Anna Martin
- Apr 15, 2020
- 3 min read

An open letter from a fitpro....

Over the last month, fitness instructors and lovers of all things sweaty have watched their classes, gyms and workouts as they know them, completely disappear. We have suddenly been faced with the reality of what our lives are like without our usual outlets for stress and relaxation, and let’s be honest, it hasn’t been that pretty.

Where we would normally join friends or family for a workout we are walking alone in the park. There are no team sports followed by a friendly pint or group ex classes starting with a coffee in the gym café. The UK fitness industry as we know it was dissolved with immediate and complete effect. Working fitness instructors & gym owners around the UK, just like most other self-employed folk, found themselves out of work and missing not only all their income, but also the very essence of what keeps them ticking day in and day out.

The large majority of gyms and independent instructors have now taken their businesses online, offering PT and a huge range of classes straight to your living rooms. “It’s not the same” we hear you cry and we agree. We prefer to see you face to face too. We wish we could feel the energy in the room when we all hit the peak of the class together, we wish we could be in the squat rack helping you hit a PB, we would sell our right kidney if it meant we could watch a newbie’s face light up when they realise they’ve found the one workout that’s going to change the way they perceive fitness forever. But we can’t. And we won’t be able to for a while. So online it is.

Via the medium of online training and classes, we can reach our current clients and their families and help to keep them fit, healthy and sane during this life-changing time. We understand it might not feel the same, we understand that you might have to re-jig the furniture or get your teenage son to help you get access to your workouts and we appreciate that. But we are also realistic. We cannot bear the thought of our clients sinking back into their old exercise-less, anxiety-ridden patterns. We cannot stomach the thought that one of our clients might feel alone and isolated because they’ve been unable to reach out to the fitness community that they were so heavily involved with. We hate the thought that it may take us another year after being able to return to work to build back up the community that we have spent years creating. And THOSE are the reasons why we are banging on about our online classes and sessions.

Many of us are offering classes/workouts we never contemplated teaching in the flesh, because we know that the content of those workouts will be more beneficial to our clients in the current situation. We want to stop you from getting more lower back pain from being cooped up in doors. We want to do what we can to strengthen your core so when we have face-to-face classes again you are even more of a beast than ever before. We want to dance the night away with you to bring some laughter and smiles into a stressful day, for you AND for us. We want to to help people feel healthier... because that is what we do.

We hope that by doing this we can encourage more people to strengthen their muscles, to improve their fitness levels and to think outside the box when it comes to exercising. We hope that we can cling on to the community that we love so deeply, and we pray that when it is safe to do so, our clients will be back with a vengeance and we will have helped them maintain their fitness & mental strength during (hopefully) the worst health crisis we will see in our lifetime. We want to do what we can in the only way we know how.

We know you might prefer not to workout online, but we really hope you will try it. We really do do this job because we absolutely love the bones of it, from deep within our sweaty hearts. Chipped dumbbells, smelly boxing gloves, ripped up mats and all.

Thankyou for all your support

Anna & the rest of the UK's fitness professionals