We launched This Girl Can Classes in 2021 in partnership with EMD UK - the national governing body for group exercise - and these are now evolving in an exciting new direction as we aim to support even more women to take part in group exercise.
This Girl Can Classes currently feature branded, choreographed routines, but we’ll be moving away from this in the coming months.
Instead, we’ll be focusing on supporting group exercise instructors to help them to increase the appeal of their classes to less active women.
We will aim to provide a variety of content to aid instructors with actionable support to help tackle the gender activity gap by widening the appeal of all group exercise classes to less active women.
Our new approach is based on feedback from instructors, who told us about their challenges with delivering the existing classes, and insight from less active women.
Claire Edwards, This Girl Can's head of campaign activation, said: “We’ve loved seeing the positive impact of This Girl Can Classes over the duration of the project, with classes taking place across the country achieving an amazing 92% participant satisfaction rate.
“We’re excited by this new chapter, which will build on those successes as we continue to tackle the gender gaps in both activity levels and enjoyment.
“We know that instructors have incredible power and passion to engage their local communities, so we want to give them ownership to motivate more women to get involved.”
The classes were specifically designed with the needs and concerns of less active women in mind, after our research revealed that many women felt intimidated joining group exercise classes.
Reasons included ‘not feeling fit enough’ and concerns they would not be capable of keeping up with the rest of the group, as well as feeling self-conscious.
