I want to talk about the future state of fitness, gyms, and how they might be able to handle the new guidelines for gatherings. Our creed as a fitness industry is first do no harm. Everything done is set to make sure the client is safe and can train to improve their health.
Fitness centers are one of the most equipped businesses to handle hygiene and health safety measures as they must deal with them daily – before the pandemic started.
The cleanliness guidelines needed to be followed and enforced by Health Departments of each town and state. The guidelines are a lot stricter than any retail store. Adding more safety measures and cleaning protocols are easy to implement properly given the structure that most fitness facilities have.
Let’s talk about Working out at Home vs Big Box Gyms & Smaller Boutique Fitness Studios.
Working out at Home:
Not everyone is blessed to have the space or equipment to workout at home, but it still can be done. Now there are many possible distractions that can keep us from getting a good workout.
Not everyone knows how to create an ideal workout program on their own
Accountability and creating a routine are more difficult at home on your own
Trusting random YouTube workouts can be sketchy
Not everyone knows how to workout safely at home
Your kids/pets/spouses can/will be a distraction while trying to workout
Running a ton of mileage isn’t the best for your body anyway and not everyone is comfortable going for a run in their neighborhood
Not much room at your house to workout comfortably
Buying home gym equipment now is tough. If you can find some online, it can take over a month to ship it to you and the costs are extremely high right now.
Big Box Gyms
Large big box gyms that need to utilize all their square footage with equipment and whose model is to cram in as many people as possible, will definitely have to make some big changes. Which they can. They will need to limit customers, remove equipment, and increase their cleaning protocols. I am confident that they can do that. With these changes though, will they be able to keep their low monthly membership dues? Remember, they need to have as many people as possible on site to keep their business model. (Did you know they count on only 30% of the members to come regularly and rest just pay monthly fee and be sporadic or not at all show?) Could you imagine if all 1,000 - 5,000 members tried to come train at once? See Tidbit below on more about this.
Boutique Fitness Studios
Is this where Fitness will thrive? Most smaller training gyms are already set-up for these safety guidelines. They are appointment based already, meaning they only have a certain number of clients that are coming in at one time and are not open to the public. They already clean equipment after each person/group comes in. They can give their client a safe 8’x 8’ personal space to work in and set them up with individual equipment that only they will use during their session (which will immediately be cleaned after use).
Now there are some exceptions to this with some Franchises. They do cater to small spaces but count on larger packed classes to keep the doors open. It will be interesting to see what comes of this on the other side of the pandemic. Who will thrive and who will fall by the wayside?
Leave comments and tell me what you think!
Big Box Gym Tidbit:
THEY COUNT ON YOU NOT SHOWING UP
“If you are not going to the gym, you are actually the gym's best customer,” writes Planet Money’s Stacey Vanek Smith at NPR. Many big clubs make their money by recruiting as many members as possible, which ends up being far more than they can actually accommodate. So, they’re banking on you slacking on your workout goals. According to Smith, Planet Fitness has about 6500 members per gym but can only hold about 300 people at a time, max.
留言