Recovering sport and fitness cultures in a post COVID-19 world

Context background

Sport and fitness quickly emerged as key vectors for the spread of COVID-19. All elite and community sport and fitness provision was shut down with movement in public space highly regulated. ‘Exercise’ with one other was allowed in one’s local area or in a household context. The role of sport and fitness for identity, health and emotional wellbeing was significantly reduced through the restricted movement of individuals and communities. Many people turned to digital technology as a home based alternative, with exponential growth in digital fitness, including subscription based programs, apps, and free content on platforms such as You Tube (for example, Australian Leisure Management, 2020). These have provided accessible and low risk experiences for those who have safe space at homes. With legislated home confinement measures being lifted and in the coming months sport and fitness businesses and clubs reopening, organisations will be aiming to recover financially, and provide important livelihoods to those thousands who lost jobs, as well as providing meaning and purpose for volunteers. Little is known about the effects of the cessation, and return of sport, for individuals and organisations (Fullagar & Pavlidis, 2020). This project extends existing research on the role of sport and fitness in recovery from mental health (Fullagar et al, 2019), belonging and identity (Pavlidis and Fullagar, 2014), and recovery from natural disasters (Thorpe, 2015). Although government guidelines provide practical risk management advice, research is needed to guide organisations as they navigate the changing affective or emotional landscape of sport provision and safe participation (Fullagar, 2020).

The reopening of Australia will not be a simple return to pre-COVID normal as the threat (both perceived and actual) of an invisible and powerful virus will continue to present a risk until a vaccine is produced (and beyond as the realities of subsequent global pandemics emerge). Hence there are affective and economic dimensions to consider as sport and fitness providers grapple with the challenges of managing risk, ensuring customers/members feel safe, and their own emotional and economic wellbeing. The recovery process will need to address the changing social and personal contexts of participation and volunteering; increased unemployment and inequality, reduced household spending, heightened anxieties about risk and shifting desires for physical and social contact (Fullagar, 2020).

COVID-19 presents a unique case where the threat is invisible, global, novel, unpredictable and extraordinarily contagious. It is also racialized and gendered. There has been a rise in racist attacks (Fang et al, 2020) and gender based-violence (UNAA, 2020) during this time of social isolation as well as exponential growth in people seeking mental health services (ABS, 2020).  While the Australian Government has committed substantial funding to address the increased demand for mental health services, a deeper sociocultural understanding of the affective relations of recovery is needed.

Research Questions

• The project is guided by the following questions:

1. What impact has COVID-19 had on the patterns, practices and provision of sport and fitness in particular sport contexts?
2. How have sport and fitness providers and participants experienced risk, recovery and trauma with respect to sociocultural and gender differences?
3. What innovative responses has the disruption of COVID-19 prompted?
   What sociocultural forces have shaped different logics and affective responses to risk?

Methods

To investigate the complexity of an emerging concept such as ‘recovery’, this project draws on an innovative methodology and case study design to understand the complexity of participant experiences, sport contexts and objects (digital, material, affective relations). This project considers an ethics of care and gender justice in the process of researching sensitive issues and identifying inequalities. At this stage we propose two in-depth case studies that reflect different sport and fitness contexts;

Community sport clubs: Sport infrastructure such as fields, clubhouses, and training facilities are provided by Government and deliver substantial value to the community estimated at $16.2 billion. This includes over 56 million hours of volunteer time annually, with use by approximately eight million people each year (KPMG, 2018). Community sport clubs are run by volunteers whose lives are deeply entangled with the club and its members.
Gyms: Around 1.7 million Australians are estimated to use fitness centre services and over 18,000 people are employed in the industry (full time equivalence). Gyms have direct and indirect benefits to Australia’s health and economy. It is estimated that in a given year Australia’s fitness centres contribute up to $900 million to the Australian economy (Access Economics, 2009).

To ensure access to participants through our contacts we have selected (i) Labrador hockey club and (ii) Sana Crossfit gym. For each case the following rich data will be gathered:

1. In-depth one on one or partner interviews with service providers (this includes board members, owners, managers, employees, volunteers, coaches etc). 10 at each site = 20. In-depth one on one or partner interviews with service users (customers and members, over 18 years). 10 at each site = 20
2. Documents for analysis (policies or procedures created in response to COVID-19)
3. Visual materials (photographs of signs, information sheets on site, practices of social distancing, etc)
4. Research workshop (in person or via zoom) framed around innovative reconceptualisation of a ‘time capsule’ (Hepper et al 2020). This method draws on a range of post-qualitative approaches, such as the story completion method (Lupton, 2020), as well as reflection on objects and spaces that have become important for participants. 1 workshop for each case (including service provides and users, approximately 6 per workshop) = 2 workshops/12 participants.

Significance and innovation

Through the strengths of new approaches and post-qualitative methods, and the intellectual capability of the team, this project will provide key insights into what kinds of sport and fitness business survive this crisis, how some will innovate and adapt, and how people find a way of re-turning sport, how people will feel safe again, what will attract people back to sport and fitness (and what might keep them away), and how to manage new ‘unknown’ risks. Through a focus on sport and fitness, this project opens up questions about living ‘the good life’, or a ‘healthy life’ and how this is entangled with notions of survival and positive mindset. The project outcomes will identify shifting sport-health assemblages and hence relationships between sport, economics and wellbeing. In this way the project offers a reconfiguration of ‘risk society’.