Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 31 - COVID-19 Has Officially Changed Gyms Forever

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

Do you have a commercial gym membership?I’d bet you do. In the time I have spent traveling for workshops, meeting trainers, interacting with fitness enthusiasts it seems that most people still train at a big box gym. The majority of people are still going to a 24-Hour Fitness, Golds Gym, Crunch, etc.COVID-19 has caused the industry to pivot. You can expect some crazy changes in the coming months, including:Reduced hoursDesignated cleaning timesReservation systemsSneeze shieldsTemperature gunsAND MORE!In today's episode, Danny breaks down exactly how to handle these impending changes, including:What to do if you are a trainer at these clubs.What to do if you are a member.What equipment to grab.How to strategically breakdown your workout.Should you warm up now.And more!Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS:Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Welcome in everybody to the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. Today's episode is one you've been asking for for a really long time. So let me give you a little background here. I've been coaching in the fitness space for seven years independently at a variety of different gyms. I've been all over. I've got some experience here. And when this whole COVID-19 thing went down, a lot of people reached out, particularly trainers and coaches that said, hey, what can I expect? And so, you know, over the course of the last two, three months, I've been reaching out to contacts I still have in the commercial gym space. And I've gotten a lot of answers that paired with some of the stuff that

these companies are putting out preemptively or they're putting out because they're already opening in certain states, I think is a great opportunity for me to provide you with a little bit of insight as to what the hell exactly it is you can expect this landscape to look like moving forward. And it's going to get kind of weird, and it's going to look very, very different before it looks anything remotely close to what you are used to. Now, guys, before we get into it, I really want to help this podcast grow. And the best way for me to do that is by asking you guys for help. So if you do enjoy anything I say on this podcast, do me a favor, take a screenshot of it, share it to your Instagram

story, tag me. It's a great way for people to see it, access it, and then they come check it out. So that's all I ask. If anything resonates, do me a favor and share it. If you don't want to, no big deal. But let's talk about what it is you can expect in commercial gyms and gyms in general in this COVID-19 landscape. So first and foremost, things tend to be up until this point kind of at the state by state level. And what I mean by this is there's not a lot of federal regulation of the gym space. States are kind of stepping in and perhaps providing some guidelines, but realistically, what we're seeing is if the states are open, the gyms are going to be able to open at whatever capacity they want without creating a complete PR nightmare. and there's no stipulations, there's no adjustments, people are crawling all over the place. And while gyms probably would want to do that from a bottom line standpoint, it would probably tarnish their reputation. So what do we know? Well, first and foremost, let's use 24-hour fitness

as an example. 24-hour fitness is one of, if not the biggest chain gyms in the world. It's been in the space a long time. They do a lot of stuff right. They do a lot of stuff wrong. They did everything right. They wouldn't be going through a potential bankruptcy thing right now. That's been all over the news. That should be no news to anybody. So here are some of the adjustments that we know publicly from not just content that's been produced, but also things that they've sent out to members. Here's what we know we can expect from 24-hour fitness. We're going to see condensed hours of operation. And I think that anything that I say now for 24-Hour Fitness is going to go for any commercial gym that you go to. So whether you go

to Crunch, Planet, Equinox, 24-Hour Fitness, LA Fitness, Gold's Gym, City Sports Clubs, most of you go to a commercial gym, you can expect to see similar changes. It's a monkey see monkey do industry. There's going to be a lot of social pressure. There's going to be a lot of business pressure for these companies to handle this in the quote unquote correct way. So 24 Hour Fitness is going to condense hours from 5am to 9pm. So 24 hours is no longer their operating MO. They're going to only be open for what is now 16 hours. Actually, I believe it's even less than that. What they're doing is they're going to stagger hours of operation or gym access followed by 30 minute break. So you'll get an hour of gym

access followed by a 30 minute cleaning closure. Okay. Reservation requirements are going to be implemented. And what I mean by this is you're literally going to have to use the apps that all of these different gyms have, whether it's Anytime, Crunch, 24, they all have apps and you're going to have to reserve your hour in advance. This is going to make things very congested because they're already going to be limiting how many spots are available. They're going to shorten the workout windows down, like I said, to only an hour, which means your warmup and a lot of your accessory work for the way most people lift is probably going to have

to either be expedited, sped up, or just tossed all together. As far as trainers go, this is going to be a tough landscape for commercial gym trainers to navigate. It's a very unique time. It's something we don't know a lot about. But just based on how the operating procedures are changing with an hour of workout time followed by a 30-minute break, I cannot imagine this is going to be great for higher volume commercial gym trainers. So if ever there was a time to get the hell out, it would be now. 24-hour fitness, and I'm sure all other gyms, because again, we've seen this in the commercial and retail space, are going to be offering senior only hours.

