One of the fitness industry's biggest trends could be dangerous

Boutique fitness is taking over the exercise industry.

From SoulCycle to barre classes to CrossFit, we're inundated with new, exciting ways to work out every day.

It can be tempting to want to try all of the new classes available.

But when working out is done too frequently, it can be dangerous.

A recent Well+Good story highlights the dangers of too-tough workouts - the ones that make your muscles ache and make you dripping in a pool of sweat.

"There's definitely been a shift to a mentality that the best workout is one that destroys you," Brynn Putnam, founder of the workout program Refine Method, said to Well+Good. "I think that's a scary and unfortunate shift in the wrong direction."

That's not to say that challenging workouts are never good for you - they can be - and as celebrity trainer Anna Kaiser told Business Insider, it's "really important if trying to figure out, 'How hard am I working?'" and making sure that you're geting your heart rate up.

It's just that the desire to feel a "burn" at the expense of compromising form and safety - as well as over training - can be detrimental, Well + Good notes.

"The basis of all good fitness programs is frequency, intensity, type, and time," Putnam said to Well +Good. "You should be progressively adjusting those variables, not doing them all at once."

Well+Good notes than when doing extremely intense workouts, it's important not to do ridiculously hard classes every single day; it can result in injury and metabolic issues, and can ultimately take away from one's goals. It's important to make sure that there's time for the body to recover, the website adds.

There's good news, though; fortunately, you don't need to work out at a wild intensity for long periods of time. A study recently showed that interval-based training can be an extremely efficient way to promote weight loss.

Another risk of the boutique fitness industry is that people can become enamored with one activity, at the expense of the muscles they're not working out. Kaiser also told Business Insider that "it's easy for people to get addicted to one thing, and that's where they can go wrong," specifically pointing to how indoor cycling most days means "you're just working [the same] muscles over and over again."

For the full Well+Good story, click here.