Fitness professionals have used the coronavirus-forced shutdown to diversify their businesses, with Sports Nutrition Australia saying demand for their courses has more than doubled in the past three months.
The nutrition education programs have emerged as the silver lining to more than 35,000 people from the gym and fitness industry scrambling to find work when COVID-19 restrictions were enforced.
Diversifying skillsets was a conversation happening among fitness professionals across Australia as many came to grips with the loss of face-to-face contact with clients.
Many used the lockdown period as a chance to gain formal qualifications in another field within the industry to "pandemic-proof" their businesses. Sports Nutrition Australia added 150 extra spots to their courses in May, June and July on top of the regular 140 enrollments.
Founder and president Alex Thomas said personal trainers recognised the need to upskill and gain further qualifications to work in the sports nutrition profession, which on average allows two to four times the number of clients a personal trainer would see on a weekly basis.
"With these lockdowns, getting to face-to-face appointments became exponentially harder," Mr Thomas said.
"But people were still eating ... so having someone to correspond with in an online capacity, which happens [with nutrition] doesn't change even in a lockdown.
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"It's a more diversified and risk-averse model. If you don't have that, the moment the gym closes you're in trouble. You can't out-train a bad diet."
Others have branched out in different areas. Rise Studio Canberra founder Samantha Johnson said the restrictions turned out to be a blessing in disguise, giving her the opportunity to provide online classes. She also decided to diversify her own practice and completed two online yoga courses.
"I know a lot of people took the opportunity to learn more and the majority of those doing the courses with me said they enrolled because they had time in their schedules because of the restrictions," Ms Johnson said.
"A full-time yoga teacher or personal trainer has days which go from 6am to sometimes 9pm and it's really hard to fit extra training in, so the restrictions created time to learn and focus on expanding existing skills."
Former personal trainer Sam Bayliss, who lost his job at Canberra's FIT College campus because of the pandemic, decided to move into another career and has been accepted into a master's degree in physiotherapy.
"The pandemic made me re-evaluate and I feel like this industry is too volatile. I've worked in a lot of countries and I find Australia is quite a difficult place to make a go of it in the fitness industry compared to other places I've worked because there's a lot more competition here," Mr Bayliss said.
Mr Bayliss and Ms Johnson agreed the fitness industry had been impacted permanently by the pandemic and restrictions.
"From my perspective it's going to take at least 18 months for the fitness industry to look something like it used to, if it ever does, because more people have learned that they can work out in their homes quite easily," Mr Bayliss said.
Ms Johnson added: "People didn't have any option other than to work out from home during the lockdown and they might have found they enjoy it more, so businesses need to cater to that now otherwise we will lose local people to someone on the other side of the world offering online classes."
