The covid-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented increase in the sale of home training equipment. From bikes to dumbbells, do people still use them now?
The covid-19 pandemic was responsible for a huge wave of enthusiasm for fitness around the world. Closures and new work and school routines had left people with a lot of free time. On top of that, there was a renewed focus on health and immunity. Together, these two factors led many to engage in exercise and recreational sports activities for the first time in their lives. Those who were already active increased the time they spent on their fitness routines.
Since all the gyms and fitness centers were closed, people bought a lot of equipment and set up their own home gyms. From kettlebells and dumbbells to bikes and resistance bands, people have been enjoying fitness equipment, making it one of the most in-demand categories across all online marketplaces for most of 2020.
Three years later, the world has largely returned to pre-pandemic routines, with the World Health Organization last month declaring Covid-19 no longer a public health emergency but merely a health problem. like any other common ailment. All gyms, fitness studios and sports facilities are also open. So what happened to all the equipment that was purchased during the pandemic?
Bicycle: There was such a demand for bikes that dealers couldn’t keep up and people had to wait weeks before they could get a bike. Except for a few who took cycling seriously and can still be seen pedaling their upgraded road bikes, most cycles are rusting.
Shalin Mehta, a businessman from Kolkata, was aware that something like this could happen and therefore decided to buy a basic Firefox bike instead of a basic bike from a serious cycling brand, which costs about three times what He paid for his bike. As soon as the traffic on the roads began to increase and the artificial turf reopened, he stopped cycling and went back to playing cricket and socializing with friends. In the last two years, the bicycle has been, at best, used by your teenager to go to school or visit his friends. Mehta’s cycle is not the only one to have met this fate.
Kettlebells and dumbbells: This particular pandemic purchase is still very useful and is often used by anyone who has purchased it. The big difference between before and after the pandemic is that a large percentage of people who adopted an active lifestyle during confinement have maintained it.
These people don’t like missing too many workouts and actually feel guilty when they do. Both dumbbells and kettlebells are highly versatile and can be used for a number of strength workouts, and are still put to good use when work or circumstances put the gym out of reach.
resistance bands: Not as ignored as cycling, and not as popular as kettlebells and dumbbells, resistance bands fall somewhere in between. Business and leisure travel are back with a vengeance, and those who are reluctant to put training aside entirely while on the road make good use of these. Easy to pack, they’re still a great accessory for any type of resistance training, making a decent substitute for dumbbells.
Weighted vests: This is a very popular accessory in the CrossFit community. During the pandemic, many eagerly bought them because they didn’t have access to any weights. It remains a highly versatile exercise accessory to this day, but with the pandemic firmly in the past and all free weights and machines readily available again, the weighted vest, like mine, is practically a dead weight gathering dust in the warehouse. .
Pull up bars: It didn’t take a pandemic to install a doorjamb pull-up bar. But the pandemic definitely made the trend more popular. But ultimately, these have fallen out of favor, mainly because home workouts have faded. They’re probably still stuck in the door frame, but they’re used more for hanging things than doing push-ups.
Indoor Connected Exercise Bikes: The Peloton bike was so popular when the pandemic hit that its demand and the company’s share prices skyrocketed in 2020. This led to the launch of some smart connected exercise bikes in India during the pandemic.
On-demand video workouts and the flexibility and convenience of doing your workouts at the time and place of your choosing made these stationary exercise bikes ideal for the pandemic. Since the world reopened, most people have chosen to exercise outside their homes, turning these bikes into a mere private screen for streaming content from their phones.
Shrenik Avlani is a writer and editor and co-author of The Shivfit Wayto functional fitness book
