With further easing of the lockdown guidelines, gymnasiums in the city resumed operations on Monday. Apart from the usual sanitisation and temperature checks of members, several gym owners said that vaccination has been made mandatory while some others added that those vaccinated will get incentives in terms of membership deals.
Chirag Sethi, vice-president of the Delhi Gym Association said: “The SOPs were already drafted. This time we have also advised members of the association to promote vaccinations and give discounts. We are not making it mandatory but are trying to incentivise. The staff members are also vaccinated. There are about 5,500 gyms in the city and around 1 lakh people are employed directly or indirectly. The lockdowns have increased burdens on owners as well and many also had to shut down.”
Novel training
Siddharth Singh of Crosstrain Fight Club, however, said that vaccination of members have been made mandatory. Mr. Singh also added that with only five months of operations in the last 14 months, novel training methods were being devised to improve the business.
“We are into combat sports and it is usually difficult to maintain social distancing while training. So we have created a special programme where members will get 30 minutes of personalised workout. It will be circuit training and there is no fixed time. Members can visit whenever they choose to. Usually we used to train 50 people in a group which is not ideal right now,” said Mr. Singh while adding that this was in addition to the regular protocol that are followed.
Improved revenue
Stating that despite the unprecedented situation, it was important to re-innovate and hope for improved revenue, Mr. Singh said: “The last year has definitely affected revenue but we are keen to solve the issues. We have to evolve and survive so that once there is a boom, we have benefits to reap. We are confident that our new programme will be effective.”
Some also said that along with reopening of centres, online classes will continue.
Rupali Kapoor of BoxFit said: “We will be opening our centre next week. Currently, we are having a thorough sanitisation process. We have a studio where only personal training will be practised. One has to book a particular slot and sanitise prior to and after training. The multiple lockdowns did affect us a lot. But initially, people did not know about online training but now it is better. So we will continue with our online training as well.”