Stretching Out: Lockdown, exercise, and the body during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

This thesis will show how exercise during the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdown helped to provide a sense of progress . This progress was experienced through a feeling of togetherness during lockdown and in improving one s body through exercise. Togetherness and self-improvement are connected by a phenomenological experience of the world through the body as a medium. Based on ethnographic research conducted during the pandemic I will show how adults in the UK and the Netherlands experienced a sense of togetherness with others during lockdown despite physical separation. This sense of togetherness was provided by the body and exercise, facilitated by digital resources. This will be framed with reference to phenomenological experience through the body as a medium for understanding the world. I will also explore the role of digital technology in facilitating this exercise, and the extent to which boundaries between body and machine were blurred. Finally, I will show the value that participants placed on exercise during lockdown which, I argue, contributed to a feeling of progress . For my research participants, exercise had benefits beyond offering a sense of individual progress, and, with the aid of digital resources, helped to create a togetherness and unity. I suggest this ability of digital resources and exercise to create a togetherness between physically distant bodies, might be further explored in other areas of life during lockdown. This might be valuable in improving social unity and connection at a challenging time of physical and social distance from one another.