Based on industry standards and guidelines, this text highlights a variety of group exercise formats through training principles, correction and progression techniques, and safety to enhance the skills of group exercise leaders.

Formats, modalities, and trends in group exercise are constantly evolving. Methods of Group Exercise Instruction, Third Edition With Online Video, explores the most common group exercise modalities, enhancing readers’ marketability by giving them the skills to lead dynamic, safe, and effective classes. This text highlights the commonalities of a variety of group exercise formats through training principles, correction and progression techniques, and safety tips to enhance the skills of both group exercise leaders and program directors. Methods of Group Exercise Instruction, Third Edition, moves from theory to practice in a logical progression. Rather than simply providing routines, this book helps instructors develop the core skills needed for creating routines, use proper cueing, and adapt their teaching to new modalities. Teaching techniques convey appropriate training for each muscle group and methods for warm-up, cardiorespiratory training, muscular conditioning, neuromotor training, and flexibility. In addition, starter routines, modification strategies, and instructor assessment criteria are presented for seven class formats: kickboxing, step training, stationary indoor cycling, sport conditioning and boot camp, water exercise, yoga, and mat-based Pilates. The text also touches on alternative modalities, including dance-based classes, fusion, and mind–body training. Thoroughly revised and reorganized based on industry standards, the third edition of Methods of Group Exercise Instruction offers expanded content to help readers become better instructors. Updates to the third edition include the following: • Online video, totaling over 100 minutes, demonstrates key content in the text. • New chapters cover social aspects of group exercise, coaching-based instructional models, and neuromotor and functional training. • Callout boxes highlight important topics, research findings, technique and safety checks, and practice drills, which facilitate quick learning. • Short assignments at the close of each chapter encourage readers to look beyond the text to gain practical experience. • Evaluation forms and evaluation key points allow instructors to gauge their teaching success and adapt the key criteria of a successful class to each exercise modality. The three-part structure of this book is retained from the previous edition, but the content is reorganized to better reflect industry standards and guidelines. Part I provides a general overview of group exercise: the evolution and advantages of group exercise; the strategies for creating group cohesion in a class; the core concepts in class design; and the use of music, choreography, and cueing methods in designing and leading a class. Part II offers guidelines for leading the four major segments of a group exercise class: warm-up, cardiorespiratory training, muscular conditioning, and flexibility training, and includes a new chapter on neuromotor and functional training. These basic concepts pertain to all modalities covered in part III, which focuses on practical teaching skills. Basic moves, choreography, and training systems are covered for each type of class. Sample routines and class formats for each modality offer a confident starting point for novice instructors and fresh material for veterans. The final chapter discusses customized or hybrid classes such as lifestyle physical activity–based classes, equipment-based cardio classes, and mind and body classes. When used as a course text, Methods of Group Exercise Instruction, Third Edition, includes instructor ancillaries, which offer suggestions for effective use of the book and online video, lesson plan outlines, a sample week-by-week syllabus, lab activities, and test questions. The third edition also features a newly added image bank containing all the figures and photos from the text to use in presentations.

This encyclopedia explores exercise and physical activity from a variety of angles, including anatomy and exercise science, health benefits and risks, the wide array of sports and recreational activities available, and the sociocultural context of physical fitness. Exercise and Physical Activity: From Health Benefits to Fitness Crazes is a one-volume encyclopedia featuring more than 200 entries that cover a multitude of exercise-related topics. Content is divided across five broad themes: anatomy, exercise science, sports and activities, health benefits and risks, and exercise and society. The anatomy theme includes entries on all the major skeletal muscle groups and associated connective tissues. Within the exercise science theme, entries focus on topics within the fields of physiology, kinesiology, and sports psychology. Profiles of more than 70 sports and recreational activities are included. Entries under the theme of health benefits and risks explore the effects of exercise on many of the body's physiological processes and related systems, as well as specific sports-related injuries. Exercise and society entries profile influential individuals and organizations, as well as fitness trends. Together, these themes support a holistic understanding of exercise, encompassing both the theoretical and the practical.

A captivating blend of reportage and personal narrative that explores the untold history of women’s exercise culture--from jogging and Jazzercise to Jane Fonda--and how women have parlayed physical strength into other forms of power. For much of the twentieth century, sweating was considered “unladylike” and girls grew up believing physical exertion would cause their uterus to “fall out.” It was only in the Sixties that, thanks to a few forward-thinking fitness pioneers, women began to move en masse. In Let's Get Physical, journalist Danielle Friedman reveals the fascinating untold history of contemporary fitness culture, chronicling in vivid, cinematic prose how exercise evolved from a beauty tool pitched almost exclusively as a way to “reduce” into one millions have harnessed as a path to mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Let’s Get Physical takes us into the workout studios and onto the mats to reclaim these forgotten origin stories—and shine a spotlight on the trailblazers who made it possible for women to move. Each chapter uncovers the birth of an fitness movement that laid the foundation for working out today: the invention of the barre method in the Swinging Sixties, jogging’s path to liberation in the Seventies, the explosion of aerobics and weight-training in the Eighties, the rise of yoga in the Nineties, and the ongoing push for a more socially inclusive fitness culture—one that celebrates every body. Ultimately, it tells the story of how women discovered the joy of physical competence and strength—and how, by moving together to transform fitness from a privilege into a right, we can create a more powerful sisterhood.