Frequently Asked Questions

For personal training, your first time at Rocky’s will be a consultation where you sit down with a trainer for 20-30 minutes to discuss your goals, ambitions, history, athletic background, and lifestyle. Based on that information we match you up with the personal trainer that best matches these items.

For group exercise, your first class is complementary to see if it’s something you would like.  If it is something you want to continue, we strongly encourage you to go through a functional movement screen so we can assess whether you’re ready to be in a group exercise setting, or whether there are any underlying issues we need to address.  We determine if there are reasons for referring you to a medical professional such as a physical therapist or sports doctor or if we can mainstream you into a group.

This depends on what kind of results we’re talking about.

• More energy? It could be within a matter of hours or a few days.
• Increased strength and actual muscle size? This takes 6-8 weeks.
• Overall feeling of goodness, a feeling that you’re doing something good, and a sense of better strength? Could be a matter of just a few weeks.

For the big box gyms, the group exercise classes are usually led by a minimum wage worker with little to no experience, who may or may not be certified. The programs are most likely outdated because the drive and determination of employees at big box gyms are usually not the same as certified fitness professionals.

The difference with Rocky’s is that every class is led by a certified personal trainer, is designed using the latest scientific techniques and information, and is created with more than just a better looking body in mind. We deal with how the body moves, and how it functions. We have the ability to modify exercises for almost any limitation.

Most people can.  However, we do recommend that people with existing limitations or restrictions get individual personal training first before trying to integrate into a group exercise setting, because most of the exercises are designed for people with very few limitations.

The benefits are multi-fold.

• Energy – you’ll have more energy through your day because of the exercise you’ll be doing.
• You’ll feel better about yourself because you’re committing to something better for yourself.
• Living a healthier lifestyle you’ll start to make better choices throughout the day.
• Over the course of time you’ll start to feel yourself getting stronger.
• You’ll achieve better balance and your reaction time to certain events will improve.
• You general feeling of potential malaise will be overwhelmed and overcome by more euphoria and a sense of purpose, strength and determination.

If you ask most people why they stick with this group structure, you’ll hear that it’s because we never do the same workout twice. We might repeat some exercises over time and their might be some favorites ones for each trainer, but we’ve been doing this for a long time. Over the course of tens of thousands of classes in the years we’ve been doing this, I doubt if there’s been one time where each workout is exactly the same as the other. Therefore, you’re going always be on your toes wondering what else is coming down the pike. If you feel like you’ve just conquered one exercise, think again, because there’s a way we can tweak it in order to create a new demand for you.

It’s always changing, it’s always new. We have a fun bunch of toys that we don’t always pull out, but we have a big toy box and that makes our variety and choice of exercise quite wide.

It depends on how fast you want to see results, how you enjoy it and how much you really want to come in. We recommend at least two times a week. That will keep you motivated and in touch with what’s going on. It’s at least a maintenance program.

If you want to see physical improvement – physiological change – then 3-5 times would be ideal.

That’s a loaded question. Maybe, if that’s a goal you have, but exercise alone will probably not do it. It’s a simple equation – burn more calories than you take in – but it’s a complex solution. If you think that you can simply workout and eat anything you want, then you’re going to have a harder time losing weight.  However, if you have the right mindset, some good nutritional guidance, some discipline when needed and the right follow through, then this could be one element in the recipe for success.

Any movement you do consumes calories.  Typically, the more intense the exercise or movement, the higher the caloric demand.  By combining strength training with cardiovascular or aerobic training you get the best of both worlds.  One is you’re burning some amount of fat during the workout, but with strength training, the repair and recovery time demands a lot of aerobic energy – which is oxygen and fat – so we often find that your post exercise energy and oxygen consumption is greater after exercise. So exercising frequently through the week – similar to eating small meals throughout the day – will give you more opportunities to raise your metabolism, thereby burning more calories.

What we really want to do is attack this issue and address it.  So we do a lot of exercises that will enhance a person’s flexibility.  There are many reasons why someone may lack flexibility.  It could be that you’re young and you’re growing faster than your muscles can keep up.  Maybe you’re just chronically stiff.  Often times it’s because your core is weak and the bigger muscles outside have to do more work to keep you from falling down.

So we try to figure out why you’re stiff and improve your flexibility in a safe and professional manner.

With the group exercise classes, it may fluctuate from one week to the next or one season to the next, but historically the classes that usually have the most people in them are 6 am (M-F) – a lot of people want to work out before they get to work – and then also at 5pm when people are getting out of work.  The Saturday morning classes are quite popular but because we have two classes the groups tend to spread out.  Then the morning classes that we have throughout the week tend to fluctuate between 5 and 8 people.

