Yesterday I had the opportunity to try out a new group training class at Sats Jakobsberg. Sats Shape is a yellow colored class which in Sats terms means that it falls in the “simple and fun training” category. And yeah, it was simple and I had fun. Nuff said?

Well, no, there is more to it than that. When I say that it was simple, I don’t mean that it was easy, it was simple in the sense that it didn’t take much coordination to participate in the class. It’s entry level in that sense, kind of like the 30 minute “Sats Core” class, but quite surprisingly it can be a challenging class even for people that are used to Sats “blue” classes (Body Pump, Core Pulse, etc.). So don’t be fooled by the “color coding” in this case.

Much of the challenge lies in the way the exercises are performed. Squats for instance are performed “ass to the grass” rather than just to “parallel”. In a typical Body Pump class most people do not even reach parallel, let alone “3/4″, but here I observed several people going much deeper than they normally do. This is really cool and I believe that many of those who will stick with this class will be able to improve their squatting performance in Body Pump class as well.

A parallel squat.

As backwards as it may sound, I would say Sats Shape is actually in many ways like Sats Cross Training. Except that it takes the parts I didn’t like about Cross Training, reverses everything and makes it awesome instead. Instead of running around in pairs doing exercises on different stations, you do everything together, in the same tempo, facing the mirrors. This means that there is no hype to perform as many reps as possible as everyone is just supposed to perform as many as is dictated by the choreography and the tempo. The tempo is also slow enough to allow you to perform the exercises with good form and when you are facing the mirrors you are less likely to cheat. Obviously there are differences, so it’s not really a one-to-one comparison, Cross Training is more based on intervals/cardio, while Shape is more strength-based. In a sense it is maybe closer to compare it to the strength based parts of Power Step. In fact, my initial reaction was that several of the exercises were identical to some exercises I have encountered in Power Step class in the past year.

One thing I found interesting about the whole concept is how it also has a sports specific seasonal component. The instructor explained that for instance, when the skiing season approaches, the class will shift it’s focus towards functional exercises specific for skiing.

So I have to say, I’m quite surprised at how much I actually liked this class. When the instructors at Sats described the class to me they used the term “functional training” which is a heavily loaded term and a big source of confusion, so naturally I had a very hard time figuring out what they actually meant by this.

Functional training involves the idea of strengthening the core with the use of “unstable exercises” but that is a can of worms I’m not going dive too deeply into. Needless to say, I don’t care much for the kind of thinking where you take an already unstable and core strength building exercise (like the split squat) and add an unstable surface component to it to make the exercise less safe to perform and thus reducing the amount of weights you can use for loading the exercise.

Progressive loading is an important component of functional training, something which I believe may be overlooked in a group training setting where you are limited to certain weights and resistances. If you are strong enough to start out the class at or close to the heaviest possible resistances, chances are you will struggle to make progress with this class in terms of “functional strength”.

However, in the context of functional training, what I found most interesting is that we did a lot of exercises which seemed like they were for improving common shoulder mobility issues. For me personally, this is the biggest selling point for this class. I suspect that I suffer from some combination of a winged scapula and a protracted shoulder girdle and the exercises we did yesterday seemed like text-book examples of how to treat these very common types of deficiencies.