Be prepared to take the need for safety and injury prevention to the next level in your SilverSneakers Circuit class. Here are some additional tips and considerations for teaching a safe and effective class.
Classroom Set Up
Instructors should take responsibility for managing class set up to ensure safety and minimize the risk for tripping hazards. Chairs should be set up in rows, in a honeycomb fashion, making it easy for all participants to see the instructor at the front of class. A good guideline for optimum spacing between chairs is to provide approximately 4′ X 4′, or 16 square feet, for each member of class.
Additional safety considerations for the classroom:
- Provide a staff person for every 30 participants – if you have more than 30 participants regularly, recruit additional staff or an assistant to help you lead.
- An additional class should be added if class participation continuously meets or exceeds room capacity for a continuous period of one month or 12 classes.
- Provide an additional staff member for classes that are held in a large gymnasium or fitness studio with the capacity to accommodate more than 30 adults.
Minimum of Three
Participants will be working harder and sweating more within the Circuit class. Don’t forget to cue a minimum of three times for breathing, posture, hydration and perceived exertion.
Breathing cues
- Cue for continuous breath throughout class with no breath holding.
- Encourage exhalation on exertion phase of exercise during resistance training to promote even blood pressure and discourage blood pressure spikes.
- Any verbal interaction and feedback that takes place with your participants will encourage consistent breathing. During your class, a fun and intentional way to encourage breathing is to ask your students to count down repetitions with you (i.e., 4, 3, 2, 1). An even better idea is to have them count down in another language, like Spanish, French or Japanese.
- Use restorative and relaxing breathing techniques during the Relaxation phase of class.
Posture
- Use cues that encourage upright posture like “let’s sit tall,” “bring the chest up with shoulders back and down,” “we can lengthen the spine, reaching the crown of the head toward the ceiling.”
- Encourage participants to sit forward on the chair without the support of the chair back when it is safe to do so. This simple forward body placement will encourage a more upright posture and higher engagement of core muscles. Removing the support of the chair back makes simply sitting upright a core workout!
Hydration
- Give your students at least three opportunities to hydrate during class. Consider giving even more water breaks if your class offers higher intensity options or if the weather is dry or hot.
- As we age, our thirst mechanism begins to deteriorate, so reminders to drink during exercise become extremely important for the older adult.
Perceived Exertion
- Use the SilverSneakers Perceived Exertion (PE) chart, which is numbered from 1 to 10, in every single SilverSneakers Circuit Class. This chart is an important tool for instructors, mitigating participant risk by assisting instructors to correctly monitor exertion levels as they teach. By using the PE chart with purpose, instructors can adapt the intensity level of movements and individual exercises more efficiently during each class.
- Make sure to review the chart at the beginning of class, or during your pre-class management, and create the expectation of feedback from your participants, so you can use participant feedback to teach your class safely and effectively.
- Ask your students to use the numbers or color zones on the chart for more effective communication.
- Avoid cues like “I’m a 5 on the PE Chart. What number are you?” as this will encourage your class members to mimic your exertion level, thereby decreasing the accuracy of their feedback.