Restrictions lifted, fitness freaks still skeptical about hitting gyms

Ajay Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, August 5

Opening after a gap of over four months on Wednesday, fitness centres, including gyms and yoga institutions, brought smiles on the faces of fitness enthusiasts. Waiting to hit the gyms after such a long time, some health freaks started queuing outside gyms from as early as 5.30 am.

While weights and dumbles remained the same in the gyms, the new thing that the health conscious residents were introduced to was ‘contactless workouts’. They had to maintain a distance of five to six metres from their fellow workout buddies. Unlike earlier, no support was available from others and they had to lift the heavy weights on their own. Many gyms had even kept cardio sessions closed for clients and only weight training sessions were available.

Yoga institutes also adopted new sitting plans to ensure enough distance between two people and avoid contact. Everyone had been asked to bring their own yoga mats, water bottle, masks and sanitisers.

Gym owners, who are among those severely hit by the lockdown, started cleaning their buildings to provide a safe and hygienic workout zone to their clients. Sumit Sharma and Vikram Dhiman, owners of Gold’s Gym, said they had prepared a new schedule for clients and the routine workout sessions were framed for their client.

“As per the SOPs, we greeted the clients with thermal scanners and sanitisers, ensured social distancing during workout and also maintained a gap of 15 to 20 minutes between sessions to re-sanitise the gym for the next slot of clients. Only 20 to 25 people were allowed to exercises in one slot. As we have a large cardio room, we installed glass partitions between treadmills, cross fits and cycles to avoid contact between two persons. Besides, trainers were also directed to cover their faces with face shields while training people. Around 40 to 50 clients visited our gym today (Wednesday),” said Sumit.

Likewise, Sarvesh Mehan, owner, The Old School Gym, said: “I had told my clients to bring their own towels, water bottles, masks, sanitisers, gloves and other safety stuff along with them. As most of the people are still afraid of returning to gyms, around 20 percent of my usual clients rejoined the gym today (Wednesday).”

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