Obstacle Mud Runner - issue 15

For Elite Atheletes to Fun Runners 9 At the end of March 2020, we went into our first (of many) lockdowns. All of a sudden, our regular workout havens were shut and we were left with no access to equipment, community or motivation! But something incredible happened as a result. Fast acting and innovative companies and trainers began to bring the same energy and passion delivered in their gyms and studios straight to your living room. It was by no means perfect, but shortly after the lockdown began, we had access to an abundance of live (often free) workouts online that could be completed using our own body weight and a couple of cans of soup. It was fun (at first at least). After a few weeks of adjustment, those cans of soup turned into dumbbells and kitchen floors into yoga mats; and soon after, those Instagram workouts turned into fully fledged online training platforms. We now suddenly had access to a huge variety of exercise modalities from HIIT sessions to Barre workouts without having to leave the house. With the world seemingly taking positive steps back to normality, what happens next? Are we ready to get back to training in the real world? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of online training to figure out what our future fitness habits are going to look like. THE PROS Convenience: Training from home certainly has its upsides. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly it’s convenient. We are undoubtedly going to get busy again meaning we will be shorter on time. Online training platforms bring the gym to you – for many this is a game changer, freeing up much needed hours of their day to fill with social and family time. Cost: Not a lot to explain here. Delivering sessions online, especially classes, is a much cheaper offering from a gym and as a result those savings are passed onto the consumer, greatly cutting your fees. Global access: You can literally access these workouts from anywhere in the world. Stuck in a hotel room? Whip out your phone and press play on your favourite on-demand or live workout. What’s more, you can experiment with trainers/gyms anywhere in the world. THE CONS Atmosphere/community : It’s just not the same. As convenient, and cheap, and flexible as home/online workouts are, nothing matches the atmosphere and energy of a real gym. Not even close! Lack of kit: Unless you managed to kit out your home with a fully-fledged gym setup, you are going to run out of variety with your equipment. Motivation/results: The flip side of home workouts being cheaper and more convenient is that it’s much harder to motivate yourself and far easier to cancel. If you have a PT session, class or workout booked in (and paid for), you are accountable to turn up, which in turn will get you a better result over time. SUMMARY The future of fitness has undoubtedly changed. The Pandemic hasn’t altered the course of the industry, it’s just sped it up. Online training was always going to become a part of our lives, it’s just arrived much quicker and on a much larger scale. Ultimately, we’ve now got access to the best of both worlds and that a hybrid style training methodology will enable people to create more effective workouts. We all want maximum results in minimum time. Carving up your workout routine to include some ‘Real life’ and ‘virtual’ workouts will allow us to access more variety, giving us much more flexibility to fit in our training whatever our diary looks like. At the Better Body Group we are running a fully integrated online training platform with 8 live classes a week and over 200 on-demand as well as all of our normal in person classes, personal training and transformations. For more information visit www.betterbodygroup.co.uk or email us at [email protected] The Future of Online Fitness Over the past 12 months the fitness industry, and the way we workout, has fundamentally changed. RACE: TRAINING