The grades in this post: Review or Meta-analysis means pooled studies; Small trials means supervised studies too small to settle it; My view means a coaching judgement built over decades, labelled as mine, not a trial result.
“I already do Pilates. Why would I need you?”
I hear some version of that question all the time. One client spins three times a week. Another has done Pilates for years. Another follows yoga on YouTube, and plenty of people have a Peloton in the spare room. None of it is a waste of time.
But when they tell me what’s bothering them, a stiff back, a knee that complains on the stairs, feeling less able to take life on, what they’re doing rarely sounds like the answer. I’ve spent nearly forty years working with people, starting in boxing and athletics coaching, then personal training, corrective exercise and nutrition. This is the gap I see most often: being active isn’t the same as being matched.
What classes get right
If you love your class, keep going.
- Enjoyment. You turn up to things you like. That matters more than any programme on paper.
- Routine. A fixed time and place takes the decision out of it.
- Community. The people next to you keep you coming back.
- Consistency. An average plan done every week beats a perfect plan you quit.
Fitness in the round
Coaches talk about bio-motor abilities: the separate physical qualities that make up what your body can do.
- flexibility and mobility;
- stability and balance;
- coordination and body awareness;
- strength;
- power (force produced quickly);
- endurance;
- agility, which is built on power, coordination and technique together.
They depend on each other. You can’t train power safely without strength underneath it, or agility without coordination and balance. My view, after a long time doing this: function comes from having the whole set, not from being very strong, very fit or very bendy at the expense of the rest. I try to cover all of them for every client, either in each session or across a series of sessions.
Each class format leans on one or two.
| Format | What it trains well | What it mostly leaves out |
|---|---|---|
| Spin and Peloton bike | Cardiovascular endurance, some leg power in sprints | Strength under real load, mobility, balance, anything off the bike or in other directions |
| Pilates (mat and reformer) | Trunk control, hip stability, muscular endurance, body awareness | Heavy loading, power, landing and slowing down |
| Yoga | Mobility, strength in held positions, balance, breathing | Progressively heavier loading, power, pulling strength |
My view This table is my coaching judgement, not a trial result. Classes vary a lot, and a good instructor will cover more than the format suggests. But the pattern holds often enough to be worth checking against your own week.
The problem comes when one format becomes your whole training. Then the slices it leaves out quietly fade, and those are often the ones that matter most as we age.
It’s the format, not the instructor
There are brilliant class instructors. The limit is what one-to-many teaching can do. A teacher in front of 20 people has to pick one plan for the room. They can’t change your load because your left knee is grumbling today, or stand beside you long enough to check you’re feeling the muscle you’re meant to. A screen can’t see you at all.
What one-to-one adds
I start from you rather than from a class plan, and adjust on the spot:
- Technique. How you do the exercise, not just whether you get through it.
- Load. Enough to make you adapt, not so much that you compensate. It changes week to week, sometimes set to set.
- Directions of movement. Forwards and back, side to side, and rotation. Life happens in all three.
- Alignment. Where your joints sit while they work, so the right tissues take the strain.
- Feeling the right muscles. If your glutes are meant to work and your lower back is doing it instead, we fix that before adding more.
- Speed and rest. Slow lowering, pauses, explosive efforts, controlled landings, and rest that matches the job.
I also mix styles in one workout: a strength move, a mobility drill and a balance or reactive challenge in one superset. I coach whole-part-whole: try the whole movement, practise the part that’s letting it down, then put it back together. Here’s what that looks like in practice: Same Exercise, Different Animal.
Why it matters more after 40
Most of my clients are middle-aged. They want to move without pain, cope with what life throws at them, and keep doing what they enjoy for decades.
- Power fades first. Muscle power declines earlier and faster with age than strength does, and it predicts how well older adults function day to day (Reid & Fielding 2012). Review Of observational and lab studies; consistent.
- Speed of training matters, for specific things. Across 79 trials in over-60s, fast-intent resistance training did best for walking speed, getting up and walking (timed up-and-go) and five sit-to-stands; traditional slower training did best for 30-second sit-to-stands and the six-minute walk (Lopez 2023). Meta-analysis A network meta-analysis; effects depend on the test. That’s the case for training both, not one.
- Being able to slow down matters too. Catching yourself on a stumble means braking your body weight on one leg. That’s the reason I train landings. My view Coaching reasoning; I haven’t found a trial that tests landing practice against falls directly.
Power isn’t just “fast”
Doing exercises quickly with short rests isn’t power training. That’s power endurance, or just hard work. Power is a full-effort, quick action with enough recovery to make the next one just as sharp. The same goes for “pace”: to me, pacing means knowing your limits well enough to spread your effort over the task, not going as fast as you can.
Is it safe for older adults?
It depends on how you get there. Across 12 trials of jump and hop training in older adults (average ages 58 to 79), no study reported more injuries or other harm (Vetrovsky 2019). Small trials Small, supervised trials; no harm reported is not the same as proven safe.
In my experience, safety comes from:
- assessing the person first: injuries, joint limits, what they can control;
- strength first, so the body can absorb the forces;
- building the abilities power depends on: coordination, balance, body awareness, concentration;
- progressing gradually, with rest that matches the effort;
- reducing the impact where needed (support from a wall or bands).
Not for you yet, or only with care: if you have knee or hip pain on landing, problems with balance, osteoporosis, or you’ve been told to avoid impact. Hops and jumps come last, after landing practice. Check with your GP or physio first if you’re unsure.
And it isn’t for everyone. Some people would rather give me 60 seconds of a stretch than 30 seconds of real effort, and that’s their choice. I work with what each person brings.
Keep your class, fill the gaps
You don’t have to choose. Keep the spin class, the Pilates, the yoga, the Peloton. Just don’t assume they cover everything. A good trainer looks at what your routine gives you, works out what’s missing, and builds sessions around the gaps, your body and what you want to be able to do.
Sources
- Reid KF, Fielding RA. Skeletal muscle power: a critical determinant of physical functioning in older adults. Exerc Sport Sci Rev 2012;40(1):4–12. PMID 22016147. doi:10.1097/JES.0b013e31823b5f13
- Lopez P et al. Does high-velocity resistance exercise elicit greater physical function benefits than traditional resistance exercise in older adults? A network meta-analysis of 79 trials. J Gerontol A 2023;78(8):1471–1482. PMID 36378500. doi:10.1093/gerona/glac230
- Vetrovsky T et al. The efficacy and safety of lower-limb plyometric training in older adults: a systematic review. Sports Med 2019;49(1):113–131. PMID 30387072. doi:10.1007/s40279-018-1018-x