Picture taken from Elite Sporting Club in Tirana, Albania
There is a significant trend worldwide in the fitness business to shift from the traditional gyms to smaller specialized fitness clubs. I could mention here various centers like Barry’s Bootcamp, Soul Cycle, Orangetheory and last, but not least CrossFit. All of these fitness club concepts have originated in the US, but have turned globally and can be found anywhere in the world.
Each of them has different philosophies on how to train, the architecture of the location and the program as well as the equipment used. People like them because they offer a get-away from the busy daily life, an increased intensity in training, supervised training under certified instructors as well as a controlled number of people attending the class. Moreover, they offer variation in training so that every time you go you have a different program to avoid monotony in the training routines. By having limited number of people in a class, usually 10-20 the instructor has the possibility to watch and fix the techniques for every member as well as can motivate and push the member more to work harder. By training regularly, the participants get to know each other better and come to train in a group. They start competing and pushing one another to reach a certain goal, which could be loosing some kg, doing more push ups or pulls up, lifting more weight in the squat or dead lift etc. These are the core reasons why these modern fitness concepts help normal people train harder, more consistently and reach results while enjoying the workout. The workouts moreover are designed to be fully-body functional movements, multiple joint involving many muscle groups at ones that help increase strength and increase muscle mass at the same time. This helps normal people that also have a career and a busy life to achieve a good level of fitness that helps their functional movement in their daily lives as well. For example lifting shopping bags easier, running to catch the buss or train, extend to reach something in a shelf overhead etc.
A traditional gym on the other hand, offers a variety of static, usually single joint isolation movement that helps mostly towards increase muscle mass and strength. There is no limitation on how many people are there at a time and usually you need to wait for machines to be freed up. Also, there is no instructor and you need to make your own program and measure the progress. The progression is limited into increasing weight and repetitions. Also, there must be a big motivation to make people go the gym and work out. This type of training is still valid for pros that know what they are doing and have a specific bodybuilding goal. They know the technique, have the motivation, and have time to work on their goal. They could also stay at the gym for longer times. For a normal person that has a job, sitting in a chair for 8-10 hours a day the previous option is obviously the first choice. This is why these gyms are flourishing and taking over a huge number of client in the fitness business. This is why Elite Sporting Club in Tirana Albania, brought this concept for the first time in Albania.
As a closing remark, I would like to point out that research has shown that working out in full body functional workout like the ones the fitness clubs offer, like Elite Sporting Club, people have similar results to working out in a static machine environment like in the traditional fitness centers. This is because multiple joint workouts simulates many muscles at the same time, and this occurs at every exercise. So a particular muscle will be trained more that just doing a single isolation set. This is one of the researches: Effect of adding single-joint exercises to a multi-joint exercise resistance-training program on strength and hypertrophy in untrained subjects.
Ledian Selimaj 