At the busy Anytime Fitness on Wedge Parkway, masks are out…and Reno locals Chris and Mary Perry are back. Mary says her clothes got too tight. "I was feeling a lot more sluggish, a lot more tired...and so we knew had to get back to the gym." Her husband Chris told me, "My hips started to hurt, my knees started to hurt, and so I knew it was time to figure out how to lose some weight."
If you can relate you're not alone. Many folks spent the year sheltering at home in sweatpants, perfecting banana bread recipes and indulging in pandemic-induced stress eating. Most of us escaped Covid-19, but not the 'quarantine 19'. Heidi Hoeck, the owner of Anytime Fitness on Wedge Parkway says "They literally have put on 15 to 20 pounds, and they come in here and they are ready to lose it."
U.S. adults under lockdown gained one pound every 5 days, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The National Institutes of Health says active adults saw their activity levels drop by 32% in lockdown, and 22% of adults reported gaining weight in the pandemic.
Here in town, places like Anytime Fitness and other clubs have the antidote. Heidi says at her club, “It’s not one specific thing, it’s the mixology of it all that makes it happen." She says today was the busiest it has been there since the day before the state's mask mandate went into effect. "It is, and it is so exciting, it's bustling in here now."
But they were challenged. That particular Anytime Fitness lost 420 members during the pandemic. But just recently it gained 250. It’s almost like the annual New Year's rush all over again. Good news, as all fitness clubs have had it rough like most all small businesses. 17% of all U.S. gyms did not survive and closed for good. But now in Nevada they're allowed to welcome everyone, mask or not. Today, that very familiar “Mask Up” sign we've seen everywhere for so long, was taken down here. And a lot of folks want to drop that pandemic belly. Chris Perry told me, "The only places you were really going were to pick up food, and maybe to get medication at the pharmacy, so that social component of what the gym's about was gone."
Returning customers will see a slightly different landscape at health clubs. There are new permanent changes. Heidi says at her club, "We have a new cleaning system that's implemented, and its vey very strict."
Mary says that's fine. She has a goal to reach: "The small group training is about an hour, and the treadmill is probably another 40 minutes and that's twice a week. That's my goal."
It involves work of course. But easier to do now with others, with support...and more freedom.
