Coach Nic, You don’t have to put yourself in the bin to get fitter

I remember when I started functional fitness, I was incredibly unfit. I very quickly hit Zone 5 in workouts (Zone 5 is that very hard effort where you’re breathing heavily, talking is limited to a few words), and thought the quickest way to get fitter was to absolutely put myself in the bin every session. Redlining, struggling to breathe, feeling incredibly uncomfortable - if I wasn’t finishing completely exhausted, I felt like I hadn’t tried hard enough.

And I think a lot of us recognise that feeling. You’ve made the effort to get to the gym, you want to make the session count, and surely going harder means getting fitter quicker?

But how exhausted you are afterwards isn’t necessarily a measure of how much you’ve benefited.

Different intensities do different jobs

There are benefits to both steady, manageable efforts and those harder workouts where you’re breathing heavily and counting down the seconds.

Lower-intensity work, often called Zone 2, helps build your aerobic base. Think of this as building your engine, improving your ability to keep moving, maintain a consistent pace and recover between harder efforts. You’re working, but you could still hold a conversation.

Higher-intensity work, such as Zone 5 intervals, challenges the top end of that engine. It can improve your maximum capacity to use oxygen and your ability to work at a high output. These efforts are much harder, so you can only sustain them for shorter periods and need recovery between them.

Both help build fitness. They just do it in different ways, with different recovery demands.

More stress doesn’t always mean more progress

Training puts your body under stress, which gives it a reason to adapt. But you need enough recovery for that adaptation to happen.

If you’re redlining every workout, on top of work, poor sleep and everything else life throws at you, fatigue can start to stack up. You might find your usual weights feel heavier, your pace drops or you’re constantly knackered.

At that point, pushing harder each time isn’t necessarily helping you get fitter. It might just be adding more fatigue than you can recover from.

A steadier session still counts. You’re building fitness while leaving yourself better able to tackle the next hard session.

What does this mean in class?

Pay attention to the intended effort of the workout, and ask your coach if you’re unsure.

Some sessions are designed for short, hard efforts with rest. Others are about finding a pace you can maintain, keeping your rounds consistent and avoiding a huge drop-off halfway through.

For those steadier workouts, choosing a manageable weight and slowing your opening pace might actually help you get more useful work done overall.

You don’t have to finish every class on the floor to have trained well. Sometimes pushing hard is the right choice; sometimes keeping things controlled is exactly what you need.

The goal is to get fitter over time - and that means training at different intensities, recovering well and being able to keep coming back.

So next time you leave class having enjoyed the workout, with a bit left in the tank and excited to come back tomorrow - don't beat yourself up, that’s a good thing! You don’t have to feel completely wiped out for it to count.