It is now becoming persistently colder outside which makes people not as motivated to exercise outside. Due to this, many people are starting to attend indoor gyms. Many gyms have previously been closed due to COVID-19 but recently many gyms have opened back up, allowing people to attend their gyms. Allowing this can create risks as the gym is a closed area where COVID-19 can be contracted easily. Knowing this information, gyms will have to create more severe protocols to keep the indoor gyms as COVID-19 free as possible. 

Most gyms have put protocols in place from when they first started letting people attend their gyms. However, they will have to create new ones to adjust to the increasing number of people trying to attend. For example, Lifetime Fitness has done a noticeably good job at trying to keep everyone safe while attending their gyms. In their protocols, they state that they will be “Reducing class size by 50% by capping class capacity at 25 members.” Although this does seem to be reliable, there may need to be more additions to this now due to the increase of members. One way they may consider adding to their protocol is making it so that each class always has the same people so that they are not exposing themselves to new people each time they come to the gym. Additionally, in general, all gyms should be increasing their strictness on all of their policies. For instance, many gyms are making it so that they offer cleaning supplies so that people wipe down their equipment when they are finished. Instead of just offering cleaning supplies, it should be mandatory to clean your equipment. To enforce this, indoor gyms will have to add more staff to keep watch on people sanitizing their equipment if they haven’t already. But to do this the number of people will have to be decreased so that there is not an increase in people in the indoor gym. 

In conclusion, indoor gyms have done a reasonably well job of creating protocols, but new or more intense protocols will need to be put in place. To see more information on how gyms are maintaining their COVID-19 adjustments while having members attend, click here.