Sassy Girl Fitness: Why I LOVE teaching fitness!

This post is a little gratitude check. Today the world is hard. Stuff is happening often that makes me sad. I needed to write this post to remind myself that I love what I do for work.

I've been teaching Group Fitness since I started college. It was a way for me to keep in shape without having to pay for a gym membership. When I started I was not good. My very first class almost everyone walked out. I don't know what encouraged me to keep teaching, but I am so glad I did. When I was growing up, I was always told that I should be a school teacher, and I rolled my eyes at the thought of it. I even took education classes for 1 week in college. I quickly decided that was not the route for me. I think educators are so important and greatly under paid. Today, I couldn’t imagine not teaching (group fitness).

1. Teaching has made me a better student.

Want to learn something inside and out? Teach it. I pay so much more attention to what I’m doing now when I take classes. I'm so in touch with my body that I can take direction well. I notice little changes in body position and how they affect the difficulty of a move; I notice the ways my body naturally wants to “cheat” when it starts getting fatigued in certain exercises; I keep in mind common form errors I see in students and self-adjust if I find myself making them, too—the list goes on. Also, I am ALWAYS super friendly and I smile at the instructor a lot during class. I want the instructor to know that I am enjoying their workout, even if I am not. I believe so much in learning from others that I use Class Pass. Class Pass is a kind of gym membership that grants you access to thousands of different classes at studios and gyms in my city and around the world.

2. It feels good to be a (small) part of such a positive component of people’s day.

For the most part, people want to be in class. Or, if they don’t exactly “want” to workout, they at least want to do something good for their body and they know that this is it. Either way, taking class is a positive part of someone’s day, and it feels good to be involved in that. It’s like the complete opposite of working at the DMV.

3. It’s rewarding seeing clients accomplish new things.

To clarify, I don’t mean rewarding in the sense that I think I’m responsible any time a student reaches a new goal or holds a plank those extra 30 seconds. Group fitness isn’t like personal training—your students are going to lots of different instructors, working out on their own, and the credit for progress goes totally to them. I just think that witnessing progress in itself is rewarding—every time I see someone accomplish something they couldn’t do the month before, it’s confirmation that I’m in the right industry.

4. It’s fun being able to share a workout I’m passionate about with others.

When I’m planning a class, I always aim to put together a workout that I’d want to do myself. It keeps me excited about teaching, and almost feels like I’m sharing a bunch of my favorite things or a list of recommendations with the class. If, for example, I’m feeling the burn from a particular exercise I did the other day, it’s weirdly exciting being able to then “share” that with my students by putting them through it in class.

5. It has forced me to FINALLY learn my left from right.

Laugh away. Most people have an innate sense of left from right—not this girl. I get it wrong all of the time, instruct enough people to cross their right foot in front of their left and even a hopeless fool like me can learn.