Synthesising Les Mills’ Five Key Elements: How Readiness-to-Hand is Developed Among Group Fitness Coaches

This paper examines the process by which Les Mills group fitness instructors in the Philippines develop a seemingly effortless coaching style. They simultaneously perform exercises alongside their participants, correcting and motivating them, while maintaining awareness of the music playing. Using ethnographic data from a local Philippine gym, pseudonymously referred to as The Fit Stop, it is argued that the apparent naturalness of their teaching develops through numerous stages of practice and feedback. Throughout the process, instructors gain mastery over what Les Mills calls the Five Key Elements of instruction: choreography, technique, coaching, connection, and performance. As they become more adept, the Elements become more ready-to-hand (Heidegger, 1962), allowing instructors to apply them intuitively and without conscious deliberation. By highlighting this form of embodied expertise, the paper contributes to the limited literature on group fitness instruction. It proposes readiness-to-hand as a valuable lens for analysing the embodied development of coaching competence among group exercise professionals.