With most gyms and fitness studios limited or closed altogether due to the COVID-19 outbreak, many people have had their usual fitness routines interrupted in some way.
Fortunately, there are still plenty of in-home exercise options out there, and we’re enlisting the help of local trainers and instructors to share ideas. In the latest installment of our Quarantine Fitness series, owner Katie Douglas and regional manager Matt Clark of Orangetheory Fitness in Greenwood talk about some of their online workout options that people can do at home, regardless of whether they have any gym equipment at their disposal.
When local basketball legend Douglas opened her first Orangetheory studio in Greenwood three years ago, she envisioned local fitness enthusiasts coming together and pushing one another through rigorous high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts on site.
Obviously, the COVID-19 outbreak has put those group exercises on hold for the foreseeable future, but Orangetheory members — and non-members looking for ways to stay in shape during this quarantine period.
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A normal Orangetheory workout would involve rotations on a treadmill, bike or rowing machine, but since most people don’t have access to that equipment in their homes, the company has had to get creative in its approach. The result has been a daily series of online workout videos that the national chain has made available to the public for free.
The videos are accessible either on the Orangetheory website (www.orangetheory.com/en-us/athome) or on YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/Otheoryfitness).
"They get really creative," Douglas said. "They know that not everybody has a bike, not everybody has a treadmill, not everybody has free weights. It’s about them using very limited resources to get a HIIT workout, to get that high intensity interval workout. Our corporate team has done an amazing job, being able to put that together in little to no time."
In addition to the videos being put out by the chain, Clark and the other local coaches at Douglas’ studios have been putting up their own on the local members-only Facebook page. The trainers will go through each day’s Orangetheory workout live, giving Greenwood members a chance to go along with them and give and receive feedback.
"Every day we’ll put a coach live on our members-only pages doing the workouts," Clark said. "That way they can answer any questions and get interactive with the members. If the members have any questions about the exercises, the coaches are right there to give them some fun cues and answer any questions that they have.
"The members get used to seeing the coaches and the staff taking the workouts side by side with them, so it’s the best we can do to achieve that right now while everybody’s on quarantine."
Douglas pointed out that while the locally-tailored videos would ordinarily only be available to members, non-members from the area can request to join the Facebook group during this stay-at-home period and get a free taste of what Orangetheory has to offer.
The instructors doing the workout videos are aware that not everyone has dumbbells or other equipment at home, so they demonstrate various moves with things that everyone would have — toddlers, pets, jugs of laundry detergent, brooms, and so on.
Creating workouts that don’t involve the same equipment that the members are used to using in the gym has been a challenge, but Clark says that the company has tried to replicate the same movements as best it can.
"It is a challenge; we can’t make things exact," he conceded. "Fortunately, we do hire very qualified coaches who are able to give options. We can do things like squats to upright rows, and movements like that that at least incorporate the same muscles that you would use on that rower."
"It’s obviously a modification of an Orangetheory HIIT (high intensity interval training) workout," Douglas added, "but we’ve gotten great feedback and great engagement from our member bases through the studios that I own, so it’s been a good way for people to stay at home but stay active."
As was the case in studio, the workouts offer different levels of modification so that anybody — from professional athletes to Hall of Fame couch potatoes — can take part.
"You can always dial things down to how you feel," Douglas said. "That’s the cool thing about these at-home workouts — it’s for any fitness level, and it’s just for you to have that 30 minutes to kind of stay active and get your mind and body in a better place than it was prior."
That’s even more important during times like this, when going places isn’t really an option.
