Personal trainer and wellness coach, Jordan Comerford, leading workouts from home.
If four months of COVID-19 hasn’t taken a toll on your physical and mental health, then consider yourself lucky.
Not only are many people worried about getting sick, but they’re also dealing with anxiety over lost income, concern for elderly loved ones, sheltering in place, loss of social contact, the stress of working from home with children underfoot, overeating, and boredom.
It can all add up to a toxic mix of physical and mental health problems.
Enter Jordan Comerford, a personal trainer and wellness coach based at Fearless Fitness at 1429 Kingston Rd., just west of Warden Ave. Comerford moved with lightning speed to transition her business fully online after the studio closed on March 24 under order by the Ontario government.
“People’s health, mental and physical health, is so important,” Comerford said. “I feel as a wellness professional that people need me now almost more than ever because people are at home and it’s upsetting and staying active and connected to people and exercising is so good for your physical body…and your mental health.”
Comerford offers group fitness classes and personal training and was able to move 80% of her business online. She’s compensated for the 20% who didn’t transition to online classes with new clients. Almost half of Comerford’s customers are Birch Cliff residents.
Online fitness class via Zoom.
Among them is Pat Brethour, who began exercising with Comerford shortly after Fearless Fitness opened six years ago.
Brethour is an IT project manager and when the pandemic hit she started spending long days on her computer at the dining room table. She felt she needed more delineation between work and home and started online fitness classes with Comerford to carve out some “me time”.
“I love working out with her. She is energetic, she has such a positive attitude, she is able to encourage you through. She helps you set goals to help you attain them. Her routines are set to your level and she’s able to increase that level without you even realizing you’re doing so,” Brethour said.
“Excited with a plan”
Comerford said that transforming her business overnight wasn’t easy.
“I think that the biggest challenge was changing my mindset in the very beginning from “scared and unknown” to “excited with a plan”. Because, in those very first moments, it was like….this is scary. This is unknown for my business, for my livelihood, for everything. What do you mean I can’t open my doors? What do I do?”
Once she got excited and convinced her clients to join her new adventure, Comerford said the second biggest challenge was adapting to the technology of running her business fully online.
She switched to online registration and payment. She moved her exercise area to her kitchen with her laptop set up on a stack of books and then educated clients unfamiliar with Zoom on how to download the app, log in to Zoom, activate their audio and position their laptops so she can monitor their exercises.
At the beginning of the pandemic, fitness equipment was as scarce as toilet paper and Comerford had a plan for that too.
“What I did was, I gave out (exercise) bands, dumbbells, and kettlebells to my current clients because I would rather them be using them at home than just be sitting in an empty studio,” Comerford said. “I always show modifications. If you have nothing at all, I always just make sure that everybody can do everything. Sometimes you can do the workout without. It’s just that adding a band or adding dumbbells or adding a kettlebell makes it more challenging.”
Comerford is one of the lucky entrepreneurs. She’s maintained her business without losing any income and didn’t need subsidies from the federal or Ontario governments.
She’s still paying rent on the Fearless Fitness studio, which she co-owns with trainer Lindsay Saye. She plans to reopen whenever its deemed safe but has concerns about the number of people that will be allowed into her small studio space at one time.
For now, she’s rolling with the punches one month at a time.
You can sign up for fitness classes with Jordan Comerford here.
