Stay fit by staying home is the new fitness mantra

With people taking fitness as a lifestyle choice, many high-end fitness studios mushroomed in Chennai in the past two years. And most of these centres offer specialised fitness programs for the members. 

For many fitness enthusiasts, the gym is the communal space they miss the most after the shutdown of all public spaces. After the lockdown, many fitness centres in the city have turned online to conduct classes and also give workout challenges to keep their members and others ‘in shape’ and motivated.

Arunvignarajah Rajkumar, a fitness instructor at F45 Neelankarai, says, “Soon after the lockdown was announced, we decided to hold classes online. We started by giving basic workout challenges like how many pushups or skipping a person can do in a minute, etc. To our surprise, not only our regular members, a lot of people who aren’t into fitness also joined the challenges.

It was a fun activity. When it comes to fitness, we have to push people harder. We had a challenge called ‘50-50 mobility challenge’. In this, a person has to sit down on a chair and stand up and sit back with the support of one leg. So, if you are not able to stand and sit back, it means you have mobility problems. 

A lot of people got back to us saying they weren’t able to perform the task. Then only they realised they have some mobility issues (legs aren’t strong enough) and it’s high time they started taking fitness seriously. 

This challenge soon became an awareness -- I think, that’s the whole point when it comes to fitness. Daily, our trainers conduct online classes with a minimum of 15 members. We have designed a hybrid program that involves cardio, body weight, and core workouts. We’ve explained this in detail in our Instagram accounts.”

With many certified trainers sharing their workout routine online, fitness junkies have already started making use of this ‘extra time’ to achieve their desired sixpack. For I Raghuvaran, a trainer at Flux Fitness, Chamiers Road, the lockdown has helped him try out new workouts.

“In the gym, people train with a lot of equipment. But now, we are learning how to do the same exercises without any equipment. It’s time like this, we think out of the box and find ways to adjust to a crisis,” Raghuvaran says.