24 is doing 2 to 3 p.m., but if you count in the 30-minute cleaning break on the back end of that, that means from 2 p.m. to 3.30 p.m., you will not be able to work out. So 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., you'll no longer be able to use your commercial 24-hour fitness. That's likely to be an industry standard. 2 p.m. to 3.30 p.m., you're not going to be able to use it. So your workout windows are really only 5 a.m. to 1.30 p.m., 3.30 p.m. to 9 p.m., and you can snag an hour, but you'll be competing with other people. When I worked for 24 hour fitness, the club I worked with had about 3000 to 4000 members. And that was a smaller membership base. The average I would say is between five and 10,000, depending

on the club size and where it's located. If 50% of people cancel their membership, which may well happen, that's still anywhere from like 500 people at a really small club to like 5,000 plus people at a big club competing for a very limited spot. So this is probably a very realistic representation of what kind of changes you can expect your gyms to make where you're at right now. And consider the following. This is just based on 24-Hour Fitness' operating procedures in states that allow gyms to be open. Certain states that are a little bit more liberal and a little bit more, I guess you could say they're liberal in nature, but conservative about how they're handling the coronavirus, they might enforce even more stipulations. As somebody

who's living in California, I would not be surprised if gyms were closed until August. in California. I would not be surprised if gyms were closed until August. Things are getting crazy. We are really battening down the hatches here. And I think that states that tend to be a little bit more democratically or left-leaning, you might see these gym closures extended out through the summer. I hope that's not the case. I hope we can find a middle ground here. But again, we're seeing the operating procedures in states that are already quote unquote opened up and they are still quite restrictive. I cannot imagine that the states that have yet to open won't follow these procedures, if not even more intense ones. So what the hell are the people on the inside saying? Like I said, I've been in the space a really long time. I know a lot of people and I just went straight to the source. And anytime fitness owner I talked to said, and I quote,

we're kicking around a ton of ideas, hard to say without knowing what requirements will be, but some things we are doing is limiting capacity to 25% of business maximum. We're going to have a health questionnaire and liability waiver before entering. Social distancing will be required. Masks will be required. There will no longer be group classes. Our app will include features for time reservations that will tell you when to show up. I talked to a manager of a few UFC gyms and he said that they'll be implementing sneeze guards between treadmills. They will have a mandatory six to 10 foot social distancing protocol. Additional janitorial team added temperature checks used at the front door. That's pretty crazy. Every two pieces of equipment will be used or every other piece of equipment.

A friend of mine who's an executive at 24 Hour Fitness said, expect a lower capacity. Again, all kind of in the same vein of the ufc stuff so again it's kind of a monkey see monkey do industry equipment will be blocked off or removed lower volume equipment to provide greater space to accommodate social distancing measures reserved workout times again you've heard this before club closed for cleaning in between workouts you've heard this before and a fingerless check-in modality. So a lot of stuff is going to change. And now as a lifter, here's where we're going to focus and shift a little bit more to the positive stuff. This is what I'm doing with the clients who I work with virtually.

This is what I would recommend that you do as a lifter. If you want to get the most out of your lifting experience and you are not currently working out or you're currently a member of a big box gym. Number one tip I have for you, cancel your big box gym membership. Find a local mom and pop small business gym that's going to probably run things a little bit different. Like I said, a lot of these regulations are due to social pressure and the understanding that these commercial gyms are massively high traffic. There's probably smaller gyms in your area, mom and pop gyms, even personal training studios that might have a little bit of a different set of rules. It may be worth it to you if you're not terrified of the coronavirus. If you are, that's 100% your prerogative. But if you want

to get a more traditional looking workout, I would reach out to the small gyms in your community and ask them what their procedures are. Not only will you be driving revenue and putting money in the pockets of small businesses and Americans, probably more like yourself than these large corporations, but you'll also probably have a little bit more freedom and it will feel a little bit less like you're a number. It's going to be really weird walking into gyms with a mask on, hearing a bell tell you it's time to leave the gym now, and then seeing a cleanup crew come through. It's going to be really dystopian and kind of strange. So just bear with me where we go here,

