How Facilities Can Cope With A Health Club Shutdown

It’s a tough time to be a gym owner or fitness facility manager. If you’ve made the decision to close, as many health clubs have, there’s no timetable for reopening. This puts your business at risk. But there are things you can do to keep yourself busy and prepare for the big day when you open your doors again.

A Thorough Club Cleaning

It’s a good idea at any time, but now is an ideal time to give your fitness facility a thorough cleaning. Follow the guidelines offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ensure that you’re doing what you can to eliminate coronavirus and other harmful germs in common areas.

To clean your Life Fitness equipment, we recommend using PureGreen 24 and GymWipes because they are effective disinfectants that are approved by Life Fitness reliability experts. PureGreen 24 is a spray that can be used with paper towels or microfiber cloths. GymWipes are premoistened cleaning cloths.

Take Care of Preventive Maintenance Tasks

A club without exercisers gives you a great chance to ensure that everything is up and running in perfect shape. Life Fitness field service technicians are available for any service repairs that clubs need during this time. Our service technicians are adhering to strict guidelines laid out by the CDC when it comes to issues like social distancing and diligent cleanliness.

If you have a preventive maintenance contract with Life Fitness and want to schedule service email contracts@lifefitness.com. If you don’t have a contract, but would like to schedule a one-time service visit, call 800.351.3737 or email customersupport@lifefitness.com.

Keep In Contact with Your Members

Many of your members are missing your fitness facility as much as you’re missing them. Keep in touch through email. Provide a dose of positivity in their day and encourage them to stay active at home. Send them workout suggestions or a workout of the day. At Life Fitness, we’re using our Digital Coach platform to provide workouts exercisers can do at home. Staying connected to your members is essential and they’ll appreciate it when your health club reopens.

Get Creative with Cash Flow

The financial concerns of shutting down are massive and there’s no easy remedy for the loss of cash flow. But there are ways to mitigate this and help your hourly employees who are taking the brunt of coronavirus shutdowns. Offer gift certificates or prepayment for any group training classes or personal training sessions that you offer. This can help provide much-needed income, and members also benefit. You can also consider setting up a Go Fund Me page where loyal members can donate to help your staff. This tactic has proven to work in the hospitality sector, and if members of your health club feel that they're a part of a community, they’ll contribute.