Training at home is all the rage, we all know that. During the first days of the quarantine, we only had to enter our Instagram feed to find a few, or hundreds, of demonstrations of the “fit” and happy that we kept at home training. Forty days after the quarantine, the number of stories , obviously, has decreased. Not so the interest, which is still high, very high. However, training at home is not new . In fact, it has been in the making for more than 70 years.
The Jack LaLamme Show and the home workout boom
Before fitness influencers on Instagram, they were on TV. Although they were not called influencers , but gurus. As is the case with Jack LaLanne, who in 1951 made the first training program broadcast on television .
At the age of 15, Jack LaLanne (1914 – 2011) was – like many – a huge junk food addict . After starting to learn (unfortunately, Training.com had not been launched yet) about nutrition and sports, he decided to get inspired and completely changed his approach in life . And he did it so much that he made the television program The Jack LaLanne Show, which was initially broadcast on a channel in San Francisco, United States. The success was so great that the American network ABC decided to broadcast it nationally, making it not only the first, but the longest in history: it was broadcast for 31 years.
Throughout his history, Jack LaLanne published books, produced small individual videos, and even appeared in motivational photographs (that is, everything we see now on Instagram and YouTube, he already did more than 60 years ago). During his shows, it was also common for him to talk about the “before and after” of some of his followers. Sounds like something, right?
20 Minute Workout Shift
After the end of Jack’s shift, the 80s arrived; and, with them, stress and busy professionals (yes, they weren’t invented today either). This is where the 20 Minute Workout found its big moment . It was a Canadian program aired Monday through Friday, where young people in leotards did high intensity aerobics in just 20 minutes (yes, high performance was not invented in 2010 either). The show only produced two seasons. However, it was very successful and, due to the large number of episodes aired, managed to syndicate itself and it was broadcast for many years in the United States through Orion Television.
The program – which did not last 20 minutes, but 30 – was so successful that hundreds of spin offs were created as a result of it, having local versions in almost all the advanced countries of the world.
DVD turn: Insanity Training, an extreme way to train at home
The DVD brought variety and, with it, hundreds of programs. One of the most popular production companies, Beachbody On Demand , produced some of the most remembered DVDs, such as P90X3 and Insanity Training, training programs that were characterized by extreme toughness – or were impossible to complete.
The programs, which incorporated epic music and ‘public’ that accompanied the instructor, were widely accepted, with this production company producing more than 50 different programs.
Wii and the new era
In 2012 the Wii Balance Board, an accessory incorporated alongside the famous WiiFit game , entered the Guinness Book of Records. And no wonder: it had sold more than 40 million units worldwide.
The console, which was a great sales success, opened the opportunity for competition to offer more forms of training, such as the Xbox Kinect, where the popular Nike + game was released for the Xbox 360 console , then Xbox Fitness was the one that would take over (which, by the way, used many of the videos originally released on DVD, such as Insanity Training).
The system was capable of detecting what the video was doing to verify that the position you were having at that moment was the ideal one . A novelty for the time that, unfortunately, the market did not value enough and ended up not working.
Youtube and Apps to train at home
In the 10’s, YouTube entered our lives, replacing (or not) television with our mobile screen. The accessibility to publish, where the barrier of entry to make a video and that it is published separates it just under an hour of work (although the quality can be more than improved), has made the training videos of the most popular channels are really worthy of appearing on any national television.
We cannot fail to mention at this point Sergio Peinado and his channel ‘Train with Sergio Peinado’ which, with 2.69M subscribers, is one of the most popular channels in the fitness community in Spain . In 2013 his channel, like that of many others, began with short explanatory videos of approximately 10 minutes where he introduced a character called ‘Fuertaco’. In it, Sergio has been in charge of demystifying the biggest myths related to the world of the gym.
Thanks to Sergio, and many other Youtubers and media, we have progressively left the myth of Fuertaco behind , and the channel has been able to evolve towards a much more entertaining content that includes training and where the live sessions as a result of the confinement by COVID stand out. -19 .
In the territory of apps , in addition to YouTube itself, multiple alternatives have emerged over the years. One of the companies that has managed to consolidate the most is, without a doubt, Freeletics . However, in the territory of runners, some such as Strava or Runtastic have also managed to carve out their niche.
And later, Instagram
Training at home, in its ‘live’ mode, is something that had already become popular years before for the most demanding public. Perhaps the company that stood out the most in this regard was Peloton, which introduced – in a somewhat controversial way due to its high cost – live training for all its subscribers . Despite the emergence of competition, it is noteworthy that this was the one that managed to do it in a more elegant way (due to its cost). The workouts, often done on a treadmill or bicycle, can be followed online with subscribers from all over the world.
Due to the confinement decreed by the Government of Spain on March 12 of this year, the online trainings have reached the following platform: Instagram . If before we mentioned that a video can be uploaded after a modest edition, on Instagram the concept has been simplified even more: Influencers (or not influencers) issue trainings for all their followers through the famous stories .
Even small gyms, such as Wishbone Crossfit, in Rivas-Vaciamadrid, combine stories , small editions, and even live classes through Zoom to keep all its members in shape during confinement.
Without a doubt, training at home did not start with confinement, it had been with us for a long time. However, the confinement may have served to popularize these workouts even more. Will we change the way we train forever?
