The new normal? Movement not just for body, but for mind.
How brands can reconnect with people whose approach to fitness has fundamentally changed.
It’s not news to anyone that the COVID-19 crisis has changed everything. How we live, work, shop and socialise have radically altered shape and form, with the pandemic sweeping in changes that seemed unthinkable six months ago. And one of the most striking? The way we think about fitness — and how more people are now turning to physical activity to manage anxiety, stress, and worries about the future.
The link between physical and mental wellbeing is not a new one. A study published in The Lancet Psychiatry in 2018 examined the exercise habits of of 1.2 million people. It found that those who took regular exercise struggled with their mental health far less than those who didn’t — they experienced a 43% decrease, in fact, in the mental health burden. Yet while we understand the need to stay fit in order for our bodies to feel good and function well, argues mental fitness consultant, Charlotte Wiseman, “most of us don’t do anything to look after our minds until we have a problem.”
While there was growing awareness of studies such as the Lancet’s pre-pandemic, the link between physical and mental health rarely made it into mainstream content and campaigns. During lockdown, however, Sport England noticed that people started opening up. “More and more people are talking about exercise being part of the approach to managing both their physical and mental health,” says Lisa O’Keefe, Executive Director of Insight at Sport England.
It appears that COVID-19 has crystallised the link between physical and mental fitness in many people’s minds.“It’s time to redefine what it means to ‘go to the gym’, assigning mental health management the same status as physical health,” agrees Wiseman. That redefinition is already overdue. The change that occurred did so swiftly and fundamentally, posing a clear challenge as we head into a COVID winter: as businesses and brands, how do we help embed that change? How do we reconnect with communities whose attitudes have been so altered, and how do we help them build a new normal that better aligns body and mind?
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