March 27, 2020
by Michael Hughes & Paden Hughes
Do you remember when everyone started to say that businesses needed websites, or email was a requirement at your job? Do you remember when everyone suddenly had their own mobile phones?
We are living through a time in our lives where life as we knew is shifting. Not just because we will have gained a lot more perspective and realigned our priorities, but because we are being forced to do something we never otherwise would have done: Live our lives remotely.
We can’t tell you how many people have talked this week about how this will change business, change how we design homes, change how we interact with our friends and family and so many other things.
In Gymnazo, it’s changed how we view remote training. To be totally honest, until last week, we had zero plans of offering remote training. For some reason, whenever we checked out what people were doing online, it was uninspiring. It seemed to be a lot of one on one sessions with coaches who seemed less informed, less successful and less willing to work hard. (Not that we were beingjudgemental at all). But within one week, our hearts have changed.
There was a day last week where we shut off the lights, locked the door, walked out of our empty facility at 4pm on a weekday and it was… depressing. Michael particularly felt like he’d been shot in the heart. When we got home he logged onto Facebook and spent a full hour reading all the comments, jokes, and content our incredible community of 250 people had created in our exclusive Facebook group. And you know what? It changed everything. There was optimism. There was hope. And deep down, we know that no matter how bleak it feels, we will one day look back on this time and be thankful for all it taught us.
If we’ve learned two things through all of this, it’s these:
1. Let go of previous judgements about the quality of life as we knew it.
We stop looking behind us and we start looking ahead to what is here and available now. Even online training has surprised us. We’ve never had more fun as a team, and the community connections have only deepened. We even have a morning show each morning where members join our family for coffee, and we laugh, share stories and bond over the little things that make life special. We’ve done remote Beer Socials on zoom. We’ve met CJ in his garage for a late night Mindful Movement. Been called out by Kaleena with awesome Coach Challenges. We’ve watched as Jonathon demo’d his awesome 3D Body Browse, gotten super sweaty with Sean in his backyard, laughed at Mitch’s daily Question of the Day and centered ourselves with Michelle in her studio for GFlow. It’s been an incredible time. And we are just beginning. But all of this wouldn’t have happened if we’d just folded and waited this out.
2. It’s never been more important to show up for yourself.
To take care of yourself. To intentionally surround yourself with a community that cares, can joke, can adapt and still move forward.
For many of you, Gymnazo was the place you could come to because you didn’t historically find success working out remotely or without accountability. We understand that. Deeply. We’ve built an entire business around people who didn’t like the way fitness was being offered historically.
What we continue to hear now is how important it is to our members to stay sane, to find time for themselves in the chaos, to relieve pent up stress and to connect with friends and the Gymnazo community. We’ve heard fears of losing all the ground you’ve gained in your health over this “shelter in place” order. Yet at the same time, with more access to a greater variety of workout programs, we’re actually seeing clients use this time to focus more on their health and show up for their goals. It’s been so inspiring to see members dive in and embrace this new way and find out that there are genuine advantages to training remotely.
At the end of the day the choice is yours. How are you going to spend COVID-19 pandemic?
It’s our goal to show you what we’ve been up to, to blow past all of our biases of what online training is like and establish a whole new way to engage with Gymnazo staff and community. We will likely never stop remote training based on how accessible, fun and convenient it has been.
So if you’re on the sidelines, waiting to see how this whole situtation shapes up, we invite you to jump back in and get back to prioritizing your health…. mentally, emotionally and of course, physically. When you are ready, we are here for you in a variety of ways and we look forward to seeing you in your living room or garage, ready to crush your workout!
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