How Trainers Are Adapting to a Virtual Fitness World

My gym emailed me a link yesterday to an app called TrainHeroic. The platform features “team pages” where trainers can post video demos of equipment-free workouts. As long as my gym is closed, the manager assured me, free content will be posted for members.

I appreciated the gesture, and understand how tough this must be for my gym, a small, local fitness center that can’t afford to have half its community freeze memberships over the next two months. It’s a particularly difficult set-up for trainers at those gyms, whose livelihoods depend on a steady stream of extra-paying members, and whose day-to-day mental health and happiness (routinely ranked near the top of American professions, alongside yoga instructors), is obviously about to take a hit.

In the interest of retaining that sense of purpose, though, and keeping people healthy and motivated even when miles away, trainers just about everywhere are going virtual. Planet Fitness is offering free at-home workouts, streaming from a Facebook page. Pilates and yoga instructors from Boston to Dubai are hosting multiple sessions a week, and even urging followers to vote on a day/time of day that works best for them. New York dance studio Jane DO just launched a fitness app. And running coaches at studios like Thoroughbred, based in Marin County, CA, are putting together “care packages” with bespoke local runs and playlists.

Of course, there’s already an extensive library out there of workout apps, at-home machines and DIY YouTube channels. Think: Fitness Blender, Centr, Nike Training Club, The New York Times’ Seven-Minute Workout. We could be home a while, and it’s more important than ever — for your lungs, for your sleep, for your sanity — that you spend some of that time sweating. I recommend taking advantage of anything that piques your interest, but keeping in mind that local trainers (who almost always have an Instagram page) are probably posting workouts and inspiration to social, or working with their studios to get constant content up on an app. Support them, work with them, and while nothing else right now is certain — results will come.

Subscribe here for our free daily newsletter.