I’d known it was coming for a while. In fact we all had. Gym members and coaches alike. Many of our members are frontline workers in the NHS and social care and the severity of the coronavirus outbreak had been clear for some time.
Due to our style of coaching, strength training in small groups of no more than five in a spacious gym, meant we were well set up for social distancing. We had bags of sanitiser, antibacterial wipes and our conscientious members cleaned up after themselves meticulously.
When Boris Johnson announced that all gyms, along with leisure centres, restaurants, pubs and hotels, must close I knew it was absolutely the right thing to do.
Yet it still felt like a punch to the stomach. I’d bet there were thousands like me across the city asking exactly the same question: What now?
As I closed the shutters of Perform Gym that day, I realised that after almost four years, it was the first time I didn’t know when I’d be back, or if I’d be back at all.
As I drove home, my phone was pinging with messages in the Perform Gym Community WhatsApp group. If I’m being honest, I couldn’t bear to look. I’d spoken to members about a vague plan to take training online if we ended up in the worst case scenario.
But I knew that members working in other affected sectors would be struggling for cash. They’d need to cut costs to get by and who would want to pay for a gym they couldn’t use for an indeterminate period of time?
I’m not one to procrastinate, so when I got home, I plucked up the courage to read all the messages that had come through in the hour or so since the announcement. The response was amazing.
So many of our members, privately and in our shared groups, had pledged to maintain their membership for as long as they were able to do so. They said wonderful things about how the "Perform Fitness family" was not just a gym, but a part of their social life and a way of staying sane amongst the chaos of life generally.
They all wanted to find ways to keep fit and to keep our tight-knit community together during lockdown. I’m not going to lie, it was an emotional moment and it took me hours to pull together the email for our entire client base, which I had dreaded sending.
As well as being honest about my needs and those of Perform’s employees, I knew I had to look out for my clients too. I worked out a plan to take all of our regular sessions online, without the need for all our usual gym equipment. For a technophobe like me, the real issue was getting to grips the platforms I needed to do that.
I was lucky to have such a patient and understanding client base, who tuned in with beer, chocolate and glasses of wine to heckle my first Zoom training session and comment with merciless jibes when I fluffed my way through a Facebook Live workout. It’s good to know there is support out there!
I handed over our stock of sanitisers to gym members who were key workers and or caring for vulnerable people and even opened up some of our online training resources to the public. I reckon that we all need stuff to keep us occupied right now and all these exercise beginners taking up high-impact HIIT classes and jogging would be better with a gentle strength training session, it’ll create a lot less damage to their joints and they’ll see a lot more benefit.
Since the lockdown began, we’ve developed something of a new normal. Instead of heading to the gym, I’m delivering training sessions out of a quickly repurposed shed in my back garden. My fellow coach, Aaron, is filming workouts with specific equipment to share with our clients and people are becoming more confident and comfortable training together and enjoying nutrition seminars using video conferencing.
In many ways, it’s accelerated a part of the business I’d been thinking about for years. Free of the pressure for it to be perfect and just delivering what we can with what we have, it’s started something that I hope will remain after this is all over.
In a weird way, it’s brought us all closer too. We have the same laughs as we did in the gym but now we are in one another’s living rooms and kitchens. We’re seeing one another’s pets and families and in our group chats we’re sharing memes, advice and support when people are struggling. It’s actually really uplifting.
This week marks the gym’s fourth birthday. It’s not quite where I expected to be four years down the line. How and even if we’ll emerge from this is still uncertain, but I’m feeling positive. This lockdown is forcing us all to look out for one another, think differently and ultimately I think that can only be a good thing.
This is the latest in the ECHO’s series of Coronavirus Diaries, focusing on people’s individual experiences during this unprecedented time. If you have a story to share, email laura.davis@reachplc.com or comment below.
