You’ve motivated yourself to make exercise a bigger part of your life. You’ve plopped down the money for a gym membership. You’ve successfully put on your gym clothes and shoes, and perhaps in the biggest victory in all the pre-workout steps, you’ve entered the gym itself with the intention to exercise.

Unfortunately, there’s still a sizable group of people who make it this far, only to find themselves quickly overwhelmed – if not discouraged – after asking themselves: “what do I do now that I’m here?”

If you’ve ever found yourself in that situation, or if you feel like that’s something that would happen to you, group training sessions are the perfect way to avoid such a roadblock.

Small groups have the benefit of creating a routine of having to make it to the studio at a scheduled time, and a sense of accountability in not letting down your coach. Additionally, small group training sessions provide you the structure and guidance for the exercises you should be performing.

What Are The Benefits Of Working Out In A Group?

In our daily lives, we have to use our brain to solve a myriad of personal and professional problems. The last thing we want to do is to further tax our mental bandwidth at the studio, coming up with different exercises to perform. In group training sessions, you’ve got a coach who uses their expertise to solve that problem for you.

As there are so many different ways to exercise, with coaches having expertise in so many of them, group training sessions allow you to choose a program that you’ll actually enjoy. Perhaps most importantly of all, group exercise sessions get you the same results you’ll enjoy when you work out on your own, if not even better results.

An evaluation of medical school students in their first two years of study (one of the hardest and most stressful times in higher education), showed that students who participated in group training sessions experienced significantly decreased levels of perceived stress. Additionally, they experienced a significant increase in physical, mental and emotional quality of life, compared to those who worked out on their own.

If you’re interested in taking a bootcamp, trying out Zumba, joining one of those popular spin classes, or strapping on your gloves and partaking in an exhilarating and stress-relieving boxing training sessions at Gloveworx, group training sessions provide you with that variety of choices.

The Benefits Of Large Group Training Sessions

After choosing your exercise “weapon” of choice, one of the first things you’ll notice when you enter the studio is just how invigorated you’ll feel, as a result of all the like-minded patrons around you.

One of the most common reasons people love larger training sessions is because of the energy they feel in the room. Seeing so many people together in one place, all working their hardest toward a common goal, can be very inspiring.

Ironically, even with so many people in the same room, larger group sessions might be better for those people who enjoy solitude or anonymity when they’re training. There are lots of people who view exercise as their time of personal solitude, when they focus on themselves.

Due to the amount of people in a larger group, you lose that sense of intimacy with everyone around you. Think about it: it’s easier to avoid talking to people if you’re in a large gathering filled with lots of people, as opposed to a small gathering where each individual person is more noticeable.

Thus, larger training groups allow you to zone out and perform your exercises “by yourself,” without having to engage in as much conversation or pleasantries, while still having the benefit of being pushed by a coach.

The Benefits Of Small Group Training Sessions

It would follow, then, that smaller group exercises combine the overall benefits of group training, with a greater sense of individualized training.

More specifically, small group training sessions represent a happy medium between enjoying the energy of a larger group training session, enjoying more individual attention and having personal “face time” with a coach. In these types of sessions, coaches are able to teach techniques and movements in addition to providing you with the exercises to perform, and the motivation to perform them.

To that end, smaller group sessions are very valuable when it comes to activities like boxing, kickboxing, or martial arts because each of those sports encompass as much teaching and coaching in regards to technique, as they do the intensity of your effort during exercise.

What About One-On-One Coaching?

As the name would imply, one-on-one coaching – sessions with only you and your coach– offers the most personalized level of exercise available.

One of the biggest benefits of one-on-one coaching is that your coach will be able to customize and adjust training sessions to your particular level of fitness. There’s great value in that, considering many people will enter a gym or a fitness class as either a novice or someone who hasn’t exercised in quite some time. These people tend to feel intimidated or overwhelmed by the abilities of everyone else, and lose motivation to return.

With a coach, you don’t have to worry about that, because they will be able to build and implement a program tailored to your abilities. A great coach will be able to give you feedback on the strengths and weakness of your body, and what you should do to improve the latter.

The Accountability Factor

One thing many people enjoy about working with a coach is the sense of accountability. As an individual, it’s easy to rationalize to yourself how you’ll skip training today, and make up for it tomorrow, because there’s nobody there to admonish you or make you feel guilty for that decision. However, if you scheduled a session with a coach, there’s always that motivation to make good on your commitment, and the guilt of not doing so.

One-on-one training has been shown to be a great way to help you make exercise a regular part of your life. On top of the individual accountability factor, those who have used one-on-one training end up exercising more often even after the coaching sessions are over, because the individual attention helped them change their overall attitudes toward exercise.

Come Together, Right Now, At Gloveworx

Many Gloveworx group sessions are specifically designed as small group training sessions. These are meant to invigorate our contenders both during and after their training session is complete, and to motivate our contenders to keep coming back.

We believe you’ll feel like the proverbial “million bucks”-- even if you’re totally exhausted-- after walking out of one of our sessions, and there’s even some research to back up that sentiment. Group training sessions like the ones at Gloveworx rank among the top three exercise types in terms of overall mental health. Are you ready to find your tribe?