Mumbai: As nationwide lockdown has been enforced until May 3 in a bid to control soaring cases of coronavirus, suspending mass gathering everywhere, including gym, which forced fitness trainers to pull up their socks and shift focus on virtual gym sessions.
Interestingly, so far everyone was familiar with virtual classrooms, which became popular and considered as the new era in education pattern. At such a time, with lockdown in place, the same concept is being embraced by fitness trainers to sustain in market, especially in this critical situation, where people's jobs are at stake.
Libin Mathew, a Mumbai-based freelance fitness trainer and winner of muscle mania India 2016, who is currently training actor Ashmit Patel via virtual training, said, "Learning by going to gym or getting training through online doesn't make any difference if the person's goal are clear that he/she wants to lose fats and gain muscles by using their body weight." Mathew so far has seven clients to whom he is training through virtual session.
Mathew further said, "Right now from the perspective of staying fit and building strong immune system it very important to start doing some activity why because as due to lockdown people are at home they cannot go out even for a walk.
While generally people say due to office work they do not get time to attend gym or go for morning walk, but now in this lockdown they can develop a healthy lifestyle. So once the lockdown is lifted they will continue doing some kind of exercise."
Another fitness trainer named Rahul Dudhankar who had trained popular producer Ekta Kapoor is scaling his reach by promoting his virtual class fitness training sessions via book my show app, Instagram, Facebook pages. He explained, "like people book movie tickets they can book my session through this app for free and see me performing live.
I believe it is for the first time such experiment has been conducted through this promotional application. It has increased my Facebook and Instagram page likes. I am connected with new people who ask me questions related to exercise and diet and its remarkable.
Moreover, virtual fitness session has helped me to connect with various people located at different places." The cost of virtual gym differs from trainer to trainer.
However, the standard cost of virtual gym class range from Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,500 per month like a normal gym fees. Saurish Roy an Andheri based freelance trainer is conducting online fitness sessions from more than six months.
According to him though virtual training helps to expand connection but those who are interested and opting for this, should carefully understand the background of the trainer. "I am into this profession from past several years and thus I understand how to train a fresher and an experienced individual."
He asserted, nowadays there are several people who are conducting such virtual class based on their client's body physique. "Getting tips from such short experienced trainers can cause some major injury. Therefore utmost care should be taken while choosing your personal trainer for online class," Roy stated.
