Prestige Fitness,Inc.

04/07/2026

04/07/2026

Group fitness classes aren’t just about exercise, Mikala Jamison wrote in 2024. https://theatln.tc/z5fhRvrd

When Jamison was teaching indoor cycling, she was the nicest version of herself: “warm, welcoming, and encouraging to the point of profound corniness, despite my usual caustic tendencies,” she writes. People that met in her class started dating; strangers went out for coffee. “These experiences have convinced me that group fitness classes are the best place to make friends as an adult,” she continues, “an idea supported by research that suggests that the glow of exercise’s feel-good chemicals has interpersonal benefits.”

Once, friendships were born in what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg called “third places”: physical spaces that aren’t a home or a workplace, don’t charge (much) for entry, and exist in large part to foster conversation. Group classes don’t quite fit in that definition—they can cost money, and their primary activities are “sweating, grunting, and skipping a few reps when the instructor isn’t looking,” Jamison writes. “But they fulfill many conditions that social-psychology research has repeatedly shown to help forge meaningful connections between strangers: proximity (being in the same place), ritual (at the same time, over and over), accumulation (for many hours), and shared experiences or interests (because you do and like the same things)”—a less awkward way to find people with similar interests than at work or at a party.

Even if you don’t find your next best friend at Zumba class, getting into a fitness habit might help you step out of your comfort zone and make more friends in other spaces.

“A room full of grown adults flailing, shouting, and running miles without ever going anywhere is a fundamentally ridiculous prospect,” Jamison continues. “Ridiculous things, however, play a crucial role in connecting with others: They make us laugh.”

🎨: Debora Szpilman

09/21/2025

You can do it too!!!

07/28/2025

Well said!

01/07/2025

Active aging at its finest!!

10/19/2024

So true!

10/03/2024

This is why I love my profession:

Traveling to OH today, carrying our luggage is so much easier than this time last year! All thanks to you😊

07/16/2024

YES!

03/16/2024

Strength Training and Inflammation
Research identifies cellular changes in older adults.

SHIRLEY EICHENBERGER-ARCHER, JD, MA
JUN 6, 2023
UPDATED ON: FEBRUARY 18, 2024

We continue to support strength training for inflammation with older adults. Research adds insight into potential mechanisms for why strength training may have an anti-inflammatory effect that’s particularly beneficial for this demographic group.

Resistance training is known to have an anti-inflammatory effect (in addition to improving body composition, flexibility and balance). For older adults, health issues include higher systemic inflammation levels as well as muscle mass loss. Healthy cells protect against systemic stress from the accumulation of unfolded and misfolded proteins with an endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response (UPR). This response decreases with age and contributes to the increase in systemic inflammation observed with aging.

Florida Atlantic University researchers in Boca Raton analyzed UPR activation, inflammatory pathways and the production of proteins that contribute to the ability of cells to stay healthy and active among older adults in a resistance training program. Results showed that inflammatory protein levels remained unchanged and indicated that resistance training may have contributed to maintenance of the UPR protective effect. “Regular physical activity is suggested to be an effective intervention in improving age-related diseases such as osteoporosis, sarcopenia or muscle loss and dynapenia or loss of muscle strength,” said senior study author Chun-Jung “Phil” Huang, PhD, professor in the department of exercise science and health promotion.

“Although the beneficial effects of regular physical exercise to alleviate inflammation and oxidative stress are well-established, the processes of these physiological adaptations with regard to protein folding or UPR remain to be explored. That is why we used a systems biology approach for our study.” More research is recommended, specifically studies that measure these variables in skeletal muscle.

The study on strength training and inflammation is published in Antioxidants (2023; 11 [1], 2242).