These are all work-arounds for a simple problem: the lack of physical co-presence. That problem radiates across the category: The Pilates teacher on Zoom asks whether a movement is okay for you to do with your injury, but you’re on mute. You wonder if the clicking noise on your Peloton crank is normal, but no one else is within earshot. You take a bathroom break and just never bother to go back, because who will ever know? “The student starts to feel like, I am just a blip on the screen,” my yoga teacher Cooper Chou told me. He’s the kind of person whose warmth reaches across every room he walks into. I went all the way to the gym for his class on Christmas Day. He’s not teaching online.

Some approaches, intriguingly, embrace the fact that no one else is around, and just help you move. An app called Aaptiv gives audio cues that you can follow without staring at a screen. Fitbod logs your weight lifting and suggests fresh muscle groups to work out, with simple illustrative GIFs and tips on form; a year-long subscription costs less than an hour with a trainer. The game Zombies, Run! supplies a narrative reason to, well, run. Then, of course, there’s Nike Run Club, one of the most popular workout apps. And for all the frictions of Zoom, many thousands of flowers have bloomed there lately; some will survive, and some of those will be real innovations. I’ve personally connected with two yoga teachers I adore, and their dogs, through Zoom. (Speaking of flowers, I grew up in Utah and built my cycling legs on a hillside in Los Angeles; in many places, people will just keep exercising outdoors, as they’ve always done.)