With many fitness instructors and dance teachers creating online exercise classes during the Alert Level 4 lockdown, this Māngere family have instead turned to themselves and extended family to help maintain their physical health.
Siblings Janelle and Theresa Augsburg, together with their cousins Jozef and Taueva Lolohea, have created a family group chat, going live twice a day to workout with family members around the world.
Janelle says they’ve managed to connect with family members in America, Australia, Tonga and here in Aotearoa, many of whom they don’t get to see often.
“We started working out as a household first, and we just wanted to create a routine in this time of uncertainty. We’re not going to work and we’re all at home, so we thought we’d do something productive,” Janelle says.
Taueva adds, “You get more excited… because you don’t see each other very often. Being in isolation, you’re just looking at the same people every day, so it’s nice to wake up and see a different face and workout in the morning and workout in the evening.”
Each day a different family member volunteers to lead the 30-minute sessions, or as Taueva puts it, “they’re ‘volun-told’”.
From boxing to yoga to HIIT, circuit training and even Bollywood Zumba, the group have completed a diverse amount of exercise activities during the lockdown, testing the limits of their physical capabilities. “We’re okay now, but when we first started, we were struggling,” Taueva laughs.
“We couldn’t sit down, get up. We were really sore. But we’re doing it every day, and it really helps with your mental health.”
“We’re waking up at a good time. I thought I’d be waking up in the afternoon because, you know,… there’s no need to wake up if you’re not going anywhere. But because of our group, I’m waking up earlier than I usually do,” Janelle says.
The fitness group isn’t limited to their family. Janelle and Taueva have begun separate workout sessions with a group of their friends. “My friends saw on our [Instagram] stories that we were doing this,” Janelle says.
“One of my friends kept messaging me saying, ‘I have no motivation to workout and I love seeing your family working out.’ I said, ‘Just workout with us!’ So Taueva and I have a separate group with our mates and we do the 5:30pm Les Mills session on TV1.”
With one more week of the lockdown to go, Taueva believes they’ll continue their family fitness workouts well after the lockdown finishes.
“100 percent. We’re seeing cousins we wouldn’t normally see, so we’re reconnecting in the best way, in the hardest time.”
