2022

rozdział w monografii naukowej

angielski

EN On March 14, 2020 all fitness clubs in Poland were closed for an indefinite period, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They were only allowed to reopen on June 6, 2020, with the last stage of the post-lockdown unfreezing of the economy. Fitness centers operated under new, tighter sanitary regulations until October 17, 2020, when the rise in SARS-CoV-2 cases prompted the Polish government to order the closure of the fitness industry once more, again for an indefinite period. The long list of government guidelines and procedures regulating the operation of clubs and gyms under strict sanitary conditions also defined new rules for organizing time and space within fitness clubs, affecting how the ‘bodies’ of fitness professionals and gym participants were managed. One aspect that proved to be of crucial importance in the context of altering gym participants’ experience associated with the development of physical skills, interacting with others and establishing relations in the new conditions was the obligation to keep a safe physical distance. It meant that the bodies of the exercising gym participants could not be touched, either by instructors or by other clients. And although most fitness culture participants tried to adapt to the new circumstances, not all of them followed the post-lockdown restrictions to the letter. Based on the results of qualitative ethnographic research conducted in one of Warsaw’s fitness centers between the first and the second lockdown in Poland (June–October 2020) and my personal experience as an instructor of group fitness training, this article aims to present, in the local context, how the mandated social distancing affected the social practices developed within the space of fitness clubs, including touch (Blake 2011). It also illustrates how fitness culture participants (instructors and their clients) react to the changes introduced, how they experience them, engage in or negotiate them (either accepting or resisting), and finally, what meaning they ascribe to the changes and how they interpret them. As the work intends to present a local case study, I shall endeavor to demonstrate the so-called intersection of scales, i.e. the collision of various forces (local, national and global) influencing social actors in a given location. The study employs the theoretical framework of social change (Alexander 2004) and sensory anthropology (Blake 2011), and is guided by the case study approach (Stake 1995), which allows to obtain detailed information about daily activities and practices in the setting of interest: the fitness club.

251 - 262

10.18848/978-1-957792-14-9/CGP

https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/restart-sport-after-the-covid19-time-out?category_id=cgrn&path=cgrn%2F282%2F288

Restart: Sport After the Covid-19 Time Out

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