Sophia Stratychuk adapts to the new restrictions that stops her from attending her taekwondo class in person, by attending virtually on Nov. 25, 2020

With the recent rise of Covid-19 cases in Alberta, the provincial government is implementing new temporary restrictions.  

For communities on the enhanced list where risk levels require enhanced public health measures to control the spread, which Lethbridge is part of, there are new stricter restrictions on how some businesses must operate until Dec.18.

Indoor fitness, recreation, sports and physical activity centres, including dance and yoga studios, martial arts, gymnastics and private or public swimming pools can be open for individual studio time, training or exercise only. There can be no group fitness, group classes, group training, team practices or games.

These new temporary restrictions are in place to try and slow down transmission of the virus within group settings.

Indoor soccer player, Erick Hernandez, is not worried about the future of the game and is confident things will go back to the way they were before the restrictions were put in place.

“The league should resume once restrictions are lifted. We’ve all paid money to play for the season already. Just like anywhere else that’s shut down. They will be eager to get things up and running again,” said Hernandez.

For others who rely on a gym to be able to take part in martial arts, the option of doing it from their own living room is available, which makes this difficult time more bearable. But the restrictions have an impact on some activities that could no longer take place as planned. In the case of Champion Taekwondo, the restrictions came into effect at a bad time, since they have just started to prepare a fundraising event to collect money for the interfaith food bank.

“We didn’t let no Covid restrictions, we didn’t let any of that hold us back. We did this entire event virtually. That was the other cool thing, that we didn’t even do this in person. But we didn’t let that slow us down at all. This is what happens when you’re a champion, you figure it out, you adapt, you’re flexible and you get back up,” says Champion Taekwondo instructor, Nicole Stratychuk, in a post on her social media.

If anything positive has come from this year and all the restrictions from COVID-19 has taught us, is the ability to adapt to circumstances outside of our control.