One of the questions we have been getting frequently as of late is some variation of this:

“I am not as fit as I would like to be and wonder if the FIT Bootcamp will take that into account?

I worry about keeping up with everyone and slowing down the class.  Is there a way to have different levels of intensity for people with different fitness levels?”

I’m sure you will be surprised by how much you can do once you get in the swing of things, but this concern is entirely valid.  We have people in our bootcamps ranging from very fit  athletes all the way to people with no previous exercise experience at all.

The concept we utilize to address this very issue is a continuum of exercise progressions and regressions.  This allows for us to implement the “same” exercise prescription in terms of time and exercise type for a wide range of fitness levels.

Let’s look at an exercise to perform an upper body push for 3 different people with 3 different fitness levels.

The baseline movement would be a pushup.  This would be prescribed for a person that has been pretty active and has a decent amount of upper body muscular strength and endurance, as well as a reasonable amount of core stability.

If, however, someone begins this program and has not been active for the past few months, we will start that person off with something like a modified pushup (pushup with your knees on the ground).  This requires less strength and endurance of both the upper body as well as the core.

Think back to middle school physics when you studied levers.  (This is a class 2 lever if anyone was wondering).

The fulcrum is where your body touches the floor, the resistance is your body weight, and the force is your hands pushing against the floor.

Reducing the distance between the primary muscles being utilized for the motion, in this case the pectoralis major (chest), and the fulcrum point (where the feet or knees respectively) touches the floor, effectively reduces the force and energy required to perform the motion.

This will reduce the difficulty of the motion and allow for the completion of more repetitions and in turn the person will be able to stay in time with the group.  This is called a regression.

A third person may be incredibly fit and thus we would prescribe a more difficult movement such as a Spiderman pushup.

Spiderman Pushup

This motion will significantly reduce the stability of the motion due to decreasing the contact points from 4 to 3, as well as changing the center of gravity to be further forward as the leg moves toward the head, moving the resistance force away from the fulcrum and effectively making the motion more difficult.  Additionally, the change in leg position moves the center of gravity laterally away from the center of the body creating a torsional force and thus additional muscles have to fire in order to stabilize the body.

There are an incredible amount of changes we can make to similar types of motions that can increase or decrease the difficulty level in order to suit the fitness level of each individual, and thus allow many different people of varying abilities to seamlessly integrate into the same session.

I feel the ability of a fitness professional to be able to adapt programming to individual fitness levels is one of the most important skills to possess.  Unfortunately, a large percentage of people in the field do not have a deep enough comprehension of this type of concept necessary to properly and safely integrate people of different fitness levels into a cohesive session.

I spend a substantial amount of time educating my staff about this concept, as well as working toward improving knowledge, skills, and abilities in many other imperative areas that are far too often overlooked by your “average” group exercise instructor or personal trainer.

FIT strives to add value to our clients in as many ways as possible, and one of the more significant areas that we focus on is the fact that education is a core component of our program.  Our goal is to teach you as much as possible in order for you to be able to manage your health and fitness to the best of your abilities, regardless of whether you continue to work with us or not.  As such, questions like this allow us to craft responses that will help other people with similar concerns in the future.

I hope this helps to answer your question, and feel free to send us any other questions or comments that you can think of in the comment section below, as your feedback is what drives the focus of what areas to address in the future.

Tags: Article, Bootcamp, Common Questions, Education, Progression, Regression, Workout