It's a Failure of the System
I was working 1:1 with my strength trainer today. (I am super lucky and he has his own gym so 1:1 means we are the only two in the entire facility.) While we were practicing squats, I kept thinking back to my group fitness days and wondering how the hell I didn't get injured.
Let me back up. I love love love the instructors I worked with at our local big box gym. There is no way I'd be where I am today without them. But.... I like to push myself. At the time, pre-COVID, I forced myself into strength classes and I hated them. It wasn't something I considered myself good at, so it made it even worse. The high repetition lower weight classes made me feel not good enough half of the time.
Anyways, back to this morning. I decided to try out a barbell group fitness class. There were no racks. Just all of us piled into a room with bars and weights. I went to this class because I knew to really work on my fitness, I had to learn to lift and take strength classes. So there I was. Someone next to me had to help me figure out how to position the bar because I kept getting it on the bone (remember no racks!) and it hurt like hell. Nothing about my form was correct & I only had other people around me to ask for help. Couple this with my Chiari Malformation surgery and I bet my neurologist would have shown up and dragged me out if she had known I was doing this. It's a miracle I didn't wack myself in my head or cause some serious damage.
I shared this with my trainer after I racked the bar, and his face was the exact form of shocked that I expected. He even confirmed with my muscles how positioning the bar where I needed it without a rack would have been impossible. He then went even farther that he wouldn't have been able to do so without a rack at the weight he lifts.
Again, I love my former instructors. I still follow what they do on various channels and they are super motivating. I am starting to realize how hard of a job they have keeping everyone safe and how the gyms do not create the space for it at all. (Granted, class sizes have drastically changed with COVID, but still) People like me, well & I'd argue people in general, would be better off spending the money on a trainer. I feel so much safer working with him once a week than I ever did in any of my group classes. There are just too many heads for 1 person to keep track of. It's a failure of the system & not the instructors.