My Go Coaching lockdown experience
16/9/2020
George O'Farrell of Go Coaching got inventive during lockdown and has come out the other side smiling.
Being a personal trainer, I was absolutely devastated when gyms closed. Being a daily gym visitor, I understood the frustration experienced by many by not being able to exercise regularly. I appreciated my client’s concerns about how they would manage to keep their health and fitness goals on track during lockdown. With limited access to equipment and sometimes small spaces to workout in, my focus was initially on creating effective exercise routines for clients to follow at home, advising them how to modify and adapt their normal training routines and importantly keeping them motivated.
Primarily, I concentrated on motivating clients online to reassure them that their goals needn’t change or be put on the back burner during lockdown and showed them how to adapt their training. With the right mind-set it is absolutely possible to continue to lose body fat or gain muscle using minimal exercise equipment and indeed, for some people with more spare time on their hands than usual this was a perfect opportunity to better focus on building health, fitness and wellbeing into their daily regime.
During lockdown and unable to train and work in the gym, I transitioned 1-2-1 coaching clients online. This was received incredibly well by clients determined to keep up their healthy routines during lockdown through their own hard work and perseverance. Some clients now favour this online service and will be continuing with it despite gyms now having re-opened.
One thing I did benefit from in lockdown was time which I used to design a membership portal, called The GO Coaching Academy. The biggest challenge was collating the material and training resources including guides, videos, workouts programmes, nutrition targets, recipe packs, progress badges etc to provide clients with access to multiple fitness tools, all in one place for ease of reference. This had been on the GO Coaching list for quite some time and it feels satisfying to have finally found the time to complete it!