Reese Scott started boxing 17 years ago and dreamed of setting up her studio for almost as long. In 2018 she started Women’s World of Boxing, the first female-owned boxing gym in New York and, according to ClassPass Inc, the most popular workout in Manhattan on its app.

Last week, as social distancing measures took hold across the city - and then the US - she temporarily closed her 2,300-square-foot, exposed-brick studio and, for the first time, streamed her workout on Instagram. From her Harlem apartment she manoeuvred lighting and camera frames to best display her full 5ft 4in frame in a 2-by-3-foot space. Especially challenging, she says, is that clients need to be able to see her footwork.

"It is life-changing,” she says. "Going from having brick-and-mortar, an established clientele, and an established flow of business to all of a sudden I have to be very creative and launch a virtual online business in less than a week.”

Scott is one of more than 350,000 fitness instructors and trainers in the US who’ve seen in-person studio classes and personal training sessions dramatically shift in the 10 days. To keep their businesses afloat, they’ve turned to streaming options, whether Zoom, Instagram Live, FaceTime, or YouTube. Many of these classes are being offered for free - for now - as a way for trainers to stay connected while they figure out how to get new and existing clients to pay for their services.

The results can be charmingly DIY, as when an instructor from Shadowbox demonstrated crunches by touching her toes with a container of Clorox in one hand. But depending on your tolerance for choppy video, poor lighting, and unflattering camera angles, they can be a maddening experience as well. The pivot to streaming has highlighted the difference between paying US$30 for a class in a tightly controlled environment and one where pets can scramble your position on a downward dog and children need to be kept clear of kettlebells.

Boutique outfits have been the fitness industry’s biggest driver of growth for much of the past decade. The latest study by the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association found that premium clubs made up the fastest-growing brick-and-mortar exercise category and pushed the industry to an almost US$100bil estimation this year. From 2013 to 2017, membership at boutique studios grew over 120% despite thousands of free instructional videos on YouTube and an estimated 250,000 apps devoted to fitness.

"The central benefit of these boutique experiences is face-to-face interaction,” says Rick Stollmeyer, chief executive officer of fitness-booking app Mindbody. On a typical day the platform will book more than 1 million classes out of 2.5 million available, but that number has essentially dropped to zero. "People are jumping into alternative ways to connect, but it’s already abundantly clear that it’s devastating,” Stollmeyer says. "They’re seeing revenues drop off 80, 90% and in some case 100%.” (SolidCore, which has 72 studios, and Flywheel Sports, with 42 locations, both laid off 98% of their workforce last week.)

Barry’s Bootcamp LLC CEO Joey Gonzalez spent 48 hours over the weekend converting his garage into the closest approximation of the club’s famous "red room”, in order to give the virtual classes a similar look and feel that a class at one of the chain’s 70 locations worldwide would have. The company currently broadcasts two or three classes a day on its @barrys Instagram feed, available for free. "Obviously we were not prepared for this,” Gonzalez says. "We’re operating as a business with zero dollars of revenue coming in and just figuring out how to pay our employees.”

But competition in virtual fitness, like in the physical world, is fierce. The pandemic-driven shutdown is prompting some big brands to either accelerate their online offerings or beef them up. Equinox, which has about 350 gyms and boutique studios, said on Monday that its Variis EQX app will now be available widely for download.

Nike Inc’s Run Club app already offers guided workouts, but the company has made all premium content on its Training Club app free through June 9. Adidas AG is supplementing free training from its Runtastic app with daily virtual sessions on the brand’s Adidas Runners Instagram account.

Meanwhile, on-demand fitness services such as Peloton and Aaptiv have seen their numbers surge. Beachbody CEO Carl Daikeler, who founded his workout-from-home concept in 1998, says new subscriber sign-ups are up more than 200% from the same time last year, and volume is up nearly 80%. (There are approximately 1.5 million subscribers.) "There’s not a shortage of content available,” he says. "The shortage is from programmes that are engaging and will really work. Fitness is the easiest thing in the world to skip.”

Nathan Forster started the streaming workout platform Neo U 18 months ago, says its average number of daily subscribers grew 600% last week. And its kids’ programming has accounted for some of the most popular videos on the site. "Even before coronavirus, everyone knew that the at-home model was here to stay,” he says. "It didn’t need a pandemic to light it on fire, but that’s what it has done.”

The businesses that had already begun to create online options are now at a distinct advantage. "Having our own app was huge,” says Helaine Knapp, founder and CEO of City Row, which has nine locations across the US. When they saw that gym closings would become inevitable, the crew spent two days shooting workouts on their phones so they’d have a bank of content. "We have a production coordinator who was able to get the right instructor, put together a setup in the studio, and have a subset of trainers that have already been trained for the camera,” Knapp says.

Those without their own proprietary outlets have had to get more creative. Nathaniel Jewell, founder of the San Francisco-based mobile rowing studio Dryft, says he decided to use Zoom over Instagram TV or Facebook because the classes can be more interactive. But not being able to control the experience has its own challenges. For each class, Dryft has a team available to troubleshoot customer’s IT questions or help fix a mic or camera that’s not working. "It’s like a mini live TV show production behind the scenes,” Jewell says.

Boxing instructor Scott found herself tapping into a network of other studio owners (as well as her own clients) to create a virtual business model on the fly that also could stick around in the long term. For her first online class, 200 people tuned in. "It was amazing,” she says. "They remind me that I am not alone. It keeps me focused. I have no choice but to level up my game.”

Mindbody’s Stollmeyer finds a measure of hope thanks to this sort of resilience - at least, so far. "These are people’s passions,” he says. "What are they going to do, throw in the towel? And then what, now go look for a job?”

 - Bloomberg