Group fitness classes are a good way to stay in shape — and get your feelings hurt.
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images
Three years ago, an aspiring actress named Jenna moved to Los Angeles and decided to try out Pilates. The practice was quickly gaining steam on social media and seemed like a good way to make friends in a new city. When Jenna — who, like many others in this story, asked to use a pseudonym — found a studio across the street from her apartment, it seemed serendipitous. She bought a pair of grip socks and arrived at class early, when the instructor was checking in students and doing intake for new clients. When it was Jenna’s turn, the instructor asked if she’d done Pilates before. Nervous, Jenna said “no.” The instructor gave her a once-over before returning to her computer. “She was like, ‘Yeah, I could tell.’”
Jenna spent the next hour zoning out on the reformer, replaying the comment over and over in her head as she struggled to keep her balance. “I genuinely couldn’t understand why she said that to me — was it because I had bad posture?” The instructor, who had promised to help her out during class, ignored her. Afterward, Jenna posted about the experience on her Instagram Stories. Friends flooded her replies — instructors at that chain were notoriously nasty, they said.
The unpleasantness isn’t isolated to one chain. Expensive fitness boot camps and boutiques are now everywhere — and all across the city, gym rats are getting their feelings hurt. There was the Barry’s instructor who forbade modifications and accused students of making up their injuries, the Equinox yogi who almost made this TikToker cry in class (“I’m not in school anymore; I don’t need to take this”), and the Pilates teacher who vaped through a session and laughed at her students while correcting their form (though at least she offered corrections; some teachers, students complain, give you none). In January, an Upper East Side hot yoga instructor was fired after an influencer claimed she’d called her out “in front of everyone” for taking a sip of water in a 105-degree room before the appropriate hydration time. In a podcast appearance last year, comedian Brittany Furlan said she had recently attended a Santa Monica Pilates class in which the instructor asked if anyone had injuries she should be aware of; Furlan raised her hand and quietly told her that she had a major lower-back injury and needed to be careful with certain positions. The instructor “smiled and nodded and then got back on the microphone and said to the entire class, ‘You know the great thing about Pilates, ladies, is that Pilates makes you slim, and when you’re slim, you don’t have lower-back issues.’”
To be fair, group fitness instructors have a lot on their plates. They have to deal with obnoxious students recording content, make sure ClassPass newbies don’t hurt themselves, and design classes that’ll satisfy even the most advanced regulars. Too often, however, common decency slips through the cracks. Isha, 46, was doing triangle pose at a yoga class in Oakland when the instructor leaned over and asked if she was pregnant. “I’m a pretty thin person, and his tone was accusatory, as in, you must be pregnant, otherwise why aren’t you coming into this posture fully?” One woman I spoke with, a former college rower who’s no stranger to intense coaches, told me she was once scolded by a Barry’s instructor for watching her too closely while she demonstrated a dumbbell arm combo. “She was like, ‘Why are you staring at me? Work out!’” Emma had a “hellish hot yoga” experience at a 75-minute open-level class at her neighborhood studio in Prospect–Lefferts Gardens that had no breaks, no water, and no visible clocks. She snuck in some rest when the teacher wasn’t looking. The man in front of her wasn’t so lucky — when the teacher saw him spending a beat too long in child’s pose, she told him that his energy was affecting the rest of the class and to “try getting up.” The man stayed down. “I get that a workout should be strenuous, but everyone is also their own person,” Emma says. “As long as they’re not on my mat, what do I care?”
Perhaps there’s inevitably some sadism involved in lording over a room full of vulnerable adults for an hour, dictating their every movement. “A lot of instructors aren’t approachable. They feel cool or have a god complex,” says Leah, a 25-year-old strength trainer who runs Movement and Mindset in Chelsea. “It’s not that instructors’ hearts aren’t in the right place, it’s just — it’s their show,” she says. “It’s not about the clients’ workout; it’s about them.” Still, it’s no excuse for being rude. “People are already so embarrassed to be coming to class it doesn’t help if you’re a jerk. I don’t understand it.”
Of course, students can be ruthless to their teachers, too. “You get burned out,” says Jessie, a Pilates instructor who sometimes teaches seven or eight reformer classes a day to tourists and retirees in Naples, Florida. She tries not to be condescending when offering corrections — even using the word modification has strangely become stigmatized among clients — but there are those who simply don’t listen when instructed, like one student who ignored a movement demonstration and fell off her reformer as a result. Brielle, a 29-year-old hot yoga instructor in Los Angeles, tells me she’s dealt with a couple who won’t stop whispering during class even after multiple reminders and a regular who goes to the back of the room, ignores the class, and does her own flow (“I feel like you’d save money buying a sauna in your house,” Brielle says, “but okay, whatever”). Students who want to leave early are told to do so before savasana, the meditative corpse pose that ends class; despite those house rules, rude first-timers walk out during it and leave the doors wide open. “The attitude is, I’m entitled to do whatever I want because I paid $30, but so did everyone else,” Brielle says. “I’m not a fifth-grade teacher. I didn’t sign up to teach elementary school.”
Then there are the instructors who are mean because they think that’s what we want. “The ‘Don’t be lazy’ crap, that’s what some people think a workout instructor needs to do,” says Erin, a 35-year-old Pilates teacher who runs a studio in downtown Manhattan. “Instructors get scared that if they’re not that person, people won’t come to their class, or they’ll be seen as an easy instructor. Especially in New York City, we’ve created this culture of ‘Workouts have to be the hardest thing ever to be valuable.’” Erin’s careful not to comment on students’ bodies at her practice — she remembers being on the receiving end of “mean-girl energy” from teachers when she was young — and doesn’t concern herself with trying to be the most hardcore trainer out there. Yes, that means that there are students who dismiss her hardest class as “too easy” or leave one-star reviews on ClassPass or Mindbody. “It never feels good when someone walks out of your class like, That was terrible, but maybe I wasn’t what they needed,” she says. “That’s okay. Someone will take their place and like it.”
Also okay? Some teachers are just plain spiteful, and there’s no fixing it. A week after her disastrous first class, Jenna texted her local Pilates chain’s customer-service line to book a private session. It was double the cost of what she paid before, but she wanted to learn and put the bad experience behind her. “I told them, ‘Hey, I came to your class last week, I didn’t know how to use the reformer because I was new, but I’d love to learn,’” she tells me. The instructor she heard back from turned out to be just as rude as the first one. She took forever to respond to Jenna’s texts, and when she did, she offered no booking help and seemed annoyed Jenna was texting her at all. “It got to a point where I was like, ‘Never mind, I’m not booking with you guys ever again.’” Now, Jenna drives past the studio that’s right next to her house and instead goes to a better one that’s 40 minutes away. “The girls there,” she says, “are so nice.”
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