{"slug": "why-group-fitness-feels-so-good", "title": "Why Group Fitness Feels So Good", "summary": "Group fitness provides psychological benefits beyond physical exercise, including connection, co-regulation, and belonging, according to a podcast discussion with Dr. Tess Kilwein on Getting Better With Jonathan Van Ness. Movement in groups helps reduce depression and anxiety symptoms, build confidence, and rebuild body trust, especially for those with trauma or body shame.", "body_md": "######\n[Sport and Competition](/us/basics/sport-and-competition)\n\n# Why Group Fitness Feels So Good\n\n## Moving with others supports connection, confidence, body trust, and belonging.\n\nPosted June 15, 2026\n[\nReviewed by Ekua Hagan\n](/us/docs/editorial-process)\n\n### Key points\n\n- Group fitness can offer shared rhythm, social reinforcement, and belonging.\n- Shared movement enables co-regulation, signaling safety and easing emotional distress.\n- Inclusive movement spaces help people participate with less self-protection.\n\nOn [Getting Better With Jonathan Van Ness](https://jonathanvanness.com/podcast/getting-better-the-psychology-of-group-fitness-coregulation-w-dr-tess-kilwein/), I talked about why group fitness can feel so emotionally different from working out alone. The short answer is that movement is more than a physical process; it is a psychological and relational one, too. When we move near other people, we are relating, sensing, responding, and regulating.\n\nHumans are wired for connection. We create community through shared experiences, and movement is one of the most powerful shared experiences we have. Fitness classes, team sports, dance, walking groups, yoga, pickleball leagues, and recreational sports can all become deeply relational because they ask us to be present in our bodies around other people.\n\nThat can be energizing, vulnerable, healing, or scary, depending on what our bodies have learned to expect. At its best, group fitness is about expanding our sense of connection, capability, and belonging.\n\n## Movement Is Not a Punishment\n\nOne of the most common and painful ways people talk about exercise is as [punishment](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/punishment).\n\n*“I ate dessert, so I have to work out.”*\n\n*“I went out last night, so I need to make up for it.”*\n\n*“I don’t like my body, so I need to fix it.”*\n\nThat mindset turns movement into [shame](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/shame). It frames the body as a problem to solve rather than a body to inhabit, listen to, and care for.\n\nMovement should not be punishment for living our lives. It can be a platform for connection, curiosity, enjoyment, and meaning-making. It can help us release stress, reconnect with ourselves, build [confidence](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/confidence), and spend meaningful time with other people.\n\nWhen movement feels like care instead of correction, people are more likely to return to it. They are also more likely to experience it as something sustainable, not something they simply have to endure.\n\n## Movement Is a Mental Health Skill\n\nPhysical activity can support mental health in ways that have nothing to do with aesthetics. Research suggests that physical activity interventions can reduce symptoms of [depression](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/depression), [anxiety](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/anxiety), and psychological distress (Singh et al., 2023).\n\nMovement can help us regulate difficult emotions. It can interrupt anxious thoughts. It can give the mind a break from overthinking. It can also increase flexible thinking and problem-solving when life feels [stressful](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/stress).\n\nThere is also something psychologically powerful about doing something hard and realizing, “I can do this.”\n\nEvery time someone tries a new movement, stays present through discomfort, modifies when needed, or returns after a difficult day, they build evidence of their own agency. They prove to themselves that they can navigate stress, uncertainty, and challenge.\n\nFor people who have experienced [trauma](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/trauma), body shame, exclusion, or difficult relationships with their bodies, movement can also help rebuild trust with the body and the self.\n\n## Group Movement Gives Us Something Different\n\nGroup movement offers something solo exercise sometimes cannot: shared rhythm, social reinforcement, and collective engagement.\n\nResearch on group exercise suggests that collective movement and social [bonding](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/attachment) can reinforce one another, helping explain why group fitness may feel connecting and motivating (Davis et al., 2015).\n\nThink about breathing together in yoga, walking at the same pace with a friend, dancing in a class, rowing in rhythm, or pushing through the final minutes of a workout beside someone else.\n\nThose moments can create a sense of being part of something larger than yourself. You are not just completing a task alone; you are moving with others toward a shared experience.