In the pandemic, the popularity of online marathons from fitness trainers and personal growth coaches has skyrocketed, writes Forbes. According to the analysis of Google Trends and Yandex. Wordstat, the number of queries for the word “online marathon” in March-April 2020 increased by about 17 times. After the end of self-isolation, of course, the Russians began to take a little less interest in such leisure activities, but the request has not yet returned to the dock-like indicators.
Most often, marathons are held on special platforms, for example GetCourse, or in messenger chats. Participants are sent lessons: these can be video, audio or text. Marathons always take place under tight deadlines, for example 30 daily tasks that are checked by moderators.
The most popular topics for marathons are fitness and self-development. Moreover, the problems revealed during the pandemic led to the psychology of people, says the creator of the Strong and Happy Club, psychologist Tatyana Ivanova.
Tatyana Ivanova, psychologist, founder of the Strong and Happy Club “Basically, this is contact with the feelings that are inside. We run, we focus on the external environment and forget about the internal world. And the pandemic just led to the fact that we were alone with ourselves. We have now launched the fourth stream, and there are 34 people on the fourth stream now. What happened last year has already yielded such a result, has already exposed so many problems that this is not for a year or two, but for a couple of decades at best."
The growing popularity of the courses has led to an increase in the earnings of coaches. Thus, the annual audience of the famous "Marathon of Desires" has increased from 5 thousand people in 2017 to 100 thousand in the past. The profit of its founder Elena Blinovskaya reached 200 million rubles, Forbes notes.
The first peak in popularity of the format came in the mid-2010s. Then there was one of the first fitness marathons "Crazy Drying", distinguished by its aggressiveness. It was more like a TV show: after a week of work at home and in the gym, a participant could be kicked out for insufficient results. By the end of 2016, one five-week season brought the co-founder of the project, Vasily Smolny, 15 million rubles in profit.
During the pandemic, regular bloggers and even just fitness trainers who were left without work were added to the big players. But such training does not give a long-term result, says fitness expert, TV and radio host Eduard Kanevsky.
Eduard Kanevsky fitness expert, TV and radio presenter “I know a large number of people from the same“Crazy Drying”who, when they ran the marathon, were injured, they started to have some other health problems. And no one was responsible for them. In one of the projects on the federal channel, which Anita Tsoi and I hosted, there was a couple who won one of the Furious Drying seasons. At the same time, they relaxed so much after participating in "Crazy Drying", since they had no control that they came to appear in a television project. They also lost weight in it, and then got fat again. Such marathons do not do the main thing - they do not form the habit of eating right, exercising."
Now "Crazy Drying" is closed, to replace it, the organizers came up with the "Pohudaizm" project, aimed at long-term passage and consolidation of the result. Specific covid marathons have also appeared: doctors on GetCourse help people recover from the coronavirus. Exercise therapy doctor, creator of the respiratory rehabilitation course Respira.pro Eldar Sultanov comments.
Eldar Sultanov, exercise therapy doctor, creator of the respiratory rehabilitation course Respira.pro “Respiratory gymnastics is recommended for patients after covid. Nobody explains how to do this breathing exercises, with what frequency. Therefore, we have developed a system in which we gradually increase the load. The course is universal, we tried to make it so that any patient could use it. The videos are interspersed with testing the patient so that we can get feedback on his condition."
The interlocutor of Business FM admitted that with the cost of the course about 1.5 thousand rubles since the beginning of the pandemic, it has not yet been possible to recoup the costs of its creation.
Marathons cost from 100 rubles to 30 thousand rubles, if we are talking about a course with additional materials and in a small group. But the main test is sitting at home, forcing yourself to complete this course to the end.
