John Wilson prides himself on trying to run “the cleanest gym in town.” With the COVID-19 pandemic still in high gear, that goal has probably never been more important.
Governor Eric Holcomb has given gyms and fitness centers across the state the green light to re-open their doors on May 24, part of the third stage of his five-part plan to have Indiana “Back on Track” by the Fourth of July.
Fitness-related businesses are among the last ones being allowed to re-open; only bars, nightclubs and other entertainment venues have to wait longer. Given the risks involved with putting a lot of sweaty people in close proximity to one another, that shouldn’t be a surprise.
“Gyms are a classic place for people to get infected,” the state’s health commissioner, Dr. Kristina Box, said in late April. “We’re all working out, we’re running on treadmills next to each other, we’re using the same equipment. There are things there to wipe the equipment down, but we don’t always do that. Sometimes we’re brushing our face or wiping the sweat out of our eyes or whatever, so those are all ways that we can get infected.”
Wilson, who owns Anytime Fitness in downtown Bargersville, has long been accounting for those infection risks. He says that while the company is looking into additional safeguards, including different ways to limit the number of people working out at once, his location was already in a pretty good position in terms of safety.
“A lot of the usual things that you would expect based on the guidelines given by the CDC and the governor, the state department of health, a lot of those things we already actually do anyway,” he said. “My goal has always been to be the cleanest gym in town, so we’re always constantly disinfecting and wiping things down … but we are going to redouble our efforts there.”
Along those lines, Anytime Fitness — which is planning to re-open on May 26 — will be putting out more hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, spray bottles and towels. Most of the gym’s weight training equipment was already fairly well spaced out, Wilson says, but with treadmills and elliptical machines that are more closely bunched together, members will only be able to use every other one so as to maintain a safe distance from one another.
One way of ensuring that safe distance, obviously, will be limiting class sizes. CGX CrossFit in Bargersville will be capping its gym occupancy at 11 members when it re-opens on Memorial Day. At Orangetheory Fitness in Greenwood, owner Katie Douglas isn’t yet sure what the capacity will be when she opens the doors, but because the gym was already using a reservation system, it’s well equipped to manage the situation no matter what that number will be.
“I like our format, the class format, just because there’s a lot of control with that,” Douglas said.
Steps are also being taken to limit the amount of surfaces being touched by multiple hands. CGX is spreading its classes out to allow for 30 minutes of cleaning between each one; Orangetheory, which is also likely to decrease the number of classes it holds each day, will also be discouraging use of the locker rooms and asking members not to enter the facility until less than five minutes before their class starts.
Just about any step that could be taken to limit the amount of congregation in small areas — especially at times when people are exerting themselves and various bodily fluids become airborne — is being taken or at least considered.
“We have really good air circulation, so it really pulls the air up into the system,” Wilson said. “We’ve upgraded our filters and our HVAC to help with that as well, just to take anything out of the air that might be floating around.”
Wilson notes that he’s been in touch with some gym owners from other states that have already opened back up, and he says that — perhaps not surprisingly — reactions have been mixed. Some have welcomed the re-open, while others have spoken out against it, believing that some governors are jumping the gun and valuing profits over the lives of their citizens, especially workers.
As the situation in Indiana remains uncertain — there have been at least 500 new cases reported for all but two days since April 22 in Indiana, with no clear signs of a dropoff in sight — the common thread among gym owners is ensuring that their customers will feel as safe as possible whenever they feel comfortable returning.
(For those that don’t, Anytime Fitness is among those who will continue to offer virtual training services to its members as it has during the stay-at-home mandate.)
The COVID-19 situation has been ever-developing, making it hard to plan anything too far in advance. That can make mapping out a re-opening strategy quite stressful, which is why Douglas — who won NCAA and WNBA championships during a successful basketball career — is trying to put her game face back on to manage the situation as best she can.
“It’s game time, it’s crunch time, it’s the fourth quarter kind of thing,” she said, “and that’s kind of what I’m trying to wrap my head around. This is a pressure situation, absolutely, and I just have to keep everybody safe, members and staff, and make the best decisions given the information that I have and given the resources that I have.”
In these uncertain times, that’s all any of us can do.
