Last night, I mentioned that I had a little time zone mix up with a webinar I was scheduled to attend.  Luckily, it was in my favor and I had an extra hour of time before the webinar actually started.

Once 8pm hit the clock, I was ready!  I was completely prepared with water to drink and pen and paper for notes.

The Seven Layer Cake

The webinar was the introduction to a 7-8 part webinar series that will actually take us all the way into October.  Cameron Chinatti, the Director of Education at Stages Indoor Cycling will be presenting almost every other week, educating us on how to effectively communicate with our indoor cycling classes.

Some of the challenges that we face as instructors (and if you attend group fitness I am sure you know!) are how to effectively communicate what to feel, figuring out how to say the same thing in many different “languages”, teaching a class that is effective for the intermediates in the room but uses enough coaching for the newbies.

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Cameron said that we will be addressing all of those issues.  She is going to show us how to think about things in the group fitness atmosphere much like a personal trainer does by setting goals for the class so that as a team we can have measurable results.  I like the sounds of that!

Over the course of the 7 or 8 webinars we will be covering everything that takes place in an indoor cycling class from the introduction at the start of class, how to bring awareness to the participants of what they are actually doing, all the way down to the music that we choose (or the icing on the cake as Cameron likes to say!).

I think we have all been in a situation where we have had an amazing instructor that really pushes us to the limits, but also keeps everything safe and integrates his or her knowledge of the body seamlessly into the workout.  On the other hand, we have all been in the class where we either felt completely over worked, or we felt like we had to do another workout afterward.

When I teach my group classes, I don’t want to be in either of those scenarios.  I am very excited for this education.  So many people communicate in so many different ways, and as an instructor we have to tap into all of those methods.  I am excited to be able to use measurable goals with my classes, and overall better my coaching ability.

If you are interested in joining, you can still register for the next segment “Layer 1:  Introductions” which is on Wednesday June 27 at 8pm Eastern time.

Question of the Morning:

What has been your best or worst group fitness experience?  What could have made it better?

Share some stories!