Chris Lane, president of Chris Lane Insurance in Little Rock, wakes up at 4:30 a.m. five days a week to head to 5 a.m. fitness classes at D1 Sports Training in Little Rock.
The accountability of going with a friend and then exercising with a group is a motivator for heading to the gym before the sun rises, Lane said.
Lane is among a growing number of Arkansas business executives who prefer the group workout model.
“I don’t know anyone who’s doing a personal trainer now,” Lane said. “As far as the workout itself, I like it better as a group and the camaraderie we have out there. It’s a lot of fun.”
Ben Faires and Anthony Lucas at D1 and David Wood with CrossFit in Little Rock are popular group trainers in central Arkansas, according to Patrick Schueck, president of Lexicon Inc. in Little Rock.
CEO William Clark of Little Rock’s Clark Contractors switched about 16 months ago from exercising with a personal trainer at 10 Fitness in Little Rock to training in a group at D1.
D1’s coaches — including Faires, who trains middleweight boxer Jermain Taylor — offer one-hour classes on weekdays each hour between 5 a.m. and noon, and another class at 5:30 p.m. The classes vary from day to day and include sprints, jumps, weight training and more.
The class time options at D1 make the classes appealing to busy executives who manage changing schedules.
“You just have to show up at the time when one of the classes starts,” Clark said. “The difficulty with a personal trainer is having to … match up two schedules.”
Lee Maris, who is senior vice president of Bank of Little Rock Mortgage Corp., said he, like Lane, frequents the 5 a.m. group class at D1 because it doesn’t impede his workday.
Additionally, with groups comes competition, Clark said.
“You don’t want to finish last in a group exercise. There’s a little bit of a dynamic that you push yourself harder than you would if you were working out by yourself, even with a trainer,” Clark said.
Maris, too, sees benefits in collective exercising.
“I like the fact that it almost feels like a team concept,” Maris said. “If I were working out by myself, I might go home after 30 minutes. In the class setting, you’ve got to finish and do the best you can. And it works. I haven’t lost really any weight, but I’m having to use different holes in my belt than I did before.”
The president and CEO of the Bank of Fayetteville, Mary Beth Brooks, has tried exercising with a personal trainer, in intensive boot camp groups and in fitness classes.
Brooks said she attends fitness classes at ClubHaus Fitness in Fayetteville, and likes groups better than one-on-one training.
She’s met people through the group classes who check on her if she misses a day, she said.
“We just kind of are that little group that hold each other accountable,” Brooks said.
Beyond fitness, business can be talked before and after class and while stretching, said Maris, of Bank of Little Rock Mortgage.
“To be honest, the group setting is good for networking,” he said.
An added advantage of the group classes is the reduced cost of not requiring one-on-one trainer attention.
Stuart Walker, who owns ClubHaus Fitness in Fayetteville, said he thinks small group training is just about as trendy as hiring personal trainers at his club, but nationwide the small group, or boot camp, model has surged in popularity during the past few years.
A group of five or more people exercising with a trainer can spread out costs, while the members experience most of the benefits of hiring a personal trainer, Walker said. Groups might pay $15 to $20 per person for an hourlong session, while individuals pay upward from $50 an hour for personal training, he said.
Because people pay less for the group classes, they are more inclined to attend them frequently, averaging maybe three or four times a week instead of once or twice per week with a personal trainer, Walker said.
“So you definitely get better results” with that greater frequency of exercise, he said.
A trainer who owns CrossFit 540 locations in Fayetteville and Springdale, Trevor Belline, said group training also provides learning that personal training cannot; members of each class get to see the workout being modeled by the people around them.
“Then they’re able to pick it up easier,” Belline said.
Faires, who is head coach at D1, said the group classes are best for people who want general fitness.
A personal trainer works well for specific purposes — like, for example, the specialized training to improve boxing speed and strength Jermain Taylor wants, Faires said.
For others, “it’s like a status” symbol, he said. “’I have a personal trainer.’ I think some people do that because they can do it.”
Most of D1’s clients who are business executives opt for group training rather than personal trainers.
“What we get is people that want the personal training feel but don’t want the personal training cost or the boredom of me saying, ‘[Do] 50 jumping jacks,’” Faires said. “People want people with them when they succeed, when they fail. … Misery loves company, but also, I think, happiness loves company, too.”