Photo courtesy of The FIRM
Fitness Class at The FIRM
There will be no sweat-ers at The FIRM, along with all other fitness studios and gyms in Minnesota, for the next four weeks.
In an executive order affecting bars, restaurants, youth sports, and entertainment venues, Gov. Walz announced a four-week closure for gyms and fitness centers, which have been linked to 48 outbreaks and 747 cases in the state since they reopened in June.
Wednesday night, as I listened to the details on my radio in the car (I know, so 2019), I wondered how many more times I would have to write this article before we are returned to some semblance of our B.C. (before COVID) world.
The most recent executive order goes into effect on Saturday, November 21, taking gyms from 25 percent capacity to, well, zero. That means shifting back to fully virtual classes for many gyms that worked on their virtual class systems in the spring. The order also shutters bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues until (optimistically) December 19. Déjà vu, Minnesota.
Strong Feelings
Reactions from gyms are unanimous: frustration and disappointment. “Not surprised but frustrated,” says Megan Cooper, owner of Studio ME. “The closure needs to happen. We need to get this under control. Safety has and will always be our number one priority.”
Studio ME requires face masks even during workouts. Despite the state’s previous restrictions for gyms, which allowed patrons to take masks off when doing strenuous exercise. “We have given all of our clients masks and plastic inserts that help them breath during cardio and strength sessions,” Cooper says. And only private training has taken place in-studio—all group classes at Studio ME have been outdoors and virtual. Cooper says her main frustration with the closure is that they’ve experienced no spread through their studio.
“I am very disappointed,” says Jason Burgoon, owner of Bodies by Burgoon in Minneapolis. “Fitness makes our bodies and immune systems stronger. Most of us don’t have the equipment, motivation, or knowledge to go about all of this alone, especially in this environment.”
BBB too feels unfairly restricted. Their 6,000-square-foot space never held more than 10 clients through the reopen. But, Burgoon says with virtual offerings comes a lack of community and motivation—clients tend to disengage, and progress tends to plateau.
A number of gyms have banded together as the Community Gyms Coalition, urging government to provide relief and support to gyms, who have been hit the hardest this year. Among them, Self Esteem Brands, the locally-based parent company of Anytime Fitness, Basecamp Fitness, and The Bar Method. “For months we have worked in good faith with this administration to ensure safe gym and fitness safety and sanitation protocols, and to more broadly make the case that fitness is and should be considered an essential health service for Minnesotans,” says Chuck Runyon, co-founder and CEO of Self Esteem. “So, we will comply yet again, but we are greatly disappointed with the logic and are seriously concerned about these small business owners.”
The Community Gyms Coalition points to that gyms have a higher pandemic-induced closure rate than bars or restaurants and that gyms have been unable to receive equal federal funding because of some of the limitations around relief packages. CGC’s message is simple: healthy gyms = healthy communities. So, if we must close gyms, they need immediate financial relief.
There is an argument to be made for gyms not being a major contributor to the spread. And Bahram Akradi, CEO of Minny-based mega gym Life Time is making it.
In a press release this week, LT said: “48 reported outbreaks across all gyms, studios and clubs in the State, resulting in a total of 747 cases and equating to an infection rate of .003.” Life Time is pushing Gov. Walz to keep their fitness centers open as of the press release Wednesday, saying, “Conclusion: Heath clubs are NOT the problem, THEY ARE THE SOLUTION to maintaining public health. They are, in fact, the safest environments people may visit as compared with other forms of retail, entertainment, or any other place, at this time.” (Capitalization for emphasis is original to the press release.)
Stats from the health department show that 4,100 cases since June 10 have been linked to bars and restaurants, 950 cases (or more) linked to weddings, 780 to sports and only 750 cases linked to gyms.
However, LT’s efforts were to no avail this week and the club will furlough its 4,000 employees during the closure, says Dan DeBaun, a public relations specialist at Life Time. The gym chain filed a claim for the state’s COVID data Friday, November 20—likely hoping to bolster its argument that gyms are not a major contributor and should be able to stay open.
The fight to stay open, however, didn’t stop the chain from launching a live streaming option for group fitness classes in Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan at the end of the week.
Though the spa, clinic, and distance learning camps remain open, DeBaun notes that Minnesota is the only state in which Life Times' fitness areas are mandated to close. “We have a handful of clubs in California and Washington state that have undergone additional restrictions, but no such locations nationwide under a full closure. The vast majority of our locations are open.”
