Northwest Personal Training Reinvents Itself Amid Global Pandemic

One week before WHY Racing’s first event in 2020, we were informed that we had to cancel it. Despite the pandemic, we wanted to give the athletes something to run for. Instead of no finish line, we opted for a virtual finish line. WHY launched new virtual events, upgraded SWAG and did wild and crazy things to encourage people to register for virtual events. (It’s challenging to get people to sign up and pay so they can race on their own.) Nearly 12,000 athletes participated in our virtual events in 2020. In addition to helping these community members stay healthy and strong, our events helped raise more than $500,000 for various nonprofits and causes.

During shutdown, we renovated our facility, revamped our website, launched a virtual group session that we offered complimentary to essential workers to give back to those on the front lines and hosted several free virtual workouts and webinars for our community. We also applied for every possible grant to keep cash flow coming in.

Frequent communication with staff and clients is key to maintaining relationships and building trust and transparency. We had weekly virtual staff meetings to check in, explain new safety protocols and motivate them to keep going. We communicated with clients via Facebook Live videos, Zoom presentations, emails, phone calls and online surveys. Our messages showed our facility renovations, demonstrated new COVID safety protocols and continued to provide critical health and nutrition tips to keep our clients motivated and help them cope through the challenging times.

In June NWPT reopened with hybrid private, group, indoors, outdoors and virtual training. We ramped up our marketing efforts and focused on our private, by-appointment, clean, safe facility.

After weeks of being closed again, we were allowed to reopen on January 11 for private, one-on-one training. We follow strict health and safety protocols and are doing everything we can to offer the safest option for indoor fitness and training. We also continue to offer personal and group training virtually and outdoors. Because we were proactive, we have avoided extreme layoff and bankruptcies common in the fitness industry during COVID.

Even during a global pandemic, we continue to accomplish our mission. We can host virtual events and virtual training. We can give people something to train for and look forward to as they achieve a sense of accomplishment, continue to focus on their physical strength, mental health, stress relief and immune system. We can provide them a sense of community to counter the sense of isolation. We’re also providing something fun and positive—something we all need during these tough times.

Virtual training has opened doors for us and built partnerships around the world. I recently taught a group class with clients in three countries. On a single January day, I taught a live fitness class in Mexico, then taught a webinar with a number of fitness professionals in Ireland and finished with a Zoom meeting with fitness facility owners from across the state discussing how to petition for federal funding for struggling fitness facilities.

2020 was not what we expected. The lockdown derailed our plans and presented more challenges to our businesses than we’ve ever encountered. But here’s what 2020 taught us: To be flexible, resilient, to deal with disappointment—and to be creative in finding new ways to do business.

I knew we had succeeded when many clients emailed to tell me we were their silver lining of 2020. Many reported that they wouldn’t have made it through 2020 as strong and as well without the services we provided during this pandemic. We’ve been hustling like crazy to survive, take care of our clients and keep them safe. It made it all worthwhile when a client posted on my Facebook page: “NW Personal Training is doing so well! I feel safe and comfortable there!”