Life doesn’t offer you very many chances to start fresh.
We all pretend that New Year’s is a fresh start, and we metaphorically think of Mondays as new beginnings.
But really, the number of fresh starts we *actually* get in life are few. Maybe we start a new job or a new relationship, or maybe we move to a new city or a new home. That’s about it for new beginnings for most people.
Until 2020, that is, when everyone’s life got flipped turned upside down.
And now that gyms are reopening, at least in terms of fitness, we’re ALL about to get a fresh start.
That applies no matter which fitness person you were in quarantine.
Maybe you were the person who started out strong, doing your Fit House at-home workouts for all of April and diligently walking your extra mile or two despite the awful “spring” weather we had back then. But maybe now you haven’t done an at-home workout since sometime when it last snowed (um, that was May!).
Maybe you were the person who was so overwhelmed with work from home, school from home, ordering groceries from home, and searching for toilet paper from home that you just couldn’t even fathom thinking about working out in addition to everything else.
Maybe you were the person who, like my brother, worked out in your sister’s dungeon-esque basement with the wobbly Sears-Roebuck-special bench press/squat rack combo, doing lying leg curls on a furniture slider and more split squats than you ever want to do again in your life. (FYI, my brother has spent so much time in my dungeon-esque basement that I might start calling him Sloth and feeding him Baby Ruths.)
Quite honestly, none of that matters now.
Whoever you were during quarantine, that person gets a new beginning, starting now, with the reopening of Fit House.
It doesn’t matter if you were the gung-ho-trainee-turned-unmotivated-couch-potato. It doesn’t matter if you were the stressed-out-over-scheduled-home-schooling-mama-bear. It doesn’t matter if you were the basement-bench-pressing-Sloth-wannabe.
We all have the chance, right now, to start fresh and create our fitness identities.
As trainers, we, too, have a chance to start fresh. We have a chance to rebuild our systems, make our training more effective, and create clients who are not only strong but who are also bulletproof in a world where fitness and health are the best defense.
It’s easy to think about what we have all been through during quarantine and feel sorry for ourselves. We have all lost something, some meaningful part of our life, our experience, or our livelihoods. Those losses, though, contain lessons—things we can learn to move forward in positive and even more thoughtful ways, so that our futures are better, regardless of what the world brings us next. (2020 ain’t over, yo.)
Our fitness losses contain lessons, too. Maybe we’ve learned we need more personal accountability to stay on track. Maybe we’ve discovered that our relationship with food needs more work. Maybe we’ve had time to heal an old injury and can finally focus on strength in new ways.
Whatever we have learned, it’s time to put those lessons to use.
Whatever we lost, it’s time to get it back.
Our fresh start, our new beginning, kicks off September 14th. I hope you’ll be there with us.
About the author
Kristen Perillo
Kristen Perillo is a teacher by day, trainer and nutrition coach by night. She's also a Star Wars nerd, writer, dog (and cat) mom, peanut butter junkie, and Seinfeld devotee. Fitness has done nothing but make her life better, and she is privileged to show other people that it will do the same for them.
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