The devil’s advocate could argue, too, that it’s hard to know if someone actually got it from the gym and not from their children who are in school or their neighbors who were positive or any other number of places. Akradi is fighting to keep gyms open as an essential contributor to health and wellness.
“Community plays a big role in the health of people and that is hard to quantify in the data,” says Greta Ertl, director of client services at The FIRM in Minneapolis. “Fitness and wellness is as much spiritual as it is physical. People need community and the opportunity to stay physically fit more than ever. It saddens us that this has been overlooked.”
Tyler Quinn, co-founder of Alchemy 365, agrees. “The narrative that gyms are uniquely dangerous or uniquely prolific environments for community spread is statistically unfounded,” he says. “We have one of the most predictable customer flows in any industry out there. People preregister for class, we’re able to do symptom checks when people come through the door, and any time anybody alerts us that they have tested positive for COVID, we’re able to actually go into our system and find out every single person that was in that class with them—by the way, wearing a mask and socially distanced greater than six feet apart—and we’re able to alert them.”
The math holds up: it doesn’t seem that gyms are contributing to a large slice of the case count pie. But we can see it both ways. We could run numbers all day to support keeping gyms open or closing them—but we’re writers, so we’ll stay in our lane.
Other fit center owners are making the argument that gyms can provide that wellness outlet virtually. “Right now, [our members] need our support more than ever as we transition to more strict lockdowns,” Cooper says. “It's not just fitness, it's about mental health, and connection, and you don't need to physically be in a gym to do those things. We need to be a leader and not dwell in these restrictions. We need to show up for our clients.”
Regardless, our local health community remains optimistic that they will rise again. “We will get through this together,” Ertl says. “The FIRM has been around 34 years in 6 different locations with several ‘re-starts’. Our community is family, we all serve each other. However, with every stop and restart it takes a lot of energy to get the momentum going again.”
The First Stop
In late March, we wrote about the closure of gyms following the first set of executive orders that closed restaurants, retail, salons, gyms, and pretty much everything else on St. Patrick’s Day. At that point, tested cases in Minnesota had jumped to 54 over a weekend, prompting the shutdown. Gyms, the strong and resilient organizations they are, flexed their creative muscles: virtual classes became our new reality as our living room morphed into everything but the kitchen sink.
In May, our lil’ fitness team tried a handful of virtual classes from local boutique studios. And turns out we actually liked it. Then the Stay At Home order was lifted on May 18—joy of joys—but left gray area around gyms and fitness centers.
June 10: a day for the books. No one has ever run so fast as ‘Sotans did on that Wednesday to get to a patio, brewery, gym—or to get a haircut. June 10 marked the easing of restrictions and allowed for a gyms and fit studios, along with restaurants, bars, and salons, to end their ten-week hiatus. For gyms, this meant opening their doors at 25 percent capacity and instituting distancing and disinfecting measures like there was no tomorrow—at that point, it was really a question of what would come with each passing day.
We were thrilled to be able to get that fit vibe IRL again. On May 20, we wrote: “Limiting person-to-person contact and proximity will change how workouts look through the summer, even through the end of the year, possibly even longer.”
It’s a laughable statement now. But this was May, when we had 90 days of summer ahead of us and full confidence that warm weather would reduce spread and that the novel coronavirus would die off like the snow. At the time, it seemed feasible that life would return to semi-normal in the not-too-distant future.
So, we rolled up our yoga mats and went back to the gym. Who knew it would take a pandemic for me to become a gym girl?! (Suffice it to say that in the past, I was NOT an exercise/sweat/workout person—ever.) But here I am, teary eyed as I listen to the restrictions on my beloved sweat studio, now shuttered till December 19.
Now we’re back to where we were in the spring: virtual classes again. Gyms will go dark for the next four weeks—possibly longer depending on how good we are through the holidays. *sigh.* Time to fire up your Zoom and grab your free weights.
Looking Forward
Sweat spots like Studio ME and Bodies by Burgoon are sending their equipment home with members for virtual workouts. If it’s just going to sit in a studio for four weeks, someone might as well use it at home, right?
The FIRM has invested in a virtual workout platform, FIRM On Demand, that offers over 300 sweat-seshes—and counting. And the physical closure isn’t slowing them down. “We’ll continue to offer an abundance of virtual classes through FIRM On Demand now and in the future,” Ertl says. TF is also using the month closure to challenge its members to meditation and ab challenges, following its month-long fall workout challenge, FIRM 30, that we supposed to end on Tuesday, November 24.