but I would definitely look for small business or locally owned gyms and ask what accommodations they are going to make for members, if they're going to have a reservation system, if they're going to limit the number of people, because a lot of you work out for more than an hour and this is going to be a really, really strange adjustment. Okay, so the second thing, get some home equipment. Okay, I wrote a blog for this on my website. The link is in my Instagram bio or you just go to coachdannymatranga.com. You need to get your hands on a suspension trainer, a heavy set of dumbbells, a light set of dumbbells,

some bands, a Swiss ball or yoga ball or stability ball, whatever you want to call it, a barbell and some plates. Spend the next couple months procuring those things in case this shit happens again. If you don't have space for it, or you don't have the budget, or you can't find the equipment, all of those things are very real issues right now. Start with a suspension trainer and bands, then work to light and heavy dumbbells, then work to barbell and plates. But these are things that you can do if say, hey, I only have

an hour in the gym. Great. Go in, hit your heavy compounds, save your accessory shit, hit it when you get home with dumbbells. Ideal? Absolutely not. It might be a scenario that a lot of us have to deal with. Many people aren't going to be willing to condense their workout time into an hour if they do something like strength sport, like Olympic lifting, CrossFit, powerlifting, or even bodybuilding. The volume, intensity, or rest durations required to succeed with those sports or those lifting styles are going to require a little more flexibility.

So having equipment at home might still allow you to use that commercial gym space to do the nuts and bolts of what it is you have to do, but save you the time on the back end of being like, oh, I have to fit my bicep curls into this hour. No, you save that shit for when you're at home. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. Another thing I would consider, if you are just gen pop or recreational, hire a coach or a trainer to help you navigate this

craziness. Having a set program that's going to be aligned with the confinements that are going to be in place at these big box gyms, or even having somebody who can design you a program that's hybrid for use at two different locations or at different times will be incredibly valuable if you do not have the wherewithal or know-how to do this, because it's going to be a really funky time. Identify the times that make the sense for you to go, because the likelihood of you slipping into your daily routine is probably rare. If like I said, you have 5,000 members, gyms are going to be limiting utilization to just 25% of building capacity and everybody's going to be competing over certain times. Gyms had high

traffic times anyway. So you again had an understanding of, okay, it's really busy from seven, eight, nine in the morning, kind of dies down from 10 to three, then it really picks up from three to seven, then it dies down from seven to nine. So all the people are going to be competing for those same spots. And understanding that you might have to work your schedule around a little bit differently and find some low traffic times. So try to set it up so that there's some efficiency built into finding low traffic times that you have a better chance of getting through these app-based reservation platforms. I mean, who's to say these apps are going to be reliable? They might crash. It's going to be weird.

None of these gym companies are known for having high quality third-party app-based software. So do yourself a service and try to get lower traffic times reserved if you can, instead of just perhaps always going for broke on the times you want. If you can't get the times you want, maybe open up the idea of getting some less than ideal times. lifestyle related, but that will help you manage this stuff a lot. Not a lot of people I know are going backwards. We might all be struggling to go forward with limited equipment, but if you nail your sleep and nutrition, it makes it a lot easier to avoid going backwards. A tip I have is, and this is a really unique one, by warming up at home. And the reason I recommend this is if you don't, if you live within five to 10 minutes of your gym, you can do a 10 to 15 minute warmup at home, do your soft tissue work, your foam rolling, your stretching, do your corrective exercise work, even your activation work, even your aerobic

warmup, then hop in the car and hustle over so you can get right to business. But if you're only working with a one hour window, skipping your warmupup and being forced to rush through a workout, that's not a great combo for long-term performance and injury management. So I would not recommend skipping your warm- on the end. I would recommend having those things on hand, perhaps even a foam roller and a yoga mat to prepare yourself to get a little bit done on the front end. So guys, this is a quick hitter podcast, but this is, as far as I know, hitter podcast, but this is, as far as I know, all of the details related to what these big box gyms are going to look like moving forward for the foreseeable future. There's been a massive run on home gym equipment, so now would probably be the time to get on a waiting list for those things. I'm not trying to sound pessimistic, but it's not unreasonable to assume that within the next 5-10 years we might face another COVID-19-esque pandemic

with similar social distancing, shelter in place procedures, and having home gym equipment made from iron and rubber that will last forever is going to be an investment that you are happy you made. Additionally, these things don't tend to lose their value. So if you have to resell them, even though the resale market is likely to be saturated in the future, you'll probably find a buyer for a somewhat reasonable price. So do yourself a favor, be prepared. Understand that the likelihood of your gym opening and resembling what you perhaps thought two, three months ago is probably very unlikely. Even in states, like I said, that are opening everything up, the procedures at health clubs are being modified tremendously

