As COVID-19 stay-at-home orders are slowly lifting in many states, gyms will need to start putting together their re-opening plan in order to stay compliant with national, state, and local authorities. When outlining your re-opening plan, gym owners will need to do their part in keeping their gym compliant and safe for their members by staying up-to-date on any new restrictions and adhering to social distancing and cleaning protocols.
Below are 5 safety considerations to consider implementing when re-opening your Gym:
- Using a Fitness App or Software for Communicating Member Updates, Class Time Changes, and Workouts
Constant communication with your members will be essential during the re-opening process. To keep your members informed you should be constantly sending out updated state or local changes regarding social distancing requirements and reopening timelines to your members. To help simplify that process, you should encourage your members to subscribe to your page, download your fitness app, or follow your social media page for updates. If you do offer a fitness app or have gym management software, you can easily send out email campaigns to update your members, adjust class schedules, create workouts to follow at home, or require your members to book classes in advance on their fitness app or through your gym software.
- Using Software to Limit Class Sizes
If you do not have gym management software, it would be wise to invest in an appointment scheduling program to have your members book any group-training classes in advance. This way you can safely restart your group training classes while limiting your class size to a maximum of 10 people from your software interface.
- Purchasing Cleaning Products & Scheduling Service
Before reopening, you will need to consider what cleaning products or services that you will need to purchase to clean your gym’s equipment and surfaces. It’s important that you choose a product that will work efficiently while being able to cover the entire square feet of your designated workout areas. You will also need to plan a time that is best fit to sanitize those areas – whether that is between classes or during a scheduled down-time.
- Enforcing Social Distancing in Certain Areas
When you re-launch another thing to consider is how you are going to re-enforce social distancing before, during, and after classes. You may need to place signs to shut off certain areas or create 6-foot marker guidelines in classroom settings, free weight areas, cardio machines, pro-shops, locker rooms, or other social gathering areas.
- Limiting Equipment and Programming Classes
To help reduce any additional cleaning and to keep your classes as contactless as possible, you should consider reducing the equipment use in classes and programming your workouts to include plyometric exercises. This will help reduce the amount of cleaning product needed while saving you valuable time otherwise spent cleaning cardio machines, free-weights, and other fitness equipment. You may also want to consider having your members be responsible for bringing in their own free weights, mats, or drinks to help reduce contact with your gym’s equipment.
