Going to a gym can often be a daunting experience, especially if you are new to the scene. There’s all this new equipment, new techniques, and a whole new social environment with its own rules and expectations that you may know very little about. For this reason, and many others, Bodyjunkies offers a wide variety of fitness classes in Islington, giving you a friendly introduction to exercise and the gym environment.
There are plenty of benefits to joining an exercise class. If not just for motivation, consider the following positives:
The Friendship Factor
When you’re on your own in the gym, things are a lot less immediately social. The trainers will help you, and other gym-goers will sometimes offer useful advice, but solo exercise is more like ships passing in the morning than a team on the same track.
When you take part in an exercise class you might all be there for different reasons, but you all come to the same place and start in the same way. When the classes are specially conditioned for specific finesses and levels of experience, you start to have something in common with the people there. Plus, because you’re going regularly, you’ll see the same people there week in, week out, so you build up familiarity, rapport, even inside jokes!
Too often, too many of us know the reality that London can be lonely, and many find life in Islington isolating. With an exercise class, you can fight back. Make friends. Build connections. Not only are those worthwhile things in themselves, but they’ll also help you get fitter and healthier.
Accountability and Competition
If self-directed and self-controlled exercising were easy, we wouldn’t need gyms in the first place. When you’ve got a place and time to come to each week, you’ve got extra motivation to act because that way, you’re accountable. People know you’re coming, people want to see you there, and it builds that extra reason to push through.
Plus, not only do they know you’re coming, but they can keep you on the hook for when you’re there. No one really likes to be nagged or dragged onwards in what we’re trying to do, but sometimes we all need that little extra push from the knowledge that there’s someone there who will be disappointed in us if we don’t emerge victoriously.
If you are regularly going to the gym and you know who else will be there, they represent a challenge. When you’ve got someone to challenge, all in the name of friendly competition of course, then that’s very motivating. Within the setting of an exercise class, you have the accountability and competition from other gym-goers to keep pushing you forward.
Skills, Practice, and Advancement
When you go to the gym by yourself, the chances are that you won’t ever become any kind of expert. You’ll get to grips with a machine or piece of equipment, find out what works for you, then just keep repeating that.
While you will be getting stronger and fitter as you go, only with the careful eye of an instructor looking over your routine will truly help you develop and improve skills in a particular area. An instructor in a class is intimately familiar with a particular set of disciplines and skills. This is something you can learn, something you can develop, something you can master. The sense of skill and pride you develop in adding a new item to your skill set can keep you going and building yourself up often far more than knowing you did X reps in Y time on Z machine. Own an ability. Learn a skill. Master a technique. Or better yet, take on more than one!
The Spice of Life and Exercise
Coming to the same gym to use the same machines in the same way week in, week out, can definitely result in exercise burnout. But as you come to a class to learn a particular skill and a particular set of movements and styles of exercise, you will be exposed to a range of exercises, rather than just the limited amount that a particular machine can offer you.
Similarly, if you want to mix your exercise routine up with indoor, outdoor, boxing, biking, or more, those options are all available to you. This can help to build up your muscles in a variety of different ways, forcing your body to deploy its resources more evenly, making your system sharper and your body notably stronger.
In summary, solo exercise is absolutely fine but in general, complete beginners to exercising should first seek a trainer or class to allow them to learn good form and correct posture. This will help prevent injuries both initially and further down the line when the intensity of exercises increases.
If you are interested in joining one of our fitness or exercise classes in our Islington studio, get in touch with our friendly and expertly-trained staff on 0203 488 3759 or email us on info@bodyjunkies.co.uk. Alternatively, you can browse our timetable of exercise classes online today!
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