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.

Pow! The long arduous wait is finally over. Power Step returns to Sats Jakobsberg next week. I don’t care which release they choose to run as long as I get my fix.

I’ve listened to the playlist for the September 2010 release of Sats Power Step (Spotify playlist) but as always it is difficult to know how the music will work with the choreography and they usually use a different version or remix of the track for the actual class than what you find on Spotify.

I also listened to the new Sats Core Pulse playlist (Spotify playlist) and it seems a bit more promising even though I’m getting kinda sick of all the rehashing of tracks that goes on with all of these releases.

In any case, anything is better than the track list for the totally forgettable summer release for Body Pump.

Speaking of Body Pump, one of my main issues with that class is the heavy focus on the arms. Regardless of which release you attend, Body Pump always devotes one track for a crazy triceps superset and follows that up with another track just for curls. The problem for me is that if I put on a challenging enough weight on the “back” track (bent over rows + RDLs usually) my biceps are already dead by the time it’s time to do 3 minutes worth of curls. And the same applies to the triceps, if I put on enough weight for the bench track to actually feel something in my chest I fatigue my triceps pretty hard. And what do you get after the direct arm work? Oh yeah, more rowing and more pushing. I mean I can understand that the audience demands direct arm work, but why can’t the biceps and triceps be supersetted into one track like in Power Step? Power Step has one heavy press (chest), one heavy row (back), one heavy leg track and one heavy arm track. About half the volume and about twice the intensity of a Body Pump class.

Another thing that perplexes me is how at the end of every Body Pump class you have the obligatory “ab track” where you are likely to encounter some variation of leg-raises and the instructor will inevitably say something about how good the exercise is for the “lower abs”. I just cringe every time I hear that. I bet they say it simply because it is what 90% of the women in the class, and probably most of the men as well, want to hear.

Next week also marks the start of my next bulking cycle. I took a few days off from training this week and next week I will get started with my new strength training routine with a slight deload. My glutes and hamstrings got very stiff and sore towards the end of the last cycle, restricting my squats quite a bit. The “rebound” effect didn’t really happen this time around, but this is probably due to the fact I’ve been on a calorie deficit for some time now. Hopefully my strength levels will rebound once I ramp up the calories back to “normal” levels.

I already talked about Sats Cross Training but now that I’ve seen more of the class I feel that I have a few more things to say about it.

It seems the instructor sort of fine-tuned the exercise selection over time so that some of the exercises which I initially felt were sort of redundant were replaced by better and more challenging once during the second week. At first I was worried that the exercises would keep changing every single week (similarly to how the “Workout of the Day” (WOD) over at crossfit.com works). But it turned out that most of the exercises stayed the same over the past four weeks which I think is a good thing.

Thanks to these changes, I think the exercise selection during the past three weeks has been better than what I previously described. There is still in my opinion a bit of an overemphasis on triceps and the combination of pushups, burpees and “planks” tend to wear down my shoulder joints to the point of ruining any pressing I might want to do in the weight room on the following day, but this is quite typical of group training in general. Planks and pushups are very easy to add to a routine from the the instructors point of view as everyone is familiar with them, and for some reason people seem to like these exercises. Personally I think if you can hold a plank for more than 30 seconds, it might be better to just add resistance to the exercise than to increase the time spent in the plank position as it is very tough on the lower back and especially the shoulders when you stay in that position for an extended period of time.

One of the main issues I have with the class is that since everything is done on time, form breakdown is inevitable. You could obviously try to slow down the pace so that your form doesn’t fail, but it is difficult to do so in that psyched up environment. Obviously bad form and cheating isn’t uncommon in the aerobics classroom. However, when you have the kind of class where everyone is facing the mirrors, at least you might feel slightly more motivated to try harder as it means that a lot more people, including the instructor, will notice if you cheat. This is one of the reasons why I like standing in the front row in these classes. It’s a form of “accountability”. You put yourself in the “spotlight” and by doing so you challenge yourself to perform at a higher level than you might normally do, and you make yourself “accountable” to everyone who might see you cheat. Put in simpler words, men perform better when there are attractive women around to whom they want to make a good impression. And I’m obviously no exception. :-P

Part of what makes a group training class fun is that the exercises are done to a known choreography, where each repetition is done to a certain tempo. Learning the choreography is usually pretty easy and once you get to the point where you hardly even think about the choreography, it also becomes easier to perform the exercises with good form. The flow of the music also helps you power thru the movements so you can push yourself harder. And while it may feel somewhat awkward as a man to do some of the more dance/aerobics style moves in some classes, it is actually a lot more fun than the grind of mindless repetitions upon repetitions you find in Cross Training class. Even spinning and body pump is more fun than cross tranining in this aspect, simply because the grind in these classes is, at least to some degree, in tune with the music and you do things togheter as a group rather than individually. Sure you do have a partner and the instructor checks up on you from time to time, but it just doesn’t add up to the same level in my opinion.

