With the announcement of what is in stage 3 of Ontario’s reopening plan on Monday, one of the services that were finally allowed to reopen on Friday were gyms and fitness centres. Forest City Fitness manager Randi Dias, says she is very excited to reopen again, after a longer than expected shutdown began in late March.
“It is very exciting,” Dias says. “I’m really excited to get the staff back into the space, having some energy and people back in the space so I’m not there by myself is going to be wonderful.”
With most businesses now, they have to have new health protocols in place to try and slow the spread of COVID-19. Dias says that while they didn’t get much notice when it was announced they would be able to reopen, they have a plan in place at the gym.
“When we got the news that we were opening, and I think a lot of other small businesses will probably agree, we weren’t getting very much notice,” Dias says. “But initially, what we’ve set up is more hand sanitizer throughout the space, we’ve stocked up on all of our disinfectant lights, we’ve scheduled bookings for workouts, so that we can make sure that we maintain the proper capacity within our space, and what we can a lot in there to make sure that members have that safe physical distancing.”
Forest City Fitness will reopen on July 20th, as Dias says it felt the most realistic option.
“We wanted to open on Friday. It’s not realistic, so everybody can expect to be able to get in as of Monday.”
But what happens if we hit a potential second wave of COVID-19 in our region, well Dias says they would do the same thing as they did the first time they had to shutdown
“We would do exactly what we did before. One day at a time, follow the guidelines, you know, do what we’re supposed to do,” Dias says. “When this first happened, there wasn’t a lot of clear information, we relied on numbers that you know, worked in hospitals to get information from them.”
When it comes to fitness classes, Dias says the gym will keep virtual classes, and it will never go away.
“We actually will not stop virtual classes ever,” Dias says. “We’ve put so much work into designing that, you know, way to work out at home, that members actually really enjoy it. If you’re a member now or you join later, you will always have access to the classes virtually.
Dias says when it came to fitness classes, they had used Facebook Live, so members could upload the class to their profile.
“We just stuck with Facebook Live. And what we do from there is we can then trim the video, and it can be uploaded to the mind-body software for the members to then view later if they choose.” Dias says.
The biggest thing Dias learned from this long shutdown was to have a schedule in place
“The biggest thing that I learned was setting boundaries and making sure that you have a schedule in place. Otherwise, you know, an eight-hour shift quickly turns into a 12-hour shift. And before you know it, you’ve been at the computer all day.” Dias says.
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