LES MILLS Strength Development - a new series of innovative workouts launched at Nordic Wellness

Nordic Wellness, Halmstad

Katarina Hiding, Group Fitness Coordinator, Nordic Wellness Uppsala.

“We believe that group fitness is the best way to get members back to the clubs. Our instructor team is very dedicated; we help each other and promote each other’s classes. We organize a lot of events and “fika”, as we say in Swedish, and our members really love these engaging events. We believe that wellbeing is about overall health. We want everyone to feel welcome, parents, kids, young people, seniors, and all.  We listen to our members and follow the statistics very carefully to know what they enjoy and need. Strength Development is such a good complement to all our other classes.

The launch and start have been very good, and we received positive feedback from our members. We have launched it in several clubs so far with more to join. We started with a couple of weekly classes per club, and we can now see they are very popular, so we have decided to add more to meet the demand. The goal of Strength Development is to build strength, so we need to offer it many times per week. I am also an instructor in Strength Development so I can see firsthand how it is going and who are the members that join the classes.

We are attracting many members who know they need strength training but find it hard to start by themselves at the gym. It is easier to come to a group fitness class. We do our marketing mainly on social media, but we also make announcements at the gym to give a heads-up to everyone on what classes are starting soon. We celebrate each new release and make it to an event. We are happy to be the first clubs outside New Zealand to offer Strength Development as one of our goals is to be the first to introduce new innovations and fitness trends.”

Martin Krook, Les Mills Trainer & Assessor and Physiotherapist, Nordic Wellness Halmstad

“I think Strength Development is a program that the market, in general, has been missing for a long time. It takes good solid principles of strength training and incorporates them into a group fitness exercise. There has been a gap in the market for such a long time for something like this. There is just something magical about group fitness and it just elevates strength training to a new level.

In Strength Development we are introduced to floor coaching. As it is not so fast paced you have more time to execute the movements. The strength training principles are grounded in the quality of movement, so whether you want to get strong after an injury or just get stronger overall, this is the class to do that. We have really good equipment at Nordic Wellness, which is important for the members to be able to add on more weights in their training. Strength Development works really well with other programs, like Les Mills GRIT® or BODYPUMP®. At some point in your training life, you need to start training with a bit heavier weights to develop more. Our members have seen the benefits and have understood that point.

Members describe Strength Development as something they have been missing. “You cannot go wrong with strong”, as Adam Meakins so well put it. People want to feel capable and strong. Also, there is the esthetic part and feeling good about yourself, whether it means just feeling good or looking good. I like the format of 12 progressive workouts and you get a certain degree of freedom on how to schedule it. Once all the 12 workouts are done, it is easy to rotate back to the beginning. The classes really speak for themselves. They are always fully booked. Members are really positive about the classes because even though so many know they should do strength training, they might not have time or the know-how to start training by themselves."

Martin Krook, Nordic Wellness Halmstad

"The education for Strength Development is very hands-on and we focus on the techniques of the moves more than on the instructing itself. If you are already licensed in BODYPUMP, Les Mills GRIT, Les Mills CORE or Les Mills TONE programs, or a trained Personal Trainer or Gym Trainer, then this 1-day education is a great add-on and you get licensed on the spot so you can start teaching right away.”

For more about Strength Development go to Strength Development (lesmills.com)

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