WOMEN’S TRAINING
The pandemic revolutionised the home-gym market, but what are the benefits and drawbacks of working out in the comfort of your own abode? Lauren Drinkwater investigates…
confess to being a gym bunny in my 20s. Before kids, lockdown and rising costs of living, things were very different. I would spend my lunch hours or after-work hours in the gym
– a mix of long sessions on one of the cardio machines followed by ab work or weight work, with the odd class thrown in.
I stood by my somewhat fixed formula and maintained a level of fitness, strengthening through repetition and specificity, but not deviating too much from the habitual workouts. It’s a proven fact that we humans like routine and familiarity after all.
However, as we all know, when the pandemic hit, we had to get inventive with our workouts.
IBottles, cans, balls, stairs, even boxes and tea towels were now our fitness equipment while the fitness industry was transformed almost overnight.
Free and easy access to online workouts kept us all sane and if any PT or instructor wanted to keep working, they had to get to grips with social media and filming live virtual workouts pretty quickly else face becoming obsolete. If home workouts were starting to make their way into the fitness industry before 2020, by the time lockdown hit any prior preconception of fitness as an in-person experience had completely been turned on its head. Thousands of small fitness centres and studios were forced to close with others struggling to stay afloat, redesigning their spaces and turning towards more personal workouts, including online training.
LOSS OF FUN?
Two years down the road and the pandemic largely behind us, are
home workouts still as popular? Interactive fitness equipment maker Peloton says that the trend is here to stay. Demand for their bikes rose so much during the pandemic that many customers had to wait months for their deliveries.
Although this backlog has now subsided, sales continued to soar, up 141% in the first three months of 2021. Company founder and CEO John Foley thinks it’s inevitable that technology-driven home fitness will become more dominant, calling the idea of going to a gym “a broken model of yesteryear”.
And yet on the flipside, research from Penn State University found that exertion and enjoyment levels were higher during a live class in the gym versus the exact same workout followed digitally at home. Despite doing the same class, participants’ average heart rate was 14% higher during the gym class, and participants rated the gym-based workout as 13% more enjoyable and 14% more satisfying than the digital workout.
• If you’re on a tight budget,
• Research health and fitness apps/
• Agree on a time with
• Create a combined routine
• Pick up a cheap turbo trainer