I wrote this post awhile back with five tips to help you succeed at the gym. While the post itself is geared more towards people who’ve joined a quality group training program, or work with a coach in a small group setting, most of the tips are really applicable to anyone just getting started (or re-started) on a fitness journey in any setting. If you’re reading this you probably want to get strong and fit…or already are.

Get Strong and Fit

It’s been incredible learning how to best help our members get strong and stay consistent over the last 5+ years here at Skill of Strength. We’ll never be done learning and improving our MOVE group training program, or any of our other training programs for that matter, but at this point there are plenty of things we’ve learned that are worth sharing.

Get Strong and Fit at the Gym

Our most successful members seem to let go of what they know, or think they know, and embrace the Skill of Strength training system. Members who start where we recommend, continually show up, introduce themselves to other members, ask questions, track workouts and push a little harder week to week?

THEY CRUSH IT.

Get Strong and Fit

The fact is, you can get pretty darn strong and fit by staying consistent, using {mostly} proper technique and following bomb.com programming. <—-Thanks Mike!

Throw in a few great coaches and a killer community… that’s our MOVE program and we’re proud of it. Our members work hard and it shows.

It doesn’t matter if we have a member who’s never done any weight lifting before or if we’re working with someone who’s coming from a serious athletic background. When they trust the system, keep showing up and stay coachable, we’re confident they will make progress.

Consistency

Of course as gym owners and coaches you want to make sure you’re not fooling yourselves, right? I mean is what we’re doing here really working? Can you really get strong and fit in a group training program or do you need a personal training and individualized training program?

We’ll get to that answer in a few minutes because we accidentally stumbled up some truth here…

What if You’re Strong and Fit? What’s Next?

Lately, we’ve had some members approach us after years in our MOVE training program who don’t have any injuries, feel super committed to training right now given all they have going on in their lives outside of the gym, and want to take their training to the next level. Each of these members know first-hand what great results they can get in our group training program MOVE and they have no intention of ditching their bread and butter training program. They do, however, want to step it up for a bit.

As the requests for this type of thing started rolling in more often, we realized this was a chance to come up with something new. Something WOW. Something bad-ass.

Enter our first ever ELITE 8.

{Note: a few members are missing from this photo…more to come.}

First thing’s first…testing. If we want to help these members set appropriate goals and we want to give them individualized road maps with directions on how to get there, we need to know where we are starting, right?

We were blown away by the BEFORE results and feel more confident than ever that, yes, you can get ridiculously strong and fit in a group training environment. Or should I say, the right group training environment.

Starting Strength Numbers from Group Training Members

To give you an idea, here are some of the BEGINNING STATS from testing. WHAT?! These are all members of our group training program. They’ve gotten this strong and fit in a group training program, people.

  • Everyone, men and women performed at least 22 strict push-ups at the beginning of the program- that’s men and women!
  • On the max power output test on the bike, one of the women, Rebecca, hit almost 1000 W while Connor, hit 1600 W.
  • Two of our male clients pressed the 85 pound dumbbells for five reps.
  • Their technique on the barbell deadlifts, barbell back squats and push-ups were nearly perfect.

If nothing else, these “starting” numbers are PROOF that group training can get you some seriously amazing results if you’re looking to get strong and fit. So, I’d go out on a limb and say that hell yes, you can get really strong and fit in a group training program.

Now, let’s see what taking that up a notch will do for this super-committed trainees, right?

Stay tuned. I have a feeling the results will not disappoint!

Here’s what ELITE 8 Participants are saying after week one of training.

“I thought week 1 was telling.  I did more weight and reps than I would have chosen by myself to do at MOVE.  The result was me in a child’s pose on the carpet for a time which I usually do not do but I felt like I accomplished more – #goalofthesavage”

“I look forward to it all day (until I get there and read the day’s program). Lol. On to week 2….and as Rebecca loves to say ‘We got this…’”

“You never know the strength, determination and courage you have until you have to put it to use! Encouragement is motivation and this group truly motivates. We wouldn’t be RockStars without a RockStar coach! Thanks Kevin!”

“I’m feeling stronger already – if a little sore. Amanda promised it would be fun and it is b/c of the gang and the coach.  So thanks.”

“I also think it is worth noting that in the MOVE class it is largely up to us to determine when we move up in weight or push ourselves on the bike, etc…..with ELITE we’re being “forced” to do it.  Each of us needs to push aside the little voice in our heads “There’s no way I can do all those push-ups or pull-ups.”  It’s tough, but very satisfying and we’re feeding off that energy to continue driving not only ourselves, but also each other….t least that’s how I feel…..great group and I’m loving working out with them.”

“I love it!   I’m not going to lie, it’s really hard. The group is extremely supportive – everyone seems to have the same mindset. They helped me get through the sleds…. Kevin is yelling!!!”

And from Coach Kev…leading the wolfpack.

“These guys are SAVAGES! They Totally crushed week one. When working with them this week, it made me realize this is one of the reasons I love coaching. They are all really working their butts off and coming together as a team do it. The amount of support I saw for one another yesterday was awesome!

They are F*cking RockStars!”