Poor footfalls worry owners who depend on fitness centres for livelihood

Mysore/Mysuru: Gyms and fitness centres in city are yet to recover from the impact of the prolonged lockdown imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and poor response from patrons. Most of the gyms continue to witness poor footfalls as people are not yet confident of entering a gym for their regular exercises. 

 After two years of the pandemic where people spent months cooped up at home getting very little exercises, the trend continues and even now, people are not entering gyms despite gym owners taking enough precautions to curb the virus spread.

More prefer online training

The trend now is to take online classes and move toward maintaining mental as well as physical health. More and more customers are shifting to online gym training mode and fitness freaks are scared to return to the actual gyms for pre-pandemic routines.

“COVID has accelerated online/in-person workouts that are offered by brick-and-mortar gyms. Fitness clubs and gyms are grappling with declining memberships,” said a gym owner. 

Most virtual workouts can be done via mobile phones or a laptop. Some are pre-recorded and allow for pausing or rewinding. Others are live-streamed, which helps mimic the experience of exercising with a group. People prefer this system now, he added. 

“Many gyms that are owned by trainers have hefty loans on the building and expensive infrastructure. And there has been no business since the past two years. Despite taking all precautions, people are not coming back to gyms,” President of Mysuru Gym and Fitness Centre Owners’ Association M.S. Harsha told Star of Mysore. 

 A major blow

There are 250 gyms and fitness centres and there are over 3,000 families in Mysuru who depend on gyms for their livelihood and a minimum of Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 10 lakh is required to maintain gyms every month depending on the size of the gyms and the equipment they have, he said. 

“This is a major blow to the industry that has been struggling after the lockdown. The fitness industry has suffered the longest compared to other professions. Some of them will be forced to shut shop if the Government does not intervene,” Harsha added. 

“Till now, we had to incur all fixed costs such as rent, taxes, etc. We also paid salaries to our staff. But there was no revenue. We had to take loans to resume our business after lockdown and we are under huge financial burden at this stage. We were hoping for a good business but now even that hope is petering out,” he said. 

Other owners say that gyms have followed a long list of protocols to ensure safety of clients as well as employees. That is the reason why there is no case of gyms turning into hotspots anywhere. There have been no instances of violation of rules either. But still, the patrons are not coming, they regret. 

“We are also part of COVID fight and are offering free one month training to Corona warriors like doctors, Police and journalists. This social initiative makes us happy too,” Harsha added.