Pandemic fitness assemblages: The sociomaterialities and affective dimensions of exercising at home during the COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

The implementation of physical distancing measures and lockdowns across the globe to control the spread of COVID-19 has led to the home becoming a focal point of exercise and fitness activities for many people. A plethora of digital tools were hastily assembled to help people workout at home or in spaces close to home: including apps with workout suggestions, online videos and livestreamed fitness classes. In this article, we draw on our empirical material collected through semi-structured interviews and virtual ethnographic home tours with Australian adults to explore the ‘pandemic fitness assemblages’ generated with and through their improvised pandemic fitness practices inside and outside their homes. These materials illustrate how bodies, digital and non-digital technologies, and place and space came together and help to surface the affects, sensations and embodiments that emerged. We describe how people’s re-imagined fitness practices contributed to daily routines, transformed the atmospheres of the home and yielded affective experiences of escape. To do so, we think with sociospatial and feminist materialism theoretical frameworks that emphasise the generative relationships emerging between human and more-than-human forces and entities. Our analysis further illuminates the situatedness and relationality of these heterogeneous forces and considers how they come to matter within the broader sociomaterial context of COVID-19.