Fitness facility going online to keep people active during COVID-19
By Jensen, Randy on April 9, 2020.
With doors closed due to COVID-19 health orders, local gyms and fitness facilities have been moving to online alternatives to keep their members active. Herald photo by Ian Martens @IMartensHeraldGreg Bobinec
Lethbridge Herald
As a way to improve the overall well-being of its members, a local fitness facility has expanded its online alternatives for exercise for the whole community to keep active, motivated and uplifted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kinetic Indoor Cycle & Fitness Lethbridge wanted to make sure its members were keeping on track and taking care of themselves during this stressful time physically and mentally, and began their online community classes.
“When we closed down a couple of weeks ago, we realized that there was definitely a need to keep people consistent with their fitness regime,” says Kinetic owner Sandra Asuchak. “We were also huge advocates on how much physical activity impacts your mental well-being, so we didn’t want people to get sidetracked and decided right away that we were going to offer free online classes.”
After realizing the need and importance of physical activity during this time, Asuchak and her team decided to offer the classes to everyone in the community free of charge as a way to say thank you for the support the community has shown them since their opening five years ago.
“At first what we did was we created a new Facebook page for our existing members and we published them on there, but then we thought it would be nice for all members of the community to access it and so we started a YouTube channel where people can find our pre-recorded classes and they can do the exercises and classes whenever it’s convenient,” says Asuchak. “We are not charging anything extra like a subscription fee for any of the classes, we just figured now is a time to give back to an amazing community that has been giving back to us over the last five years. It’s our way of saying thank you for supporting us from the day we opened to the day that we temporarily closed and we look forward to seeing them again when we reopen after this crisis is over.”
Kinetic Cycle & Fitness is offering a variety of classes from ones that require some weights or equipment, and others that require none; from cycling classes, to yoga, Barre, HIIT, Tabata, strengthening classes, and Baby Mama Classes to fit every level of physical fitness.
“We have offered a variety of classes where some of them are body weight only, no equipment required. Some of them are a combination with equipment or modified with no equipment, and then we do offer, because we started off as a spin studio, we do offer online spin classes for people who have a fit-bike at home or a bike trainer that they can pop their road or mountain bikes onto,” says Asuchak. “Throughout our regular Facebook page and through our Instagram, we are posting daily workouts as well, so if people are either getting tired of just looking at a screen or watching TV, we offer workout schedules to print out or to write down. We post recipes as well because we know that we have a little more time on our hands and, unfortunately, we are less mobile. One important factor is keeping our nutrition in check. You can’t exercise out a bad diet as much as we would hope.”
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