So it’s safe to say I’m not a big fan of the class. There are other classes which are more “fun” in my opinion and that is essentially what it all boils down to in the end.

I tried a new group training class yesterday. SATS Cross Training.

When the class was introduced at SATS Jakobsberg it was first named “PT Circle” (Swedish: “PT Cirkel”) and I was always under the impression that it would be kind of like working out with a personal trainer, and that is also typically how people would describe the class. They later renamed the class as “Cross Training” which I always figured meant that it had some kind of ties to the whimsical Cross Fitness cult. In any case the word “Cross” would imply some kind of workout that would try to include a very wide range of training or fitness goals.

To add to this I heard all these stories about how it was the most “intense” class Sats had to offer and that I was guaranteed to be sore the day after (as if that was a sign of a good workout). So naturally I was quite intrigued.

The weird thing about this class is how no one has been able to explain the class in a way that made sense to me. Everyone kept re-iterating that it was like the circuit training we all know and love from school gym class. But now that I’ve seen what it is for myself I can say with certainty that I never had this kind of circuit training in school. Maybe I’m the odd one out on this but the kind of circuits we had in school as I remember it were like obstacle courses and involved a lot of gymnastics. Anyway, that is what I imagined “circuit training” to be like in this context. So it’s no wonder I was confused, it just didn’t make sense.

But now that I have experienced the class first-hand, how would I describe Cross Training?

I would say that on the highest level of abstraction the class is a form of metabolic/aerobic conditioning with the use of intervals similar to other group training classes. A novice trainee might build some small amounts of strength and power as well. But while it may be true that some girls are able to build some strenght endurance by doing Sumo squats while holding a 10 kg plate, it does nothing for the average guy who loads up 50+ kg on the bar for his back squat warm-up sets.

On the more hands-on level the class is built up around a circuit consisting of a dozen “stations”. You simply work your way from station to station in groups or pairs. You spend a set amount of time (typically 45 seconds) on each station before you move on to the next. With 5 seconds “rest” in between sets and twelve stations one lap around the circuit takes about ten minutes. We did three laps, however, for the final lap we only spent 30 seconds on each station so the main part of the workout lasted a bit less than 30 minutes. This is considerably less than a typical pre-choreographed group training class where you might spend 40-45 minutes on the main workout.

As advertised, the class initially feels very tough, and it will burn calories if that is your thing, but don’t be fooled to believe that the amount of calories burned is significantly different from other group training classes like Core Pulse, Power Step and Cycling/Spinning. In fact, I believe all of the above-mentioned alternatives burn more calories overall.

When it comes to “soreness the day after” I can’t really relate as I rarely get sore in the first place and yesterdays Cross Training class was no exception. The class includes a few exercises that almost seem designed for the very purpose of creating soreness, exercises that isolate and hammer down on very small and typically neglected muscles. So if you like pain you will get your moneys worth in this class.

Fortunately, not all of the exercises were like this. In fact there were some nice compound movements in there. My favorite was the jumping box squat, as this seems like a good exercise for developing vertical power output. Another exercise I liked was the Burpee, which the instructor assumed everyone already knew. However, this was the first time I had seen it.

Some exercises didn’t work out too well, most notably the cycling station, I got stuck trying to loosen the strap so I could fit my feet into the cages for about 20 seconds, essentially wasting the entire workout for that station.

Overall I would say this class resembles the kind of metabolic conditioning we did in the army. Sans the mud and the heavy combat gear and the psychotic drill instructor with the evil stare… I sort of miss that here, contrary to what people had me believe it is not at all like working out with a personal trainer or a really sadistic drill instructor. The fact of the matter is that the trainer interaction is watered thinner here than in any of the other group training classes. You do work out in pairs so you can of course shout at each other and so on, but that doesn’t work out too well with most of the exercises and it is also very dependent on who you are paired with. The instructor does have the most wickedly evil laugh though. So bonus points for trying. ;-P

Ultimately, Cross Training is not the substitute to Power Step I had hoped it would be. But it is decent enough cardio, so I’ll include it in my program as such.

