Review- Group Power

Happy Weekend everyone!  Today, I'll be doing a review of another group exercise I do at my gym called Group Power!  Let's get right into it.

First off, the description in our program guide is "This 60-minute barbell program strengthens all your major muscles in an inspiring, motivating group environment with simple, athletic movements such as squats, lunges, presses and curls."

I don't exactly look like this when I'm curling..but you get the idea!

Let me tell you, this is one intense workout!  For the entire 60 minutes, we're constantly moving and lifting and by the end I'm a pool of sweat!  We work out all the major muscle groups - Legs, Chest, Triceps, Biceps, Glutes, Shoulders, and Core with light to moderate weights.  We also use a step to do exercises like chest presses and split squats.

For each song, we focus on one muscle group, and do a variety of exercises with lots of repetitions, set to the beat of the music.  The tempo of the exercise is constantly changing (for example, if we're doing chest presses, we might do 4 counts down, 4 counts up, then switch to 1 count down 1 count up), so you're constantly challenging your muscles!

This class is similar to a very popular workout called Les Mills Body Pump.  According to the Les Mills, Body Pump can burn up to 590 calories!

There are many benefits to a class such as Group Power or Body Pump.  There was a study done that tested the benefits and results of participants, and here is what the results showed (credit here)

Putting these results together, researchers concluded BodyPump classes were effective at increasing muscular strength and endurance and developing efficiency in movements and muscle activation.Although subjects did indicate metabolic and cardiovascular improvements, these improvements did not translate to actual aerobic fitness.Exercises involving the lower limbs were most responsible for increases in heart rate and researchers believe a program with more lower body involvement may increase the likelihood of it being beneficial for aerobic running fitness.

Basically, this a good supplement to aerobic activity (such as running or spinning), but you can't replace those activities with Body Pump.  This is the main reason why I wanted to take this class- I wanted to build some muscle in a fun, energetic class!  If you're looking for the same thing, I think this is a great cross training class.  To find a class near you, you can check out this site to find Group Power, or this site for Body Pump.


Have you ever tried Body Pump or Group Power?

What are some of your favorite group exercise classes?