• Bring to class an attitude of 110% commitment.
• Bring exercise apparel that you feel comfortable in.
• Don’t worry about proper footwear.  You can workout barefoot if you need to – we have no shoes policies here.  We want you to be comfortable and feel the earth around you.
• We supply you with workout towels.
• Bring a water bottle, but we have those for sale if you need one.
• Bring a friend, because it’s always a fun time to share in the misery of success, whatever your mindset is.

We require one or more of the following certifications as personal trainers in Rocky’s Fitness Center.

• Certification by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)
• Certification by the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA)
• Certification by the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM)

We do not accept other certifications.  They may be good we recognize these three as the leaders in the field.

This is where proper screening comes into play.  We do what’s called a functional movement screen – seven movements to determine whether or not you are ready for the exercise class.  If we find that you have limitations that prevent you from entering the group, we will prescribe corrective exercises or encourage 1:1 personal training or semi-private personal training with another client and the trainer, until you get to a point where you are ready for groups. So we won’t turn anyone away.  There’s always something we can do.

If you’re new to exercise and you haven’t had a history of sports growing up, you’re going to be a bit more challenged neurologically.  Your body has not grown accustomed to certain movements.  Not to say you can’t perform these exercises, just know that you may be a little more challenged by certain exercises, but you will be successful.

If you’re out of shape, well, isn’t that why you’re here to begin with?  To change the lifestyle that has gotten you out of shape?  By incorporating regular exercise into this lifestyle, your body will start to reflect that and that out of shape will start getting into shape.

There are several things we can do.  The mainstream group is general strength and conditioning.  If you want sport specific training, then we suggest focusing on individual or semi-private personal training.  There are often sport specific clinics going on such as baseball, surfing, skiing, snowboarding, golf, etc.  If you’re in that mix or other sports then we can try to put you in small clinics with trainers or simple do individual training to achieve your performance goals.

We currently do not offer pilates, yoga, tai chi, tai chi chuan, qigong and any martial arts.  Most of these, with the exception of pilates, have been around for millenniums and have centuries to perfect their movement.  They have a lot to offer the human form.  Pilates is another approach that could be beneficial and complimentary to the work that we do because it’s approach of lengthening the body while strengthening it.  Also, the breath work that they do is an essential part of life.

This is often a concern that we hear. All I can say is once you experience a group exercise class at Rocky’s, 95% have a new attitude toward group exercise and find that they fit in quite well regardless of their ability. For those that are highly capable and able athletes, we step up their program while in the group setting so their intensity level matches their desire. For those that are neophytes, new to exercise, or those that may feel intimidated in a large group setting, the small intimate groups at Rocky’s where people are bound together by the same common goal of trying to improve their lives provide a safe and fulfilling environment. Not one person has left feeling awkward or out of place. If nothing else, they’re embraced by the group collective.

We have a variety of classes throughout the day – early morning, mid-morning, mid-day, evening, and a couple on the weekends. If you are unable to fit one of our group exercise classes in your schedule, you may actually want to find out how you can open up more time for you as a priority.

The only way to really find out is to try it and see if you like it. It’s important to try more than one, because some people have a greater affinity for a certain style of personal trainer and training. Some people like the variety of trainers, but some work well with just one type. You really never know until you try it.

If you don’t find a Group Exercise Class that meets your needs, then we do offer 1:1 individual personal training.

This can be a big concern for women, but for men as well.  In all these years, we have yet to have anyone say they got bulky from taking any of these classes.  If you want to be a competitive body builder, we can find a trainer for you, though that’s not really our specialty, nor do we really think much of the body building approach.  Chances are though, that your muscles will get to a point where they’re strong without becoming bulky.  It takes quite a bit of time to actually bulk up.  It’s not that you go to bed one night and wake up the next morning looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger.  If you find that your body is changing in a way you don’t want, we check in and find out what’s been going on.

We have a basic foundation and order of approach with all of our classes.  We first start out with foam rolling and myofacial release techniques – something similar to self massage.  That is followed by mobility and stability exercises that are corrective in nature.  From there we go into dynamic movements to warm up the body in all dimensions of movement for the upper and lower body and full body.  Then we get into activating and conditioning the deep muscles of the body – otherwise known as your core.  This is followed by strength training for the entire body.  Some exercise may be biased towards the upper body, while others are biased towards the lower body but we’re going to work the entire body as a unit as you would throughout your daily living.  Finally, at the end, we do short bursts of higher intensity training, followed always by more foam rolling and recovering the muscles, trying to regenerate them so you walk out of the gym feeling refreshed and not completely fatigued.

