Well, like many small businesses out there, gyms are taking their lumps too!
It got me thinking about how we can make Pinnacle Fitness as safe and sanitary as possible.
I will get more into that later this week, but I wanted to touch on something that not a lot of people think about when it comes to gyms.
There are training gyms (Pinnacle Fitness) and there are membership gyms(Lifetime, 24 Hour Fitness, EOS).
What is the difference?
You might say amenities, or size, or how you are treated.
But as it pertains to the current situation……
Safety….
As the owner of Pinnacle Fitness, I can say how many people come into the gym at one time and how the flow of the gym will be so that members are not crossing paths.
I actually feel for the large box gyms that rely almost exclusively on members coming in and just using their facilities.
We have been open for over 10 years and I have repeatedly heard:
” Wow it doesn’t smell like a gym!”
“You guys do such a good job of wiping everything down after the session.”
“Wow, how many wipes do you go through in a month?”
This just shows that even prior to the pandemic, Pinnacle Fitness had a reputation for being clean.
Membership gyms allow people to come in and use the gym on their own. I would like to think that people will be hyper- vigilant about cleaning up after themselves during this time, but I can’t see that happening long term since each person feels a little different about the pandemic.
I know big gyms will have to decrease their numbers for the time being which puts them in a tough spot for both staffing and making enough revenue.
It is a tough situation for sure.
So what are the benefits of a training gym during this pandemic?
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We are by appointment only so we set the time and amount of people in the gym at any one time. ( even with a small group training session, we will not have more than 8 members in the gym – at our current location)
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We do not put cleaning and putting up equipment in the hands of our members. All staff are in charge of this before and after each session. ( so no one walks away from a machine or mat without wiping it down).
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The trainers place the member in an area which will be more than 6 feet away from any other person.
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Moving forward, the gym will be split up into zones. Each member and trainer will stick to one zone, only using the equipment in that zone for the workout. We will then be able to sanitize all equipment in that area that was used before allowing the next member to enter.