‘BEE Fit’ proves the power of the group
Photo by Katherine Rountree
Written by Savannah Rake
I’m standing at the end of a long row of maybe 12 treadmills. Runners and walkers occupy each. Some are sweating and struggling, looking much like I imagine myself on the rotating belt. Some, however, run with an ease that would put a gazelle to shame. They don’t seem to sweat, either, but rather “glisten”— that is, if they perspire at all.
My hands are balled into tight fists. I have my arms crossed, and I am acutely aware that there are eyes on me in every direction. My stance is tensely casual, emphasis on tense.
A boy with brown hair plastered with sweat stops his machine, and I take his place. My mind is not in the exercise, not in each step that I take, but rather on the eyes that I imagine watching me. I see the physically fit superhumans that come into this gym. I see them everywhere: on every magazine cover, on every television show, in every movie playing in theaters. It feels like these fitness gods and goddesses are the majority, and that I am somehow sub-par. I choose to avoid the gym most days because I am ashamed that I am not one of them.
This is an idea that permeates every day life. It is one reason that the physically fit superhumans, in fact, are not the majority, but instead the minority. Group exercise changes that.
Let’s start with the Köhler Effect, partly because it’s an interesting topic and partly because it’s fun to say. In a nutshell, the idea behind the effect is that group exercise works because there is an instinctual desire to not be the “weakest link” in any group or partnership.
Walking into the Club SCAD group classroom on Wednesday started out much the same as the daunting treadmill experience from the day before: there was tension, nervous anxiety and anticipation. This time, it wasn’t just me, but me and the other five Orange Team members and our two coaches. It wasn’t a treadmill, but dumbbells, boxes and cushy black floor mats that greeted us. The biggest difference, though, was the social support.
“Today we are going to be doing circuits,” said Isabella Mendez, one of our lovable coaches doubling as our torturers.
I was unfamiliar with circuits of any kind. But as the six of us worked through the first—30 seconds of squats, 30 seconds of pushups, 30 seconds of shoulder presses, 30 seconds of rest, and then the whole thing over again—we faced one another. We pushed one another through that instinctual phenomenon called the Köhler Effect: i.e., friendly competition. The workout hit new levels I have hardly seen since maybe my days in eighth grade volleyball.
Squats turned to lunges, pushups turned to bicep curls, and shoulder presses turned to dreaded tricep dips. Had I been working as a lonely gym-goer, I probably would have forgotten the tricep dips altogether simply because I don’t like them.
I think designed classes intimidate because of this aspect. But it’s also the reason why they are so effective (just ask every single muscle in my body). The BEE Fit organizers, along with Ali and Isabella, controlled the workout and the intensity. We knew that the 30 second plank came after the crunches, we knew that we couldn’t skip over the plank in favor of the bicycle crunches, because we knew that our coaches and our teammates would immediately call us out.
Exercising like this reminds me of playing when I was a kid. I loved to play with my friends, climbing trees and scraping knees together. Our tiny worlds revolved around our friends and our activities reflected that. As a college-age adult, I still love group events; it just doesn’t feel like I have the time I had when I was 5 or 10 or 15. This workout provided that feeling again. I felt young and had fun being active with my teammates.
There is power in the group. Week two of BEE Fit proves that.