Why I haven’t hated Lockdown

Let me first start of by saying if course I wish Coronavirus was something from a Resident Evil game and not a real thing and of course I wish in the past month I could have gone to the Steam train day we had planned, to Power Up (a computer game convention) and most important on the 27th April we were going on holiday for a week by the coast.

But I am also going to say despite all the above I have actually not hated Lockdown and there a number of reasons for this. I will start the day the Lockdown really hit me. It was Friday 20th March about 4pm and I was personal training clients and my friend Sam a fellow personal trainer at the Basildon Sporting Village told me it was closing tonight. I was midway through a session but I didn’t panic, I got on with the session and at the end of it spoke to them and we booked in sessions as per normal but explained they would have to be outside. Of course I knew this would affect my work but I adapted to the situation I was faced.

So on Monday 23rd March I delivered 4 personal training sessions outside and then at 5pm it was announced a full lockdown was in place, now I had to go online and this was something I was also very adamant I would not do. I always felt not being there in person really devalued the experience but I thought I have to adapt and it’s something I have to offer, I still maintain its better in person but I know the importance of exercise not just for physical reasons but just as much for mental health and I thought offering online is better than offering nothing.

So on Tuesday 24th March Danielle helped me set up online personal training sessions and we worked as hard as we could to figure out the best possible way to do so and then Wednesday 25th March at 1pm I did my first online Personal Trainer Session and you know what it was better than I thought it would be. It would be better in person and of course we had limited equipment but we made it work. I saw my 2nd online client later that evening and I was surprised how well it all worked.

Lockdown forced me out of my comfort zone and forced me to expand what I offer as a business and being honest for a while I was struggling to see how I could grow my business. I was delivering between 35-40 sessions a week and I was simply fully booked morning and evening. Now because everyone was working from home I was seeing people during their lunchbreak from work and all of a sudden I was able to offer more timeslots to people, I was seeing clients at 7am instead of 9pm because they didn’t have to be on a train to get to work in London and then get back late. It quite simply changed my business and while I know things will go back, the fact is people won’t be working the same way again. Working from home is going to happen more often and the same applies to me. For the first time is 20 years I have consistent nights off.

Now when the country is back to normal I really believe people will be thinking of their health more than ever and personal training is going to be in huge demand and now I can offer to help people in person but also online if they can’t get to the gym or even live in another country.

I am loving having so many nights off, I am a lot spending a lot more time with Bobby and Danielle, people as a whole are being nicer, pollution worldwide is going down, there are positives to take, of course there are many negatives but there are always negatives and positives in life it depends on how you look at life as a whole really I guess, I look for the positives. If I wasn’t able to train then perhaps I would think differently and yes I wish I could use a gym but it’s the end of the world doing home workouts.

In summary Lockdown has forced me to spend more time with my family and expand my business while still being able to see my clients and exercise either outside or at home.

Yes I want things back to normal and yes I wish this never happened but it has and you can either adapt or collapse, I adapted