\n\n[Competition](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/sport-and-competition)Essential Reads\n\nThere is also power in watching other people struggle, pause, laugh, modify, recover, and keep going. It gives permission. It reminds us that effort does not have to look perfect to be meaningful.\n\n## Co-Regulation in Motion\n\nMoving in sync with others can support co-regulation by signaling safety to the [nervous system](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/neuroscience).\n\nCo-regulation is the process of feeling steadier through connection with another person or group. In movement spaces, this can happen through shared breath, rhythm, eye contact, encouragement, music, [laughter](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/laughter), and the simple awareness that other people are doing hard things too.\n\nA group class can help someone feel less alone in their effort. A team can give someone a sense of mutual commitment. A recreational league can offer play, structure, and belonging that might be lacking elsewhere in someone’s life.\n\nThese experiences can improve mood, deepen connection, and help people access the body’s rest-and-recovery systems after stress.\n\n## Inclusive Movement Spaces\n\nMost fitness and sport spaces were not designed with everyone in mind.\n\nRace, [gender](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/gender), queerness, body size, disability, class, and lived experience all shape access, safety, visibility, and belonging. If someone has experienced support, affirmation, and belonging in fitness environments, group movement may feel motivating. But if someone has experienced judgment, exclusion, [racism](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/bias), anti-fat bias, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or public [embarrassment](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/embarrassment), that same environment may feel threatening.\n\nA sign that says “all are welcome” is not enough. Inclusion has to be built into the walls of fitness and sport spaces, and lived through the daily offerings, practices, and environments those spaces create.\n\nIt has to show up in the language instructors use. It has to show up in who is hired, represented, and protected. It has to show up in pricing, accessibility, modifications, music, policies, changing spaces, [leadership](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/leadership), and clear responses when harm occurs.\n\nReal inclusion is not reflected in how a space describes itself; it is reflected in how people actually experience that space every day.\n\nFor LGBTQ+ people and other minoritized communities, affirming movement spaces can reduce the burden of [identity](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/identity)-related stress. When people do not have to constantly monitor, protect, explain, or edit themselves, they often have more capacity for movement, enjoyment, connection, and performance.\n\nInclusive spaces make it possible for people to participate more fully once they arrive.\n\n## What a Movement Community Can Change\n\nAt its best, a great movement community can change (or even save) someone’s life.\n\nIt can transform a person’s sense of belonging. It can bring people out of [loneliness](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/loneliness). It can improve their relationship with themselves, with others, and with their bodies. It can offer a healthier way to cope with stress, [grief](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/grief), recovery, anxiety, or disconnection.\n\nIt can give adults permission to play.\n\nIt can give queer athletes and performers space to move as their full selves. It can give people across identities a shared court, class, team, or rhythm. It can help someone find not just an exercise routine, but a reason to keep coming back.\n\nMovement is powerful on its own.\n\nMovement with others can be transformative.\n\nReferences\n\nDavis, A., Taylor, J., Cohen, E., & Keren, N. (2015). Social bonds and exercise: Evidence for a reciprocal relationship. PLOS ONE, 10(8), e0136705.\n\nSingh, B., Olds, T., Curtis, R., Dumuid, D., Virgara, R., Watson, A., Szeto, K., O’Connor, E., Ferguson, T., Eglitis, E., Miatke, A., Simpson, C. E. M., & Maher, C. (2023). Effectiveness of physical activity interventions for improving depression, anxiety and distress: An overview of systematic reviews. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 57(18), 1203–1209.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-group-fitness-feels-so-good", "canonical_source": "https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-the-trenches/202606/why-group-fitness-feels-so-good", "published_at": "2026-06-15 17:21:46+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-15 17:41:48.687813+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Jonathan Van Ness", "Tess Kilwein", "Getting Better"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-group-fitness-feels-so-good", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-group-fitness-feels-so-good.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-group-fitness-feels-so-good.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-group-fitness-feels-so-good.jsonld"}}