Why do all participants always stand in the back of the room? … or in other words – as far away from me as possible! 🙁 Grrr…
Yesterday, after taking my shower, I walked past the large group fitness room again, took a look inside and saw it: All participants were standing in the very back of the room and the trainer was standing on the stage at the front – far away.
Now I have to say that my colleague’s course – Les Mills Bodypump – is a static course in which you always stand in the same spot. So once all participants have set up their equipment in the back, they inevitably stay there.
In Bodyattack we are in motion – that means, even if people start at the back, they usually spread all over the room during the class. But still – at the beginning of my course I often ask myself: Why the hell are they all standing there in the back? With a few exceptions, even regular participants and friends often start far away from me.
Are they scared of me? I don’t bite… I’m actually quite nice. 🙂
But now that I know that it is obviously not up to me – thank God! – I’d like to get to the root of it.
Personally, as a participant I always choose a central position (i.e. not too much to the side, so that I can see the trainer relatively frontally) in the second, if necessary third row, so that I am not so far away. Everything further back is too far away, you can’t see the instructor very well. Further ahead you might not see him or her as well, depending on how the room is cut and how high the stage is. If there is no stage, a place in the front row is of course best. In this way I can benefit the most from the course – I have nothing to gain from not noticing half of it or only part of it because my view is permanently blocked.
And that’s what I recommend to my new participants: Don’t go in the back. If you don’t want to stand right in the front row because you feel “observed” there, stay in the middle – where you can still see what’s going on. But in the end they sneak to the back row again. Especially with a course like CXWorx, which takes place mostly lying on the ground, I notice then that they don’t get a lot of things because they simply have no (good) view on the instructor.
It can’t be because they don’t want to be corrected – first of all I go through the group from time to time to look closely at what everyone is doing and secondly the feedback of my participants is basically very positive when I improve their technique – after all everyone wants the exercises to be effective and nobody wants to get hurt.
Now that I am writing about it, I come to the conclusion that probably most people simply do not feel comfortable with others standing behind them. I think they then feel harassed or observed – not by me, but by the other participants behind them – and completely forget that in truth everyone is totally occupied with themselves. Moreover, many people prefer to have a wall behind them – then they are protected, nobody can “sneak up on them” from behind. (I myself have this tic when it comes to choosing a seat in a restaurant or café: please always with my back to the wall!)
Ergo: I will probably have to FIBER with the fact that my group tends to build up in the rear at the beginning of the course… And as I said: With Bodyattack they come closer and closer to me during the class anyway. 😀
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