No Microphone, Twenty-Eight People, and a Hearing Aid

Switch from an audio-led class to a visually led one. The teaching channel changes; the workout does not.

• Position. Come off the stage and teach from the floor, front-center, at eye level and close to the group. Distance and elevation both work against you when there is no amplification. Bring the class into a tighter formation - a semicircle or three clear rows - so peripheral vision covers more people.
• Cue channel mix. Reduce verbal volume and increase gesture. The room's echo means shouting makes you less intelligible, not more. Establish a small signal set in about 20 seconds: flat palm down = lower intensity, fist = stop/hold, circular hand = keep going, two fingers = two more reps, hand to ear = listen. Teach the signals once, use them consistently.
• Voice. Face the room, project from the diaphragm, use words with strong consonants, and use short commands. Do not talk while turned toward the whiteboard or while demonstrating a rotation.
• Counting. Keep counting aloud on the transitions and use your hands to show 4-3-2-1. In echo, rhythm and repetition do more work than volume.
• Kinesthetic cue. For strength segments, move through the room and use brief hands-on positioning only with consent; otherwise use self-touch cues ('hand on your ribcage').

Position yourself to her right and slightly in front, and keep your face visible. Practical points:

• Do not stand with a window or bright light behind you; backlighting silhouettes your face and removes the lip-reading and expression information she is relying on.
• Face her when giving safety instructions, equipment changes, and the exercise name; those are the cues she cannot reconstruct from watching the room.
• Reduce background noise where you can - the echo is fixed, but you can stop your own talking while the music plays and avoid talking over the co-instructor or over equipment noise.
• Use the visual channel as the primary one: hand signals, written or whiteboard cues for key numbers, and clear demonstration.
• Pair her with a neighbor on her right for a tap cue on the transitions, and tell the neighbor that is the job.

None of this is special treatment; it is the same principle as any cueing - never rely on a single channel. It also helps the back-left participant who is a beat late and the rest of a room with no amplification.

Treat them as two different problems.

The talkers are a group-management issue. Handle it with proximity and role, not confrontation. Teach near them for a phrase or two while continuing the class; make brief eye contact; then give them a job - demonstrate the next move, hand out equipment, count the reps for the row. If it continues, a quiet word at the water break ('I need you both with me on the next block') is enough. Public correction in front of 28 people escalates the situation and costs you the room. Also check the obvious: are they talking because the class has a long slow segment with too little cueing? Boredom looks like rudeness.

The man who is a beat late is almost certainly a cueing problem. Without a microphone he cannot hear the count and has defaulted to copying his neighbor, one beat behind. Fix the cause rather than the symptom: move him to a position with a clear sightline to you, and give the whole class a slowed walk-through of the next eight counts. Do not call out that he is late. If he is still behind after that, check whether the movement is simply too complex for the class level and simplify it for everyone.