For most people, getting fit is a solo affair. There’s an app to download, equipment to buy, maybe a little YouTube action, and then it’s really just a matter of willpower from there. And for a while, people can do it. Then life gets busy, motivation wanes, and that strict home workout routine goes down the drain.
The answer is not more discipline. It’s not even necessarily a better program. The answer is community.
Training with other people impacts every aspect of the trainee experience. Most importantly, it affects whether they are able to stick with their training long enough to actually get results. This does not just come down to making friends in the gym (although it tends to happen!). The ways people are held accountable to show up, inspired to put in more effort, and able to connect with the other people in the community training next to them has an enormous impact on how much they enjoy their training and how much they achieve their fitness goals.
Accountability Makes A Difference
Working out alone is far too easy to skip. No one cares if a person decides that a day of sleeping in is more appealing than getting their exercise in. The only person let down in these instances is the same person who decides to do so—and the disappointment fades almost immediately.
Training in a community makes all the difference in the world. When someone regularly attends a fitness class in a Culver City fitness studio, the other people in class notice when they are there and when they are not. The trainers see who comes regularly. The person training starts looking for their fellow class members and expecting to see them at certain times of the day. This creates a sneaky form of accountability that community does not use guilt or shame to achieve.
Instead of relying on “I should go to the gym” to show up, it becomes “people expect me to be there.” That makes it a lot harder to skip a workout. As it turns out, consistency is far more important than intensity when it comes to getting results.
Peer Power
Anyone who has ever run a little faster because someone else was pacing them knows this one instinctively. People perform better in groups. Researchers have coined this term social facilitation, but here is what it all means: people input more effort when other people surround them.
In a solo workout, it’s easy to stop when things get too difficult. There’s no gauge for what a worthy effort looks like. When people train in a group, however, seeing someone next to them powering through another round or holding a plank for ten more seconds creates an unspoken challenge to everyone in the class. Not in a way that makes them feel inferior or like they need to compete but just as permission: if they can do this, so can I.
This effect compounds over time. Fellow class members push people to another level every time they show up, and resistance training has the beautiful effect of exponentially increasing what a person can physically accomplish. Community creates this level that overcoming it with sheer willpower will not.
Stronger Bonds Are More Fun to Workout With
Working out together creates bonds between people faster than most social situations do.
Sweating together uniquely bonds people. They’ve accomplished something that does not need forced, awkward small talk or ice breakers. People who train together respect what their fellow trainees have accomplished because they have seen the effort. They have observed the breakthrough moments—and that creates relationships between community members trained together that are rooted in strength, not weak interactions.
This also matters in getting results because working out with other people becomes more appealing when motivation dips. When it gets tough to push through a workout (and it should!), spending time with fellow class members can fill this gap. Having two different reasons to show up for class is better than one.
Even if someone’s original motivation for getting fit is wearing thin (like wanting to lose weight), showing up for other people remains.
Feedback is Key
When someone trains alone, there’s no one there to see when their form is off, which muscles they are using incorrectly, or when they fail to progress from the most basic movement patterns to the more difficult ones. This may seem like a minor point, but avoiding injury and optimizing how people learn new skills are both crucial when getting results as a trainee.
Training communities provide an instant mechanism to give feedback through instructors or fellow classmates.
One final tool solo trainers do not have is accumulated knowledge. Fellow students regularly share what exercises worked, which ones did not, and how they achieved certain results (and equally importantly, how not to get stuck in certain workout ruts).
Training communities have a wealth of information and experience to draw from.
A Different Environment Changes Perspectives
The environment in which someone works out determines how they view their workout. A minimal setup at home sends a subconscious message that training is something people fit in around everything else they have going on in their lives. A dedicated training space with everything people need (great music, good vibes, etc.) changes this message. People tell themselves how they treat it matters.
Walking into a dedicated training environment full of other members specifically there to work out changes up the mental headspace that people enter when they train alone.
All of those excuses to skip workouts quickly fade away when surrounded by others doing the same thing.
Additionally, an appropriately diverse community creates different “cultures” within groups. Some may value competition more than other communities value focusing on personal development or a shared goal. Finding a community that fits one’s personal preference makes it easier for someone who puts in the effort to achieve fitness results.
Better Than Any Program?
Training programs are important; there is no doubt about this fact. But who cares about the best training program in the world if people quit after three weeks?
Community does not only dramatically improve fitness results; it significantly enhances retention rates for fitness communities so their members can stick around and actually see the results they want.
The fitness world sells an appropriate training program all the time—yet no one seems to recognize the importance of training next to other people who showed up prepared to put in the effort and expect the same of everyone else?
Finding an appropriate fitness community has nothing to do with being trendy or having bragging rights about how many Instagram followers they have. Finding a community that makes it easier to show up than stay at home (ideally creating opportunities to bond with fellow classmates in the process) is what everyone needs to achieve results.
When people join the appropriate training community, achieving fitness results becomes easier—not harder.
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