Gyms REOPEN in Michigan - What you should know no matter where you live

On Wednesday, September 9, gyms are reopening across Michigan. I have mixed feelings. As a "gym" owner, I an excited to see people able to return to exercise equipment they desperately need. As someone who studied public health, I cringe at the prospect of people running on treadmills and sharing the same air in cardio classes. We know from published research that Covid-19 can spread in these situations. As a responsible business owner, my number one goal is to keep my customers and staff safe and healthy.

Thus, we've made changes at Better Living Fitness.

To provide you with the safest gym environment, Better Living is doing the following:

• Limit the use of the 4,200ft facility to 4 clients/hr. Call 734.747.0123 to make an appointment
• Provide individual workout rooms to eliminate any sustained contact with others
• Equip every patron gets a clean towel, rag and bottle of CDC-approved sanitizer
• Require everyone in the building to wash hands upon entry

Covid-19 is an airborne virus. Therefore, we have taken additional precautions to create the safest gym environment:

• Air conditioning/furnace units run continuously - this creates a continual flow of outdoor air into the facility.
• HEPA air purifiers approved to filter coronavirus are installed.
• Ceiling fans are set to push air down toward the floor. This quickens the settling of particles from the air to the floor.

You may read all of this and think, why go to a gym? Sure, you can decide to keep working out at home. We will continue to provide video-based personal training AND Full-Body FIT sessions indefinitely. There is no safer way to work on your fitness right now than via Zoom/FaceTime. However, if you want to go back to a gym for the motivation or the superior equipment, we will provide you the safest, best run gym experience you will find.

As always, email me at mark@betterlivingfitness.com to let me know how I can best help you.

Be well,

Mark

Fitness Challenge - 4 Things You Need to Know to Get Fit at HOME

 Is the tide turning? Sadly, I'm not talking about our progress on fighting Covid-19, but rather our attitudes toward fitness. This summer it seems like everyone has been out walking, jogging and biking A LOT more. Bike shops are out of stock. Similarly, you can barely find dumbbells and other home equipment. It seems like a lot of people are searching for ways to stay or get fit without traditional gyms.

I welcome this change. I'm not sure the traditional gym model has worked. We all purchase a gym membership in January and (re)start going regularly. Sometimes we stay through the year, sometimes we stop going. When gyms closed in March, I actually had 3 different memberships! Yet despite our having these resources, heart disease and diabetes are still just as prevalent as when I got into the field. Even in Washtenaw County, 1 in 4 adults is obese.

The pandemic has forces us all to be more creative with our fitness. At Better Living, many 70+ year olds have done their first video calls switching to Zoom or Google-based video personal training. Crisis necessitates change and this resilient population was used to rolling with the punches. I remember being surprised at how easily one 82 year old client was able to follow exercise instructions I gave through his Ipad.

Most of us went into survival mode when coronavirus entered our lives. We immediately grabbed for toilet paper and cleaned out the grocery stores. We hunkered down and we quarantined. Now it seems we all are asking, "what's next?". I'm hearing more people ask, "how do I get rid of this knee pain?" and "how do I lose this belly fat?". Business has surged at Better Living as more people are searching for ways to improve their fitness. Furthermore, we can now work with anyone who has a camera on their computer, tablet or phone. While we used to be limited to clients within 5 miles of our facilities, we now train clients in 5 states.

Now that we've figured out how to get by in the age of coronavirus, I'd like to issue a fitness challenge. We can do better than we've done in the past. We don't need a 24-hr gym. Rather, we need well-crafted exercise that keeps us fit and keeps us coming back. 

Check out our video: 4 Things You Need to Get Fit at Home

and 

Join our Fitness Challenge. We are committed to your long-term success. To reward you for still being in the challenge 6 months from now we will GIVE YOU $100.

How to be Safe in a Gym - WATCH THIS VIDEO

Wow. This is the post that has kept me awake at night. Why have I been losing sleep? Coronavirus is airborne. It comes from people's breath. When we breath harder, especially from our mouths, we likely emit more virus into the air. And, people breath harder when they exercise.

I've been serving on work groups to advise Governor Whitmer on how to safely reopen fitness, personal training and gyms in Michigan. With the continued spread of Covid-19, is it even possible to go back to working out? I've read a lot of research - hours of reading.

Then I distilled the information down into a 6-minute video.

10 things your gym should be doing to keep you safe

AND 

...the 7 additional things you can do to protect yourself

2020 How to Be Safe in a Gym 

If you plan to walk back into a gym or fitness center, arm yourself with these tips. Spread the word, it could save some lives.

We are continuing to personal train over Zoom and FaceTime. This will continue to be the safest way to exercise until Covid-19 is gone. If you are not already training with us, try a free fitness consultation. We'd love to help you feel your best and NOW we can train you wherever you are.

Surviving a Pandemic with your Muscles Intact

I’ve worked as a personal trainer for over 20 years. While I am training, I give 100% of my focus to my client. For years I’ve been irritated when someone tries to talk with me while I am working. How can I talk? I am watching every joint in the body moving, reading exertion levels, chatting with my client and counting repetitions. On March 16^th, when one of my fellow trainers nudged me during my training session, I knew it had to be critical. It was. The governor had issued an executive order that would shut us down at 3pm.

One thing I’ve learned from personality testing, it is that I do not change direction well. As a small-business owner, I’ve had to change direction a lot since mid-March. It helped to realize that all decisions came from three immediate priorities: 1. Keep our clients strong and healthy. 2. Keep our business afloat and our staff employed. 3. Prevent a single staff member or client from getting the Covid-19 virus.

Many of our clients are baby boomers and older. We help them keep their backs, spines and legs strong. Our strength training helps our elderly clients remain independent in their own homes. Many are saying now, “Thank God I’m not in a nursing home; that’s because of you!”. My team and I dropped off sanitized dumbbells and exercise bands to our client’s porches to ensure they could keep lifting weights during the stay-at-home period.

While staying at home is keeping us safe from the virus, it is also cutting us off from our community and our support resources. 

April was a scary time for Better Living. Even so, I was encouraged by the local, state and federal responses to help small businesses get through this. So many businesses were suffering as people went into lock down. On Monday, April 13^th, I called the Small Business Association to check our SBA loan status. I was caller 1,526 in cue. It was time to ramp up our efforts to keep people healthy and survive on our own. 

The Better Living team and I started offering Zoom and FaceTime-based training sessions. They were immediately popular. As people lost their access to gyms, fitness classes and other exercise outlets, our exercise training became even more valuable. Clients told us that the sessions worked surprisingly well - "We can train on Zoom the next time there is snow." We had found a new way to help people! 

Over the past 3 months, we have continued to offer our entire staff full-time hours. We continue to listen to our clients for what they need and we seek to pivot our company to serve the community. So far, we have not had a single 'known" case of Covid-19 among our staff or clients.

The isolation of staying-at-home, while necessary, leads to muscle loss, joint deterioration and depression. I believe we all need to take care of each other right now. It is a depressing time so we need to “Focus on what you CAN do, versus what you can’t”. What Better Living can do is keep people strong, so that’s what we are doing.

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Let us help you:

Try a FREE Zoom Full-Body FIT strength class. Use Promo Code: StayAtHome

Or try a COMPLIMENTARY On-line Mobility class with the Promo Code: GetMobile

SIGNUP and SCHEDULE

You don't need any exercise equipment to do these classes, though light dumbbells and/or bands make for an even better workout.