San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Gyms worry masks won’t work out
Omicron forces fitness centers to face specter of membership loss at busiest time of year
The past year has been a bumpy one for Bay Area gyms and fitness studios. Dean Eriksen, the co-owner of Fit Local Fit, a small network of gyms in San Francisco, describes it as “a continuous stream of operational pivots and just an overall challenge to make it to this point.”
Now the fast-spreading omicron variant is poised to throw the industry yet another curveball going into what should be one of their busiest parts of the year, when people are drawing up lists of New
Anandi Cade lifts weights at Fitness SF on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. As of Thursday, masks must be worn in all gyms in Bay Area counties.
Year’s resolutions and committing to hit the gym more regularly.
“I feel like there’s light at the end of the tunnel, except we’re starting to see trends go a little bit backward,” Eriksen said. “I’m feeling optimistic, but I’m also feeling a little concerned with the direction things are going right now.”
Don Dickerson, the vice president of Fitness SF, which has eight gyms around the Bay Area, six of which are in San Francisco, was less sanguine, especially in light of the news Wednesday that masks
Pedestrians and cyclists share the car-free John F. Kennedy Drive inside San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
“Twenty percent of our member base just won’t work out in a mask.”
would, once again, be required in gym settings in San Francisco, Alameda, Marin and Contra Costa counties.
“It’s been a brutal year. The constant change has been rough on members,” Dickerson said. “January was our hope to get back on our feet.” Now that’s looking less likely. Membership numbers are just “a fraction” of what they were before the pandemic, he said, thanks in part to an empty downtown core, where three of the group’s gyms are located. Dickerson expects to lose more with the latest mask mandate. “Twenty percent of our member base just won’t work out in a mask,” he said. “Those members will go on freeze right away.” Other Bay Area gyms and fitness studios estimate a 20% to 25% drop as well.
Nationally, 27% of the gyms open in 2019 had permanently closed by summer 2021, according to IHRSA, a global health and fitness association.
“I would hope to say with 2021 coming to a close that we are optimistic, we’re looking forward to a whole new year in 2022, but with omicron, everything is up in the air at this point,” said Dave Karraker, co-owner of MX3 Fitness and a spokesperson for the San Francisco Independent Fitness Coalition. “You just never know what’s going to happen, and I think omicron has demonstrated that anything can happen.”
He’s hoping the latest mandate, which has an expiration date of Feb. 1, in San Francisco, won’t cause too much attrition, and that, with an end date in sight, members might be able to push through it. “I think it is important for people to remember these are small businesses that we’re talking
Don Dickerson, vice president of Fitness SF
about.”
Despite the tumultuous past couple years, those who have made it this far are trying to remain optimistic.
Tracey Sylvester, the owner of EHS Pilates, called the past year “a whirlwind” with “a lot of stops and starts,” but said the city’s fitness industry has come out of it stronger in some ways. “In the beginning, we kind of were isolated as a small group that really got very little support, very little attention; we didn’t have the big advocacy groups, so we really had to fight for our voice to be heard, and it was a battle for a year.
“I think we’re at the other end of it. I think we’ve coalesced as an industry, I think we now have a voice.”
What’s more, Sylvester said, is she thinks residents and policymakers have a newfound understanding of how vital these businesses are. “The most important messages coming out of this pandemic is how much people have atrophied, how much movement is an important component” of daily life.
At the outset of the pandemic, Shannon Boughn, the owner of 17th Street Athletic Club in the Mission District, was worried Peloton and virtual classes might replace the gym altogether.
“That was scary, just to think this is maybe the new world, that everything is online,” she said. So far, that’s not the case. “What I’m seeing when they relax the mask mandates and when they let people come back is
Yiming Jen works out at Fitness SF in San Francisco while wearing a mask. Bay Area gym owners estimate they’ll see a 20% to 25% drop of members because of the mask mandate.
people want to go in, they want community, and they want accountability in person.”
Now that the “existential dread” has passed, Boughn said, her focus is on the city. With the surge in full swing, masks make sense, she said, but she knows that will mean a considerable dip in customers for the time being. She’s hoping the city can step in to help.
“The city has got to do some stuff to help gyms the way they helped restaurants,” Boughn said. “And they’ve got to figure out a way to make doing business in the city a little easier.”