A new experience
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Happy New Year!
A new year, a fresh start and a new opportunity for some of those promises you’ve been making yourself in 2023 to finally manifest themselves into your everyday life. This may sound a little cliche but personally, it feels like a chance to reset and be mindful about what habits and practices to leave in the year behind and keep for the year to come.
One of my goals for this new year is to try one new fitness class a month.
This year, I want to level up my personal fitness in every possible way. This could be through furthering my education, spending more time exercising and in this instance, I would like to try new classes to learn about different ways of moving my body rather than sticking to what I know. I also believe that these new experiences will benefit my self-development, and help me build my confidence and connections with others in the industry.
A concept referred to as the Köhler Motivation Gain Effect explains that members of a group are more motivated than individual performers, and this very much applies to group exercise. The energy of being within a group creates a fun and exciting environment whilst bringing a vast range of ages and abilities together. The format also takes the hard work out of exercising as you have a coach or trainer to do the hard work for you which also is motivating when it comes to trying new exercises. There is always this we are all in this together vibe during group exercise.
Typically I am a solo exercise kind of girl as I like to use the time in the gym to be in my thoughts and focus on what it is that I’m trying to achieve. I don’t think I perform as well when distracted, however, I think group exercise serves as a more social experience and an opportunity to have fun and engage with others. I have tried a few classes over the years and I do suffer with a small amount of anxiety beforehand but this is always natural when trying something new and different. To be honest the whole point of this goal is to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
So to put my goal into action for this month I booked a class in a fitness studio called Mohiito. They specialise in reformer, barre and strength training classes that give clients the option of firing up or winding down. When booking I chose to go for the FIRE class which is described as a total body conditioning circuit workout with short intervals, and high intensity using a wide variety of functional equipment. This class sounded like it had my name written all over it. The studio is a beautiful space, the class sizes are small and intimate and the coach, Marcel, was informative and welcoming. There was a separate studio for reformer classes which I found intriguing and something I would be keen to try for my next visit.
The paragraph above gives you all the shiny good parts but the reality is all that glitters isn’t gold.
I made the brave decision to book an early class at 6.55 am. The reason for this is that I want to build an earlier morning start into my routine, however, I went to bed quite late the night before and struggled to sleep. I think this was based on a mixture of nerves and excitement but when it was time to wake up my first instinct was to snooze my alarm and stay snuggled up in my warm bed. After powering through a dozy start I managed to get in my car and make my way towards the city. As city parking is expensive I decided to park roughly 20 minutes away from Mohiito as I love a good walk and thought 20 minutes is nothing.
Once I got out of my car I realised the level of torrential rain I was walking in and instantly regretted this decision after my trainers became soaked and it was making me feel icy cold. 5 minutes in I desperately wanted to turn around, get back in my car and go home. Still, I persevered with my mission because I knew I would feel a great sense of accomplishment afterwards and I had made a promise to myself to make this commitment.
The reason I wanted to document this experience is to encourage others to do the same. Set a goal and then go out and start achieving it, no matter the circumstances or whether you feel like it or not. You owe it to your future self to start showing up now as these new experiences are really what make you feel whole and become valuable learning opportunities for the next.
There isn't a one-size-fits-all method for exercise so if trying a new fitness class is something that you want to experience I would recommend going for it.