Related article: Sats Cross Training Revisited

Power Step has been murder lately. They are running a sort of promotion at Sats Jakobsberg where if you show up on all the Thursday Power Step classes for a month and if you manage to increase the resistances on all of the strength based exercises, you can win a prize of some sort (which is probably not worth it, but whatever, it’s fun). It seems easy enough, incremental increases in resistance is a fundamental concept in weight training. The thing is, you also need to survive the cardio.

Somehow I managed to increase the resistances across the board for all of the exercises already on the first week of the challenge. Due to the small size of the Body Pump bars I had to jump from my previous personal best of 35kg to 40kg as you can’t fit more than 3 plates on each end of the bar. 40kg on the bar for bench press, split squats, deadlifts and bent-over rows doesn’t sound like much but when you consider the number of repetitions we do for each set (well beyond the endurance range) in these classes and the very short (5-10 seconds) breaks we get in between sets it does add up quite nicely. It also involves the typical Body Pump tempo changes where you might go quick-slow for eight reps and then go slow-slow for the next eight reps and so on. So currently I bench to failure, and everything else is very close to failure.

But like I said the limiting factor isn’t really the strength part, it’s the intervals after you’ve already pre-exhausted your muscles which destroys you.

Sats Power Step is interesting that way. If you look at the cardio part and the endurance based strength parts of the class separately it falls short of pretty much every other major group training class that Sats has to offer. I think this is one of the reasons people dismiss it in favor of Body Pump, Spinning and Core Pulse. Most trainees won’t load up enough weights on the bar on their first try and will consequently experience these two aspects of Power Step separately. It is only when you load up enough weights on the bar to work yourself to fatigue or even failure on the last reps of the strength sets and then immediately afterward do the intervals based cardio, that you realize how the two are connected.

However, my biggest issue right now, isn’t the increased weights or the cardio, or even the fact that this is that time of the year when it feels like my hay/pollen allergies cut my lung capacity in half. It’s actually grip strength.

I haven’t had issues with grip strength when pulling in the 6-12RM range up in the weight room so far but in Power Step class I’ve noticed that my grip starts to fail in the last sets of straight/stiff leg deadlifts and bent-over rows. At first I figured it had to do with the sweat making the bar too slippery but yesterdays class made it clear to me that it was in fact an issue with grip strength. When you feel that your fingers are slipping it’s very hard to focus on form so my bent over rows have been terrible lately. I don’t really know how to improve my grip strength though. I suppose I can try switching over to a hook grip to see if that helps.

I did something very different today. I tried one of Sats “red” classes.

It’s not a coincidence that Sats has chosen to use the color red to encode that the class is more demanding from a choreography stand-point. It is a color which denotes “danger”, a not-so-subtle warning to all us stiff guys to stay the hell away from these classes.

Afro is not an exception to this. It is red. It is not trivial. Which begs the question: what the hell was I doing there?

Well, several reasons, actually. I’ve been contemplating substituting one of my workouts for something easier, to use as active recovery. I’m not sure I really need to make this adjustment, but since I’m taking one week off from the strength training before I start my next six week period I figured I would try something different.

In fact, speaking of active recovery, I was thinking of picking up Yoga again. I think one of the reasons I was able to do four-five Body Pump classes every week back in Kista for so long was probably thanks to the one Yoga session each week. Thinking about it, I somehow managed to squeeze in some strength training and badminton on the side as well. I must have spent 6-7 hours per week in the gym back then.

But it’s not like Yoga doesn’t have its own associated issues. I suspect my shoulder flexibility problem might get worse with it. All those side-planks in Body Pump class has made me painfully aware of just how sensitive my shoulders are to certain forms of stress.

Another reason I wanted to try Afro was out of pure curiosity. I hear a lot of good things about it from time to time. But is it really as difficult as the “color” suggests? Is it fun? Is it a good workout?

