around. Muscle growth is going to stall. Body recomposition is going to stall. You might be burning some calories, but you're not going to really like the shape of your body or see that muscle tone. All right. So let's talk about the where fat loss comes into this. Because yes, part of this equation is having enough muscle to actually see your muscle tone. Right. But the other half of it is having low enough body fat to reveal that muscle. Okay. So you got to focus on both if you want a toned physique. So a lot of people are using classes to burn calories. However, here's the issue. Exercise is going to contribute way less to weight loss than most people think. I know, I know, it's not very encouraging, especially as a trainer. Um, maybe I shouldn't be telling you this, but it's the truth. Like you're not going to get your dream body just from exercise. That's why some people who run marathons and triathlons and stuff still are not super lean, because it's not all about the exercise. You also have to factor in your nutrition, your lifestyle, your steps outside of your workout, your sleep, your stress management, your hormones. Okay, so there's more to it than just the exercise. Nutrition is going to be the biggest driver of fat loss. I cannot reiterate that enough. I definitely fell into the trap of like, oh, I earned it. I burned so many calories. I'm so hungry from all this exercise. I'm just going to treat myself. And then I stayed stagnant or was gaining weight because I was overeating versus what I was actually burning in the workouts. Okay, so that's another thing to understand, is that exercise is not going to burn as many calories as you think, even if you're watch or a machine tells you, oh my gosh, you burned a thousand calories. If you're a small female, I guarantee you're not burning a thousand calories doing anything okay in an hour of workout, if you're like a five foot four female, you might burn maybe 400 calories. Maybe it probably is going to be less okay. So typically it's going to be overestimated. And then you are underestimating how much you are consuming due to the increased hunger. So fast paced, cardio based classes do tend to drive up hunger without actually increasing your basal metabolic rate, which is what strength training does. Okay, so that is just a recipe for spinning your wheels, right? You work out really hard, then you get super hungry, then you eat more than you think you are, and you didn't actually burn as many calories as you thought you did. Meaning, you're either just equaling out and canceling out what you did from your exercise, or you're actually ending up in a slight surplus at the end of the day because you're really freaking hungry. Your portion sizes are bigger than they would otherwise be if you weren't burning all these calories through exercise. So it's honestly, you're making it harder for yourself. Okay, so another thing to consider here is that if you're already a Type-A person, you're already a very highly stressed female. Adding more stress to the fire can actually cause a lot more damage, a lot more hormone imbalance, inflammation, exhaustion. Okay, so this type of exercise is going to not be great if you are already a very stressed out person, okay. Because our bodies as women are more sensitive to stress. And that can really, really pile on over time. If you're already going through a lot and your nervous system is already on high alert, when you're just doing hit, you're doing runs, you're doing sprints. That's just more stress. That's how your body is going to take that, okay. It doesn't sense that it's the good kind of stress. It just senses that it's stress and that you're staying in a fight or flight state. Okay. So it's important to understand that while you might be able to get back to that type of training eventually, it might not be what's best for you right now. I had to completely step away from any sort of hit, all running, anything like that. That was stressful because I always gravitated towards that and my hormones were not okay. My estrogen and progesterone were completely tanked. I had to step away from the super high stress type of exercise in order to get myself to a better place and actually lose weight, actually regulate my hormones, get my period back. Okay. All right. So our group class is bad. Absolutely not. As I mentioned before, there are so many benefits. They're fun. You have a community aspect. There's accountability. There's stress relief. There's cardiovascular benefits. Okay. The problem is that if you're using them as your primary strategy for getting toned, it's probably going to frustrate you over time. You might see results initially and then hit a plateau after a couple weeks or months. All right. So these classes are great for enjoyment movement conditioning, but they're not really optimal. If you're trying to build significant muscle, really reshape your body, or create a toned appearance. So if you've been taking classes for years and just aren't really seeing the muscle definition that you want, it's not because you're lazy or your body's broken. It just means that your those workouts are not really designed for body recomposition. Muscle growth. Sweating is not going to equate to strength, and fatigue is not going to equal progress. Okay, so if your goal is to get toned, it's much better to focus on the foundation of strength training. It doesn't have to be a crazy amount, but 2 to 4 times a week following a progressive program that actually is designed with your goals in mind, is smart, is going to actually create that body recomposition, eating enough protein, really getting your nutrition dialed in for your goals, understanding what your baseline, um, what your basal metabolic rate actually is, what your maintenance calories look like. Okay, you have to factor all of this stuff in. It's not just about the workouts. All right. So if you are a woman over 30 who wants to lose 30 plus pounds, finally see that muscle tone and build strength for the trails. That is exactly why I created this program, because I took all of the years of frustration of not having a holistic program, of just trying to piece this crap together by myself and feeling so frustrated, spinning my wheels, seeing so many other women doing the same. I wanted to put it all together into one cohesive plan in place to get women their dream body, to get them prepped for their hikes without being miserable, without spinning their wheels, doing two days and having to cut carbs or eat ridiculous diets. Okay, so if that appeals to you and you're like, I know that I need this, I know I need that support and I don't really know where to start. This is the perfect opportunity for you. You can apply at the link in the show notes. There's an application link there and we can start your transformation. I hope that this episode has been a helpful breakdown of group classes. Again, I'm not a hater. I actually love group fitness. I think it is so fun. But for me personally and for so many other women that have come through my program, it just was not the key for body recomposition and actually getting those physical results that you might be missing. If you're listening to this episode, there's a reason that you're listening to it. So if this is resonating, I hope that you can take away a lot of great info from this episode and understand that group fitness can definitely be used as a tool. It can be fun, you can meet people. It's awesome for building community, but I would use it as a supplement to a really smart, progressive overload style program. Okay, don't use it as your main method for fat loss. All right you guys, thanks for tuning in today. I hope that this was an enjoyable one. Always loving to hear your suggestions for episode topics and connecting with you guys at the Fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page, so send us a message there. We'd love to connect with you and hear about your goals here, about what you guys are liking on the show, what you would like to hear more of, and I will chat with you all in the next episode. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this. Be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at ponytail on Etrailer.com. Happy and healthy trails.