Zibby Mag

By Alisha Fernandez Miranda

The fitness industry’s learning curve can be steep, but the work pays off.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” I replied.

“What are you doing down there?”

My husband crouched to meet my gaze.

“I’m sitting under the table.”

“I can see that,” he said, in the measured voice you would use to talk to an angry toddler or negotiate a hostage crisis. “Why are you sitting under the table?”

“I’m trying to calm down,” I replied.

My daughter invented this maneuver as a deescalation tactic. Many of our recent homeschool sessions would devolve into yelling and blowing up and end in tears (for both of us). But one day, when she got particularly mad at me for not explaining fractions clearly enough, she just crawled under the table. She stayed there for about a minute. Then she came back up, calm.

“It’s a new thing I’m trying,” she said. “If I get really upset or mad and can’t handle it, I go under the table and breathe really deeply until I feel better.”

The student had become the teacher. It was a great technique that I had started using myself, but this was the first time my husband had seen it in action.

“Ok…” He sat down next to me. “Can I do anything?” he asked.

My eyes were red and puffy. I didn’t need to explain that, for the umpteenth time that week, I felt overwhelmed and out of my depth.

“No,” I said, reaching out my hand so he could help me up. I stood and readjusted my hot pink headband. “I’m done anyway. I have 80’s One Hit Wonders Barre class in five minutes.”

I sighed deeply, rolled my shoulders back and, with a shake of my high ponytail, positioned myself in front of the TV, weights in hand, ready to join another live, virtual Retroglow class — my third of the week. It was just another day in the lockdown life of a fitness intern.

When the U.K. shut down in March of 2020, we initially measured the passage of time with bars of chocolate or bags of pasta consumed. By the time we arrived at month two, I was going stir crazy, cycling through the seven stages of grief — shock, denial, cookies, brownies, tiramisu, apple crumble, and cinnamon rolls.

My year wasn’t supposed to be like this. In 2019, I hatched a plan to spend 2020 running down the undiscovered roads of my past by taking unpaid internships in the dream careers of my childhood. As I approached 40, my goal had been to work the jobs I had always wanted to try but never had the time or guts or opportunity.

For months, I had carefully planned and rearranged my personal and professional responsibilities, and color-coded my calendar to fit this once-in-a-lifetime experience. But as the world shut down around me, all of the internship opportunities, the ones that were supposed to resolve my nigh-midlife crisis, had disappeared (like the cinnamon rolls which were, admittedly, delicious).

Plus, there was the homeschooling. It is truly impossible to overstate how bad I was at homeschooling.

Life had handed us a motherlode of lemons. I could have made lemonade. But I said, “Screw you, I’m having a vodka martini with a lemon rind garnish instead.”

By the time we arrived at month two, I was going stir crazy, cycling through the seven stages of grief — shock, denial, cookies, brownies, tiramisu, apple crumble, and cinnamon rolls.

My in-person internships had been cancelled and I couldn’t leave the house, but the idea of completely giving up on my plans was too depressing. I decided to do a virtual internship instead.

The whole world had moved online, why couldn’t I? While most of the industries I wanted to work in — musical theater, food, hospitality, art — were locked down just like me, there was one that actually seemed to be booming: fitness.

I am not a sporty person, despite the fact that on a normal, non-pandemic day there was an 80% chance that I’d be clad in athleisure. Still, I had always toyed with the idea of exploring a career in the fitness industry.

Every New Year’s Eve, I would resolve to register as a Zumba/yoga/cardio striptease instructor. Like most resolutions, it was a distant memory by the third week in January. Indeed, work or parental obligations got in the way. But I was also worried I wouldn’t be good enough; failing Zumba certification was an embarrassment I couldn’t suffer.

I messaged my old personal trainer, a brilliant and beautiful Lorelai Gilmore look-alike named Frankie Taylor, who had set up her own dance and fitness company, Retroglow, which had to quickly pivot to online workouts as the pandemic set in.

“Would you consider hiring me as a virtual intern? (FREE OBVIOUSLY). I can work for you and help you with whatever you need as you transition into digital fitness. You name it, I’ll do it. The only thing I can’t do is make you actual coffee.”

Astonishingly, she said yes.

In the doldrums of lockdown, I spent every waking minute that I wasn’t cooking or cleaning or homeschooling or crying (the last two were not mutually exclusive) helping Frankie.

Some of my tasks were sedentary. For example, I wrote social media posts — the holy grail of intern tasks — which are designed for 20-something interns who know their TikTok from their Twitch (two words I had to Google). I wasn’t a natural. Once, when I signed off a post with “Yay” she wrote back: “Change that to ‘Super-YAYsies!’ and it’s good to go.”

The more active part was the market analysis. Frankie drew up a long list of fitness brands — partners, competitors, or concepts that she admired — with the goal of finding out how they were responding to virtual fitness. I reviewed over two dozen brands, taking classes at each one. Every day, I woke up, grabbed a pair of leg warmers (yes, I own more than one), and channeled my inner Jennifer Beals.

Most of the classes I took were great, but the fitness industry’s learning curve was precipitous. Some concepts that worked well in person did not adapt to the world of dancing in your living room. A highlight (lowlight) was a session of the popular dance workout VXN.

Featuring moves like “Ridin’ Round and Gettin’ It,” “Sex Bombs,” and (my personal favorite) “Milkshakes,” VXN amounts to little more than provocative dancing and touching oneself. But it was difficult to recreate that sexy studio magic in my living room, groping myself in broad daylight while the children ran around the house screaming “CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW, OVER!” on their new walkie talkies. I lost the flow when the mailman arrived while I was mid-twerk.

I am not a sporty person, despite the fact that on a normal, non-pandemic day there was an 80% chance that I’d be clad in athleisure.

In short, Retroglow was more my speed. It became my saving grace during lockdown. As a result of all the prancing and popping and locking, I got stronger. I still spent plenty of time under the table, but after a few weeks of devoting myself to fitness — not just as self-care, but as my job, albeit unpaid — I was able to cope with the brutal workouts Frankie doled out, and the concurrent emotional challenges caused by the pandemic.

I wasn’t the only one. Among my intern tasks was reviewing a member survey Frankie had conducted early in the pandemic. Many of the respondents were people who worked for the NHS, the U.K.’s National Health Service, who were on the front lines of the crisis. Retroglow offered them free classes.

I teared up when I read one response: “I’m a 53-year-old unfit, overweight NHS nurse who is really enjoying exercising for the first time in a long while. Thank you so much. You’ve changed my life.”

Now, back in another lockdown, it’s been a continued struggle to make time for my exercise alongside parenting, homeschooling, and cooking. However, just knowing there is a Britney vs. Whitney aerobics class waiting for me at the end of a tough day is sometimes all the motivation I need.

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Alisha Fernandez Miranda is a Miami-born writer, entrepreneur, and CEO. After 13 years in London, she currently lives on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, where she’s one of only two Cuban-Americans (the other being her husband). She’s been published in Grazia, Metro, Herstry and an upcoming anthology, Waterproof. She’s currently working on her first book, The 40-Year-Old Intern, her coming of (middle) age tale, detailing the year she went from CEO to intern, in an effort to understand what might have happened if her life had taken a different path. Say hi to her on Instagram.