FALL RIVER – Sweat to your heart’s desire, but please keep at least six feet away.
That dictum became a mantra of sorts on Monday for gyms and health clubs in Fall River, as well as the rest of the commonwealth, as Phase 3 of Gov. Charlie Baker’s reopening plan took effect.
The first step of Baker’s two-step Phase 3 mandates that anyone wearing a face covering while exercising in a health club maintain a six-foot degree of separation from the next closest person.
Gym rats who manage to keep a social distance of at least 14 feet are not required to wear a mask.
Health clubs and gyms must also limit their capacity to no more than 40 percent, as part of the Phase 3 effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The owner of General Fitness gym and health club at 425 Pleasant St. isn’t overly concerned about the under-40-percent capacity rule.
“We’ll work with what we have,” said Scott Fastino, who says that 58,000 square feet spread out within two floors inside the Durfee Union Mill complex gives his members a lot of space with which to work out.
“Social distancing is not a problem here,” he said.
The Fall River native says he’d been working more than 20 years at General Fitness, which opened in 1985, and most recently as its general manager when he bought the business last March from former owner Doreen Patys.
“I bought it on March 1, and by March 23 we were closed,” said Fastino, referring to Baker’s initial executive order shutting down businesses across the state, in order to stem the tide of the coronavirus pandemic.
Fastino, 55, says after he bought the health club and gym he set to work cleaning up the place and making extensive renovations.
As luck would have it, he said, friends and acquaintances, many of them club members, volunteered their time to help him paint the place, put in a new front desk and remove old pipes.
Fastino says he also “bought a lot of new equipment.”
“It was a sizable investment,” he said.
Fastino says his staff of 23 mostly part-time workers is now focused on sanitizing workout areas. “They walk around all day wiping,” he said.
He’s installed hand-sanitizing stations and offers sanitizing bottles to club members, who must wear masks when they walk in.
Sabrina Hinchey of New Bedford has been a General Fitness member for nearly five years.
“It feels amazing,” she said, being able to get back to her old regimen of using free weights in the club’s expansive, lower-level coed weight room.
The upper floor of General Fitness includes both a coed cardio-workout and a women-only exercise area with a menagerie of elliptical, treadmill and other exercise machines.
“It motivates me to see all the big guys around me,” Hinchey, 28, said, as she took a brief breather.
She kept physically active during the past three and a half months by running but says she doesn’t have free weights at home and missed pumping iron.
Fastino says during the late March through early July shutdown some exercise classes were conducted online while others were suspended.
The yoga, spinning and aerobics classes still can’t be held in person because of social distancing rules -- but he says some instructors may begin conducting remote instruction from the gym’s exercise rooms, as opposed to from their homes.
He also acknowledges the inconvenience for members who normally would shower after working out, but until further notice will no longer be able to do so as part of the governor’s Phase 3 reopening plan.
Fastino says he doesn’t fault Baker for the steps he’s taken to restrict the spread of COVID-19, which to date has taken the lives of nearly 8,000 Bay State residents.
“I do understand why he did it,” Fastino said. “I feel the governor did make the right decision, and I’m going to do my part.”
YMCA back in business
It’s not exactly business as usual at the Fall River YMCA on North Main Street, but executive director Stephanie Mancini says Phase 3 of the state’s reopening plan is a welcome relief.
For three and half months the only exercise being offered to members were fitness classes taught online as part of a “virtual group” of 3,000 members belonging to the six YMCA facilities within the YMCA Southcoast network.
Mancini, however, is also quick to note that the Fall River YMCA, in conjunction with the Boston Food Bank, during the pandemic has so far provided 15,000 pounds of food and groceries to more than 4,000 local households.
Monday marked the first day since the late-March shutdown of health clubs and gyms that the YMCA was able to admit members into the building — to either swim in the pool or work out with weights and machines in the two-story Wellness Center.
“There was a line out the door at 6 a.m., which is good,” Mancini, 40, said.
Members, however, are now required to make reservations either to use the Wellness Center or pool.
Mancini strongly recommends that they do so online but says that members who don’t have access to a computer or mobile device can call the main phone number.
Reservations can be made 48 hours in advance and are good for a maximum one hour per day for each member.
The swimming pool has four lap lanes, which at different times of the day are reduced to make room for a family swim period.
Mancini says the new reservation-only arrangement actually favors some adult-swim members who, unlike in the past, are now guaranteed a lap lane.
But the men’s and ladies’ adult locker rooms with their showers, lockers and sauna rooms are closed.
That means anyone using the pool first must rinse off in a shower in the smaller family locker room, which has two private stalls for changing in and out of clothes.
Instead of storing clothes and valuables in lockers, swimmers bring their gym bags into the pool area and place them on numbered, designated spaces.
Entry into the pool, or “natatorium,” area from the hallway leading from the family locker room is now controlled and regimented, with arrows and signs guiding swimmers where to walk.
Swimmers are allowed a maximum 45 minutes in the pool.
“When you are done swimming you need to change and leave,” Mancini said.
She said men and women using weights and exercise machines in the Wellness Center have the option of changing their clothes in the adjoining bathrooms.
Mancini says all the exercise equipment has been rearranged to ensure a distance of 14 feet.
After using barbells and weights, she said, members are asked to place them on the floor within a box-like space with blue borders, where they are then sprayed with disinfectant, as part of a three-minute-long “dwell time.”
Hours of operation at the Fall River YMCA have been abbreviated and adjusted.
The YMCA is now open Monday through Friday 6 a.m. to noon and reopens from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. That gives the staff two hours to clean and sanitize the premises.
Hours on Saturday are 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday, although activity on that day, Mancini said, is limited to the swimming pool.
She also said that outdoor fitness classes have been held in the rear parking lot since June 8.
Mancini says membership since late March has dropped off from 2,200 to 1,900.
She said roughly 30 percent of members opted to put their memberships “on hold” as opposed to leaving.
Mancini says members who continued paying their monthly and annual dues, despite not having access to the YMCA facility, have made a big difference by helping support the food distribution program for needy Fall River families, many of whom she says would otherwise “go to bed hungry.”
“I’m super grateful for them,” she said of those members.