Bodies by Burgoon is leveraging its virtual training system, launched in the spring. “We will handle the weeks to come in stride,” Burgoon says, “because instead of focusing on the things we cannot control, we’re going to focus on helping our clients stay healthy and strong, in whatever ways we can—even if it’s training via Zoom.”
But even before this pause was announced, we had already seen a few gyms back out of the running.
Just two weeks ago, Fly Feet bid its cult following adieu. The high intensity run studios in downtown Minneapolis and Wayzata closed their doors on Saturday, November 14. Tipping our hats to “chief dream-follower” and founder Kristin Shane—It was fun flying with you for the last four years.
Alchemy 365’s Uptown location closed at the beginning of November in an effort to support it’s more successful locations and maintain the MN-based company’s track record of no layoffs during the pandemic. At the time, we wondered if this was just the first of a string of closures in the fitness world. That’s something we hate to be right about, and our fingers are still crossed that this list doesn’t get any longer.
Alchemy just restructured their corporate leadership to reduce overhead, and Quinn says even that won’t be enough. “The problem is that we’re so far behind where we were pre-COVID that even if the vaccine came out tomorrow and it was distributed world-wide and it all went away, it would still take a long time for us, I’m assuming, to rebuild our membership base. It’s not a light switch, it doesn’t just come back,” he says.
In the months leading up to this closure, Alchemy, like many of its sisters throughout the Twin Cities, was operating at about 30 percent of its pre-COVID membership. And that’s certain to drop with another closure. “So, it’s not just a matter of can we get through to May when the vaccine is more readily available,” Quinn says. “May is going to be the beginning of a very long road of returning to where we were.”
We have lots of questions for our crystal ball—most importantly: when will this end? We don’t have all the answers, but the Star Tribune is continually updating a running list of FAQs and need-to-knows on COVID-19 restrictions.
In the long run, gyms are like concerts and sporting events: magnetic atmospheres that people are drawn to. Connection, experience, and growth. Something innate in our existence. But, Quinn voices what we’re all wondering: “The question is, who will be around when that happens?”
The fit landscape of the future could look vastly different. All evidence points to that virtual workouts are here to stay. “What will not change, however, is the role of a coach for people as they pursue health,” Burgoon says. “They need someone to pay attention to their specific needs and they need community to keep them encouraged. That’s why I know my facility will make it through this mess—perhaps with some debt that will pain us for a bit, but we’ll make it through.”
And, as 2020 has unrelentingly reminded us, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. “We think the landscape will be very vibrant,” says The FIRM’s Greta Ertl. “There will be an evolution in the fitness industry that will allow people to feel safer. Soon there will be vaccines and therapies that will give people the confidence to reenter the gym environment. Additionally, people will realize the positive impact community and working out have on their overall quality of life.”
The biggest difference between this closure and the original March through May shutdown is the financial side: No PPP funding for employees affected by the pandemic; no small biz relief packages. Fit studios have to stand on their own. But small gyms may have the advantage, with close relationships with their patrons and more dexterity to (to use one of our new fave words) pivot.
“If gyms and small studios can't adapt they won't survive this,” says Megan Cooper of Studio ME. "If they haven't built a community, they won't survive this. The local gym landscape is going to look very different. … It's the small studios, who have built a community, that care about their members, who will come out of this.”
We sure hope she’s right.
Shop Small, Y’all
While we can’t swarm the malls in droves this Black Friday, we can use our dollars to support local business that are struggling. Our local sweat studios need income right now and are taking advantage of our need to shop post-tryptophan. Here’s your chance to help out.
Much like toilet paper, gym equipment is hard to come by these days. Alchemy 365 is offering up some of their equipment with their Black Friday sales through Monday, November 30. They have membership deals (score!) and discounted merchandise. Best of all: Snag your fitness equipment at their warehouse sale at that shuttered Uptown studio, and presumably someone on your list—or you, yourself—could use some new equipment for the home gym. “Please understand that we’re using this sale as a life raft for our business,” the Alchemy website says. “Your decision to shop small is helping us survive.”
For the more dance-focused folks, Barre3’s semi-annual sale goes through December 7. It includes 20 percent of 10-class packs and other membership deals, plus 60 percent off retail. If you’re a member, you can make an appointment to shop in-person.
The FIRM is also offering some sweet end of year deals, but only for members. Download the hot pink app to get 20 percent off class packages or 20 percent off a year-long membership.
