“Personally, I'm very optimistic about what the fitness industry looks like on the other side of this,” says Lachlan Learg, owner of the yet-to-open Red City Gym in Orange.

Like hospitality and tourism, the fitness industry has been hard hit by the restriction put in place to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. But for Lachlan, the timing of the shutdown order was particularly frustrating. Following months of back and forward with Council over planning permission, the new Red City Gym Orange was all set to open… the very week personal distancing restrictions were put into place.

“We were pretty much due to start the week lockdown came into effect, which was very frustrating,” Lachlan.

Red City Orange is an expansion of the CrossFit gym, Lachlan and his brother founded in their hometown of Dubbo five years ago. Even back then, he said they always saw Orange as the next natural step to expanding their business.

“It was actually a bit of a toss of the coin whether we were going to go Orange or Dubbo and we settled on Dubbo simply because we had more of a support network there with family and friends,” said Lachlan, who had spent a decade working in fitness in Sydney before coming back out west.

“We've kept Orange in the back of our minds since then and so here we are; a few years later and it has come to fruition.”

Well, not quite.

“We are now in a position where we have got a fully-fledged gym, but nobody in it,” said Lachlan, adding that not knowing how long restriction would remain in place has been trying.

“I think the hard thing is there is no timeframe for it. You go to prison and you know how long your sentence is, but we’ve never really got that, which is really, really difficult as a business,” he said.

Like many other gyms, Red City in Dubbo has been hiring out their equipment to members and producing online content, but not having an established membership in Orange ruled out that option for Lachlan.

Still, with restrictions slowly easing, Lachlan remains positive that they will be able to get on with the business on getting people fit and active.

“Timeline wise now there is a hope that things might be as normal as possible by July… We are tossing up at the moment whether it is feasible for us to do a bootcamp outside, but it is Orange in May and not Orange In February!” said Lachlan, who believes the current pandemic could well drive an increased interest in health and fitness.

“CrossFit’s mission has always been one of improved public health, rather than necessarily competitive gain — I think that is something that has been lost in many affiliates around the world. Some people view CrossFit as just a competitive endeavour in its own right, which it can be, but really where we can make the biggest impact is in improving the health of normal people,” said Lachlan.

“The hope is after COVID-19 people will be more aware of that, more aware of those risk categories that could have been prevented by lifestyle. Obesity is the biggest risk outside of age and it is something that is preventable, high blood pressure same thing, diabetes same thing — so the hope is that nationwide there is actually an influx in the fitness industry when things start to open up again.”