Early birds, night owls make classes different

Fitness instructors notice that classes offered at different times of the day develop different group personalities.

For instance, at Conway Regional Health and Fitness Center, students select from a range of activities from 5 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

In the five years he has been facility director, Rance Bryant has been impressed by the few but faithful regulars who exercise at lunchtime. They don’t chitchat and mess around.

“When they come in, they’re on a mission,” he says. “They only have so much time.”

Some of them put in 25 minutes on a treadmill; others use the whole hour to take a bootcamp class and shower before they hurry back to work.

Similarly, “early morning exercisers are down to business,” says group exercise instructor and personal trainer Heather Kendrick. She leads some classes at 5:10 a.m., others at 6:10 p.m. and various times in between. “They come in, get it done, and they’re out the door for the most part.

“They don’t necessarily like a lot of chitchat, a lot of bells and whistles, especially at 5 a.m.”

They like their classes to end on time, because they have someplace else to be.

“Evening people sometimes are more social,” she says. “Some people are social in the morning, but they’re just morning people. But evening classes tend to be more chit-chatty. Some people are there early because the gym hasn’t just opened the doors. If the class starts at 5:45, people get there at 5:30. They set up their stuff. They get their water. They talk about their day and sometimes, depending, they stick around a little longer afterward. They stretch.”

She sees more “ebb and flow” in the evening classes, especially at the first of a year when an influx of newcomers attempts unfamiliar routines. And so mingled with the people who are able to arrive a little early will be others who had to rush and fight traffic to attend. They resent it when a class doesn’t start right on time.

The most social of all the groups she leads come at midmorning.

“This is your stay-home moms, or work-at-home moms or dads, so they are a community. A lot of these men and women have worked out together in this same class for years, even before I was the instructor. They work hard, but they are maybe more of a group together than any of the other time slots,” she says.

“They can be because they have the most time of anyone.”