A phrase used quite often is that life is all about balance but what they didn’t say or anticipate was that a lockdown puts you in a false state of balance. This period has been full of challenges as an independent business and like many others we had to evolve as we moved through the lockdowns of 2020 and into 2021.
Today I sit here 1 day after our doors reopened on April 12th, reflecting on what has been and the optimism of what is to come.
Having our social and work freedoms restricted moved us all into finding a balance that was fundamentally unusual.
K1 Fitness is all about interaction and the enjoyment of everyone here, creating those moments of belonging.
Fitness professional are all geared to being face to face with their audience and thrive off of the in-person interaction and then effectively overnight we were logging into our online live streams to deliver our services. I am sure some trainers out there prefer the online life but the team and I here at K1 aren’t those trainers. We won’t hide from that.
Sure we delivered a strong online offering but it wasn’t the same, how could it be?
Lockdown one showed many of my colleagues in the industry how special their members and staff were. There was a real sense of we’ll get through this together and we’re not going anywhere.
When you look at things from the outside or from someone who isn’t connected with a gym they will appear from the outside to be just that, a gym. What you get in places like ours at K1 is something sprinkled with a little bit of magic, engrained from years of experience cultivating an environment whereby you feel it is part of you. It doesn’t happen over night but done right you create a fitness business you can be proud to run and proud to be a member of. I have mentioned this as there was a real fear that the years of hard work were going to be lost very quickly due to the pandemic.
Each lockdown brought with it a period of fatigue and this last one seems to have delivered the biggest dose (shameless vaccine pun).
I have seen it with our coaches and members alike and it has been a delicate balance of keeping spirits high, being empathetic and making sure the business survives to re-opening day. Owners and operators throughout the industry have been striving to adapt, to survive and pushing to thrive throughout the pandemic and at times it has come at a cost both monetarily and emotionally. Let’s be honest and say that this has been tough period in time for most, if not all of us. I am definitely a glass half full kind of guy and I was at times questioning who stole the jam from my doughnut.
Not every fitness business will have come through this period, which as I write this, makes my heart feel heavy as I take a deep breath and sigh as I know first hand how much fitness business owners care.
Credit where credit is due to my colleagues that have kept working hard and believing in better days.
April 12th 2021 was a better day.
The lead up to it gave a real sense of purpose.
We have taken the opportunity of the lockdowns to refine our product, service offering and the direction we want to take as a business. It is and will always be geared to those of you that we are lucky enough to have come through our doors.
Getting to K1 for the reopening felt like we had never left. The 4am alarm rang out (OK, I haven’t missed that!), kettle on, coffee made and into the car I went. Then something happened which I won’t be alone in feeling and that was an excitement to be back doing what I love. The routine of switching the lights on, getting the kit ready and greeting our members with a big smile.
We’re back doing what we love, in a space that we see more than our homes and you know what. That is OK.
We’ll make sure we are doing what we can to remain safe, remain open and embracing running a fitness business in this covid era we are in.
Here’s to finding the way forward together.
Thanks for reading.
Nick