STAYING FIT WITH GYMS CLOSED
Area fitness professionals are setting up online options and recommend other ways to keep active amid the coronavirus pandemic
“In all this stress, these unprecedented times, it’s important to stay physically active.” — Holly Snow-Schuler, owner and operator of Kingston’s Mac Fitness
Gyms and other close-contact, nonessential businesses in New York were shut down by Governor Andrew Cuomo last Monday night amid the coronavirus pandemic, leaving exercise professionals worried not only about their businesses, but their clients’ wellbeing.
“This is therapy for some people,” said Fred Borzumato, the co-owner and personal trainer at RidgeWell Fitness in Stone Ridge. “There’s a huge emotional component to exercise.”
“It’s a triple-header,” said Holly Snow-Schuler, owner and operator of Kingston’s Mac Fitness. “Don’t work out. Don’t go out. And keep your distance.”
Routines have been disrupted and everybody’s under stress,
said Snow-Schuler. “In all this stress, these unprecedented times, it’s important to stay physically active,” she said.
Snow-Schuler recommends maintaining cardiovascular fitness: “Walk;
take hikes in the woods.” She suggested walking at “our great” Dietz Memorial Stadium in Kingston, the Walkway Over the Hudson between Highland and Poughkeepsie, or biking on the new Ashokan Rail Trail near the Ashokan Reservoir in the Catskills.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommends that people out walking stay
at least six feet away from each other to avoid possible infection. (That doesn’t include the people you live with who aren’t in isolation.)
Another option, said Snow-Schuler, is to access the Les Mills classes online. “They’re free as long as gyms are closed down due to coronavirus,” she said. The workouts can be accessed at https://watch.lesmillsondemand.com/at-home-workouts.
Juli Colotti, who runs a personal training studio, Bodies by Colotti, has set up a variety of free and feebased online classes. Her Facebook group will conduct a free, live workout every day, probably at 11 a.m. If people can’t make the live workout, said Colotti, it will be available all day on replay.
Colotti’s free Facebook group is “Fierce Female Fitness Fanatics of Kingston;” and her free 21-day “Stronger You Challenge: At home workouts and daily education, can be found at http:// bit.ly/BBCstrongeru.
Borzumato said RidgeWell Fitness will be setting up a free YouTube channel, with free classes and workouts. Trainers will be be working
with individual clients through Facetime.
“I feel I have a responsibility to my members to stay engaged and positive, to help them through this time,” Borzumato said. He said we’re lucky to have the technology to be able to do so.
“We need to be leaders, to rally people and uplift them,” he said. “The medicine is here; it’s within us all.”