We have everyone work at their own pace and everyone that comes in for their very first class is encouraged not to do as much as everyone else, regardless if they’re a professional athlete or an 85 year old grandmother.  It doesn’t really matter because these are new movements and if you’re not accustomed to these types of exercises in this arena, then chance are you will fatigue early and be quite sore.  We want to spread that out a bit having you do one maybe two sets of each exercise at the most, and encourage stretching in between exercises, so you’re not completely wasted at the end of the hour, feeling defeated.  We want to breed success here not defeatism, so we want to find what works for you.

There’s freedom in these classes where, although encouraged by the personal trainer leading a class, you can work as light as you need to or as intense as you need to.  It really falls upon your shoulders to determine the intensity of that day.  We will lead you through very effective programs, but ultimately, if you feel like we’re not pushing you hard enough, you need to tell us and we’ll make sure we adapt the exercises to meet your needs.  On the other end of the spectrum, if you find we’re demanding too much physically of you, then it’s important you communicate this so that we can adjust your program as well.

There are certain common factors in a human form.  Typically there are two legs, two arms, a trunk and a head.  They all move in very similar fashions. Therefore, the exercises that we put together are based on pillars of human movement and not on specific muscle groups, or on gender.  The group exercises are general strength and conditioning for every body.  They can be modified based on specific needs, but regardless of the shape, size, gender or age, everyone will benefit from the exercise program that we have created here.

Boot camps are something you find when you sign into the military.  We are not militaristic.  Boot camp has been a phrase that has been overused in the media and in our industry.  It connotes high intensity training with basic training as it’s main core – crawling under barbed wire, jumping over walls, going to the point where somebody is screaming at you while you’re trying to do the one thousandth push-up.  That’s not how it is here.  We are encouraging, we are motivating, we may raise our voice to get the group going even further into an exercise fury, but we are not in the military.  If that is what you seek, then there’s a recruiter office down the street.

This is always a question we’re asked.  Cross fit can be a fantastic program for the people that like that style of training.  We differ from cross fit in the fact that we pride ourselves on screening individuals prior to working out.  We are corrective exercise specialists so we have the ability to find ways of improving motion and form.  We are more about the quality of movement than the quantity of movement.  That’s not to say that cross fit is all about high volume work, but that is common point in some of their program design.

I am friends with the person who created cross fit.  I think the world of him and the empire that has become cross fit. I’m very grateful for what he has done to thousands of people that otherwise would not be moving and would remain out of shape, but we are not cross fit.

Well, we don’t really do much dancing here other than maybe some warm-up movements that might be looking like that.  Zumba is more of a fad style exercise.  We’ve just been plugging along for the last 16 years doing similar movements, trying to stay as up to date with information as possible.  We’re not Zumba; we’re not step aerobics.  We are group exercise, but we do more than just move the body without weights.

For one, spinning classes are single track exercise.  They keep you locked into a certain movement and it’s highly repetitive.  It has you hunched over handlebars in a flex position and most of us sit down too much as it is.  The last thing most of us need to do is go into an exercise class where we’re further sitting and then adding more intensity to it.  We try to break people out of the seated environment as often as possible and get them into extended positions, moving the body in many different dimensions.

Spinning can be intense.  It can be great for working out in a group, but there are so many other things we do here other than spin our wheels.

Aerobics is typically low intensity, high duration.  Aerobic, meaning aerobic energy, which is burning oxygen and fat.  You can primarily be aerobic when you do low intensity, high duration exercise.  We’re a bit the opposite.  We do strength training.  We want you to get stronger and use weights.  Sometimes heavy, sometimes moderate, and occasionally low weights and low intensity, but for the most part we want physiological change to occur.  That requires a certain intensity level and that involves some strength – sometimes using your own body weight but sometimes using external forms of resistance.

Kick boxing I would consider similar to any other aerobics class whether it be Zumba, Step Aerobics, Muscles in Motion.  They’re all dealing with movement, which is fantastic, but we have strength components to consider.  We delve into power, agility, speed, mobility, flexibility core stabilization, full body stabilization.  There are so many elements to the group exercise that it’s not just the one trick pony.

Traditional strength training often isolates muscles in a non-practical, non-lifestyle type of setting.  For example, the leg extension or bicep curl machine.  They move around one joint and very rarely you’ll find yourself moving around a single joint when you’re going through your day to day activities.  We try to condition the body to be better at every movement you can do. Traditional strength training isolates and breaks down the body in non-functional manners.

We do throw in cardio components, but often they’re short bursts.  They’re not long durations and we use them as just another element to our conditioning.  We encourage people on the off days to get cardiovascular activity or seek out a yoga class to improve their flexibility depending on their needs and goals, but it’s not something that we throw at somebody or put into our program for group training, because honestly, it’s mindless.  To get on a treadmill and not get anywhere or get on a bike spinning your wheels – maybe for a few minutes, but after that it’s boring.  So we try to the energy alive and the excitement at the highest point we can keep it.