based on social and societal pressures and expectations as to how we should limit our exposure. So you would do yourself a major disservice not thinking this through ahead of time as to how am I going to make this work for me? Because in the same way we've had to be creative with a lot less now, thankfully if things do open we will get more. But we will still have to be creative because we are quite a ways away from normal, at least out here in California. So continue to prepare yourself, take care of your health, your fitness, your immune system by staying active in some way, shape, or form. And again, if you're somebody who's very worried about

contracting the coronavirus with the way these diseases tend to be spread, a return to the commercial gym is simply not a great idea. You know, there is going to be increased exposure there regardless of these stipulations. And I don't want to tell people to rush back. But this is a question that I've gotten at a tremendous frequency. And I would be lying to you guys if I told you that I don't think a lot of people are going to rush back regardless of what the science and the data says. People who work out are incredibly routine oriented and many of them are straight up neurotic and they're going to go back regardless of the risk that it places on themselves or the people around them. I'm not going to tell you that's the right or wrong thing to do. I'm going

to tell you that's the reality of the situation. These are the decisions that people will make. And unfortunately, that might slow this down. It might speed it up. Who the hell knows? I'm not an infectious disease expert. I won't tell you whether or not you should go to the gym. I'll only tell you exactly what it is or what my expectation is that you will face in the coming weeks and months as these facilities start to open up around the country. Like I said before, if you're in a little bit more of a liberal state or a democratic quote-unquote blue state, you might expect to be waiting a little bit longer as the uncertainty and the bias that this political faction seems to have would probably lead me to believe we'll stay closed a little longer. Not right, not wrong. This is just

what you can expect. So again, the bullet points. Indensed hours, you'll probably get one hour a few times a week. The likelihood of going one hour a day, five to six days a week seems really unlikely with how many people will be competing for spots. that would be your best case scenario. The best case scenario for you if you go to a commercial gym is that you'll be able to get five to six days a week of about an hour of training. You won't get any more than that because they probably won't allow any more. This is why I would strongly recommend looking into the locally owned non-corporate gyms, training studios in your area and seeing if they are offering a different set of rules and regulations. That may be the best case scenario for you. And I think that keeping your dollars in the hands of small business owners will support the economy better. Now,

trainers, if you're working at a big box gym, and I know many of the listeners of this show are coaches. Now is time to get the fuck out. Get out now. I am dead serious. The commercial gym industry is not going to be a conducive space for personal training any longer. If ever there was a time to leave the nest, it's now. Don't be afraid. You can give yourself a little bit of a raise here if you bounce. But understand this, there are a lot of people that stay where they're at because of fear. And the restrictions in this space are going to limit your ability to help and connect with people doing what you love doing, which is personal training. I would rather leave a big box gym and only train on Zoom than have somebody tell me when and how I can train my clients. Your clients will be safer

at home. You'll be able to work with them probably in a more intimate capacity without the fear of the social distancing and all the rules and regulations. You'll be instantly giving yourself a raise because you won't pay 60% of your income to a big box gym anymore. Now is the time to pivot. If you have a solid clientele, I think that you would be doing yourself a disservice not to reach out and communicate to them what they would think if you were to leave, if they would be open to the option of a virtual training relationship via Zoom

or perhaps following you to a local small studio where you can pay rent. Just make sure all your bases are covered. Everyone, I really do appreciate you listening in. Not to be pessimistic, but it does look like we are in this for the long haul. Take care of your health and the health of the people around you first and foremost. That stuff is exponentially more important than getting a pump. Like I've said a million times, it's really hard to lose gains. So get your protein, get your sleep, play this out, start looking into potentially

saving towards getting some high utility, high functionality, home training equipment. And we are going to make it through this. Regardless of the pessimism you hear in my tone, this is just my way of kind of bringing this information to you in the best way possible. But realistically, I think we are all fortunate. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably care about your health. You're probably somewhat fit. You're in a very good position. Don't let that privilege jeopardize other people's health.

Understand that there are ways that we can continue to work towards our health in an atypical fashion, independent of our traditional gym setting. We've made it this far. We're gonna make it all the way through. Just be patient, take a deep breath. And again, remember, at the end of the day, this is going to make us all better people. It should make us better lifters. It should make us more versatile.

Try to garner as much as you can, pull as much positivity as you can out of this situation. I wish you guys nothing but the best. Please stay safe. Thank you again for listening. And if this resonated, please feel free to share. Thanks so much for listening. Subscribe to the podcast. Leave me a five-star written rating and review on iTunes. Have a good one.