Similarly to Power Step it is hopelessly difficult to get right on the first try and I can honestly say I failed miserably today to keep up with the instructor (who btw was absolutely brilliant). But since the choreography is fixed on endless repeat thru the session, I don’t think it’s impossible for me to learn the choreography within 3-4 sessions. So it’s definitely a step up from Power Step and Core Pulse but not quite on the level I thought it would be. After all I needed 3-4 sessions to get the hang of Power Step as well.

I’ve reacted negatively to “dance style moves” in the Power Step choreography before but that doesn’t mean I hate dancing, whether I like the choreography or not depends a lot on how comfortable it feels. Afro, as the name suggest, is sorta “primal” for lack of a better word, so I enjoyed the stomping and squatting and kicking and what have you. The ass-shaking was quite interesting as well. :-P It was a lot of fun to be honest. However, seeing how the whole session is set up on an endless repeat of the same moves over and over again I can see it getting a bit stale after a few sessions. But what class doesn’t suffer from this problem really? I should probably note that a major factor as to why this session felt like so much fun was due to the sheer charming power of the instructor. Overall the atmosphere of the class was very different from any other group training class I have experienced.

But maybe the most important question to answer is whether or not it is a good workout, and that is a difficult one to answer. I know I shouldn’t judge the intensity level of a group training class after the first session as the workout tends to suffer quite a bit when you can’t keep up with the choreography. Still, it doesn’t seem to be at the same level as Core Pulse and Power Step. The 20-something push-ups we did really didn’t do anything for me. It’s also not easy enough to really function as active recovery either. Today it would have worked as such, as I was completely lost but I figure the intensity once I get the hang of it is still way above that of a low-tempo run for instance.

Finally, as the newly formed blisters on my toes can vouch for, dancing bare-feet is not something my feet are used to. I felt it throughout the entire second half of the session, which was quite distracting.

Some people wonder why there are so few guys in Power Step class. If you just look at the concept you would think it’s the perfect fit for all those men who are already hooked on Body Pump and Spinning or maybe even Core Pulse.

Power Step is like a mix between Body Pump and a pure cardio class. With the added bonus that you use the same weights for many of the exercises, which means less down-time and thus a harder, more intense, workout. The sections where you use the bar are shorter and have fewer repetitions than Body Pump which means you can take on heavier weights than you normally do in Body Pump class. I believe this aspect in particular should appeal to men seeing that there seems to be a linear relationship between the weights you can lift and how macho you feel. :P

But maybe this is not enough to convince most guys to even try Power Step. And believe me. I have tried.

So is it the “Step”-part which feels intimidating? It’s not like the choreography would be that much harder for guys to learn. It takes two, maybe three times before you get the hang of it. I believe this applies equally to both men and women. So I don’t think men are at any kind of disadvantage here. After two or three times you will feel perfectly comfortable with the basic step aerobics style moves they use for the cardio and I think men can enjoy it as much as women.

Anyway, this was my view of Power Step until last Thursday when I tried the new choreography.

The core concept is still there, although I got the feeling this release was a bit less demanding than the last one so I think I need to increase my weights quite a bit to make it challenging. The good thing is that they removed the overhead lifts for the back track which means I won’t have to switch weights twice now which in turn means less downtime than for the previous release. So from that perspective it is OK.

The parts I’m having issues with are the warm-up and the cool-down. For me as a guy, these parts felt very uncomfortable. The previous release kinda had this same problem but now I think they really brought it one step further. The feeling I get is like I am not really participating in a group training class at all, instead it is like I am “dancing” in front of a mirror. A very feminine, kinda fruity, gay, dance. I suppose I don’t have to remind the reader of how uncomfortable men are with dancing in the first place? Let alone doing so in front of a mirror, in a room full of women, to a set of moves like the once in this choreography? Most men only experience this in their worst nightmares.

So I ask myself, what were they thinking?

Just think about the psychology here. What parts of a lecture do you usually remember the best? The beginning and/or the end, right? This is why public speakers are trained to place the important parts in the beginning and the end of their speeches to make sure their message comes across properly. The same principle applies to movies and plays etc. And I would assume that this applies to group training also. Which means that what guys will remember from their first Power Step session are the parts that make them the most uncomfortable. I mean, personally I believe I have enough self-distance so that I can handle these parts of the routine. But if my first time trying Power Step would have been to this choreography I doubt I would have returned. So good luck getting more guys to pick up Power Step. I just don’t see it happening.

They even have a track in this release where the lyrics go something like: “Dude, looks like a Lady”… I mean WTF?