With more people getting vaccinated every day, there are high hopes of life returning to some form of normal. However, the pandemic has had such a massive impact on some industries that they might never return to their former states. One of these hard-hit sectors in the fitness industry.
Closed gyms
Before the pandemic, the fitness industry was booming, with a lot of emphasis coming from health experts on the importance of a good diet and exercise. However, with the onset of the pandemic, gyms were mostly closed, and people are still afraid of interacting in public, even with face masks on. The economic pressure of the pandemic was also unkind to the fitness industry, with many viewing gym membership fees as a luxury.
However, this does not mean that Americans are not staying fit. Necessity is the mother of invention, and what greater necessity than the need to keep healthy on a budget without physically interacting with anyone else?
Home work out is not new. For ages, self-train workout videos have been playing late at night on most TV stations; products like the iPod were actually designed for this purpose. The concept has always been there, but nobody really paid attention to it. Then struck the pandemic and everyone started scrambling to find home workout equipment and self-train videos.
New tech
Luckily, the pandemic struck at the peak of modern technology. Instead of the hard-to-follow training videos that run on TV, people could now stream live sessions from a certified trainer. Unlike streaming a step by step YouTube videos, now there are apps and communities that work like a conference call where you can join a workout group under real-time trainer instructions.
Furthermore, tech companies have been developing fitness apps that work with fitness wearables like smartwatches and fitness bands. The apps can keep track of your daily steps, calculate the distance and time you take for your morning run or workout and keep records of your targets and achievements.
