How To Get The Most Out Of Your Group Training Sessions

Along with organised sports, Group Training/Boot Camps is the most efficient and effective way to get in your necessary quota of high intensity cardiovascular training on a weekly basis.

Boasting the added benefits of variety, accountability and adjustability including equal parts of a supportive and competitive environment … a well structured Boot camp system is hard to pass up as the best method of cardiovascular training for the purpose of improving ones VO2 max, lowering ones resting heart rate, shedding body fat and increasing lactic tolerance.

At Transform Fitness, our I.C.E (Intense Cardio Exercise) Group Fitness program has been specifically designed to complement a well-structured resistance-training regime, in addition to capitalizing on a healthy diet!

So what have we actually done to make our group training as effective as possible?

A quality group training program requires many attributes:

– High intensity to promote changes in ones heart rate during the session

– Lasts no more than 30 minutes

– Have a wide variety of movements targetting the entire body

– Offer progressed and regressed options, and

– Continually varies the work to rest interval ratios

So Here Is Our Checklist:

– Structured intervals

– 30 minutes or less

– A wide variety of movements targeting the entire body

– Options to progress or regress exercises

– Changing cycles of interval structure.

– High intensity, absolutely BUT…

Do we always work hard enough?

I can hear you all yelling “that’s your job, to smash me”.

Yes, that is our job as Coaches, and no, none of us intend to stop pushing you when we catch you doing quarter squats or chin tucks for sit ups. But while your getting forced to do an extra burpee where your feet actually leave the ground, 19 other Boot Campers have a window of opportunity to drop the medicine ball, not because they want to, simply because their lungs, quads and their shoulders are telling them to.

Which brings us to the real question:

How do you get the most out of YOURSELF during Boot camp?

The answer: Plan your attack.

Simple. Do not go into a session with no intentions at all. You can plan to go light some days, that’s fine, but if you come in expecting your body to train itself you can be sure that this will also be a light session.

So pick a plan for the next session.

Plan of attack 1. Be the Bullet:

When the Coach says “GO!” you FIRE your best and give 100% … save nothing, move as fast as possible, choose heavy kettle bells and dumbbells, take advanced options, forget about getting through the session, just get as many reps down as fast as possible. Then, like a bullet, when you run out of momentum you are more than welcome to fall to the ground. Take a breath, shake out the legs, your Coach will know that you are working, this is not an issue. Now reload and … Ready, set, FIRE!

Plan of attack 2. Just below the red line:

Stay below the red line. Only just below, find the point where you can sustain intensity for the work intervals but only just. This may seem to contradict the whole purpose of performing intervals, but the beauty here is that each time you change exercises you will have to adjust to the new stimulus. Your focus will be totally on finding your new red line and hovering just below it, then making the most of recovery time.

Finally, you can obviously implement these mental processes however you like, but here is a few suggestions for those who like to plan well ahead.

1.      30/30 intervals = Be the Bullet

2.      60/60 intervals = Just below the red line

3.      4 minutes on 1 minute off = Alternate between rounds. Be the Bullet on station one then stay just below the red line on station two then Be the Bullet on station three etc. etc. you get it.

Having intentions, a plan, being focused on the task at hand, asking more of yourself, these are the tools of the mind. If in doubt just remember that watching TV while on a treadmill will burn some calories from breakfast, but demanding 100% from your body in any physical format will build a stronger body with a faster metabolism that demands more calories for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

If you have your own plan of attack (which I suspect many of you do) please share your thought process with us on our facebook fan page.

Catch you in the studio,
Tim Cox