Under normal circumstances, Nicole Mereshensky works out about five times a week at various indoor cycling and high intensity interval training studios around Manhattan.
“Fitness is everything to me,” said Ms Mereshensky, a mother of two school-age children. “It grounds me mentally more than anything.”
But in the last week, she has been trying to weigh the anxiety of not working out against the worry of being sweated on or otherwise potentially exposed to the new coronavirus.
Ms. Mereshensky, 39, has reduced her schedule to three classes a week, and, in an effort to avoid germs on public transportation, will go to classes only within walking distance of her New York apartment.
When she goes to one-hour classes at Barry’s Bootcamp, where the protocol is four 15-minute intervals of treadmill running and floor weight exercises, she brings a spray bottle of sanitizer and four pairs of latex gloves.
“I spray the treadmill with sanitizer and wear one pair of gloves because you’re pressing buttons and you’re grabbing the sides,” Ms. Mereshensky said. “Once I get off the treadmill, I will change my gloves and put new ones on, go get weights, spray down the area on the floor, spray the bench as well as the weights.”
So far, she hasn’t seen anyone else working out with gloves on, and some people have noticed when she walks in. “I’m sure to make a funny joke when I walk in so everyone knows I’m not infected but I’m preventing,” she said.
As schools and universities are closing around the country in recommended efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus and companies are scurrying to implement remote-working strategies for employees, daily rituals of fitness buffs across the United States, and the businesses that they support, are also being upended.
Vando Cabral, 35, owns Punch Force Fitness, a boxing fitness studio in Manhattan, with his brother. “I haven’t seen too much of a slowdown,” said Mr. Cabral, who is buying a lot of cleaning supplies. “And with the schools closing, kids have jumped in and are taking classes. But of course we are all worried and that’s why we need to keep at it, washing hands and keeping things as clean as possible.”
Angie Beis, 39, is a physical therapist and personal trainer hired by individuals for one-on-one sessions at their homes, and by corporations who bring her to their offices to give group training to employees. As more people work from home, her corporate business is already drying up.
“It’s frightening,” Ms. Beis said, “As a single mom with a mortgage, it’s going to put a strain on my income.” She plans to start offering 30-minute personal training sessions over FaceTime to people working from home. “People still need to work out,” she said.
Large gyms and franchised studios are messaging members to try to calm panic about germs.
Equinox, which has about 100 fitness clubs in the United States, Canada and Britain, announced over email last month that employees are wiping down the clubs three times daily with hospital-grade cleaners. The company also reminded members to wash their hands after going to the bathroom and sneezing.
“We have asked our instructors to remain as vigilant as possible about the above and eliminate skin to skin contact (for example, adjustments in yoga, high fives and partner work that requires the passing of equipment, etc.),” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.
CorePower Yoga, which has more than 200 studios nationwide that turn up the heat to 100 degrees for some classes, sent an email to its community in early March to assure that the company is taking a hands-off approach to touching and bending over backward to clean up all the sweat.
“We’ve reduced physical assists and the use of props,” the note read. “We’ve also increased cleaning protocols to be sure all doorknobs, props, weights and other surfaces are sanitized more frequently.” It also said: “Clean is kind — we can do this together.”
Ishta Yoga, a studio in Greenwich Village, alerted students that the studio would suspend mat rental and sharing of communal props like blocks, straps and eye pillows. Namastes are still OK, but not hugs and handshakes.
Orangetheory Fitness is asking members and trainers to substitute fist pumps for high fives.
There are other ways to reduce risk. Jonathan Rein, a 45-year-old investor and father of two in New York, works out about four times a week in a communal gym in his Manhattan apartment building and in another gym: lifting weights and using cardio machines. A few weeks ago, he began to reconsider his schedule (and now he’ll have to do more rescheduling because the building just closed its gym).
“I shifted the times when I go, to less crowded times,” he said. “I’ve always used the gym-provided wipes and Purell, but I’m more conscious about wiping down barbells and dumbbells in particular, and making sure that I Purell between sets.”
However sore his biceps may be, his hands may be worse. “They’re pretty beat up from the alcohol content in the sanitizer and all the constant hand washing,” he said.
For 14 years, Amanda Rubinstein-Stern has been leading a Monday morning yoga class at a community center in New Orleans for about 20 students, ranging in age from about 50 to 91.
For the last two Mondays, they had class-wide discussions about ways to maintain the community of their weekly class while protecting themselves against germs that could lead to Covid-19. “What we have decided to do, all of us, is to buy our own yoga bags. They’ve gone to Five Below, T.J. Maxx and Walmart and each have purchased a belt, two blocks, a mat and a towel,” Ms. Rubinstein-Stern said. A hospital has provided disinfectant wipes.
“I’m not a medical authority, but stress can weaken the immune system, and in their time in class I can see change in disposition and a greater sense of optimism,” she said.
Those who invested in expensive home fitness equipment are now seeing it pay off in unanticipated ways. “I’m happier than ever to have my Peloton,” said Andrea Morganroth, of Birmingham, Mich., who has been riding daily at home for a year.
Obé, a home fitness company that offers live and on-demand classes in cardioboxing, barre, yoga and other workouts, is seizing the moment, offering new users a free month if they sign up for its platform. (A subscription costs $199 annually or $27 a month.)
Obé, an acronym for Our Body Electric, was founded by Mark Mullett and Ashley Mills, former talent agents who said on Tuesday that they had seen “thousands and thousands” of new sign-ups.
Courtney Simmons, a member of Obé’s private Facebook group who lives in Orlando, Fla., wrote in a Facebook post that she had recently canceled her Planet Fitness membership and returned to the platform because of her concern about Covid-19.
“The person on the treadmill next to me was hacking a lung,” she wrote. “I just lost it. No more — I can’t mentally handle it! So it’s Obé and outdoor running for me! Yea!”
Other higher-end home exercise companies are also reporting a surge in usage and interest. Tempo is a home exercise system that includes a free-weight set, a 42-inch touch screen display and a 3-D motion tracking mechanism; it costs $1,995. The company’s chief executive, Moawia Eldeeb, said that starting in mid-February, its users were working out 35 percent more often than they had in the previous six months.
Last week, the company increased its spending on advertising.
Asked if he was concerned about the appearance of taking advantage of pandemic panic, Mr. Eldeeb argued that the company was providing a necessary service.
“You cannot socially distance yourself at a gym,” he said. “It is the worst place to be. Because you don’t know who touched what, you can’t clean the dumbbells and barbells. I find that we’re actually offering something that does help in this time to reduce the stress.”
The Mirror, another home exercise system, costs $1,495, with classes starting at $39 a month. It too, is attracting more interest, according to its founder and chief executive, Brynn Putnam. In an email, Ms. Putnam said that the company had seen a fivefold increase in exercise frequency relative to years past over the previous several months, as well as a “noticeable uptick” in new purchases.
A company within the Equinox Group’s portfolio, Equinox Media, also chose this week to introduce Variis, an app featuring content for home workouts from Equinox, SoulCycle and Precision Run, among others. (The company said it had intended to release Variis at South by Southwest, the festival in Austin, Texas, before it was canceled.)
Variis will be compatible with a new home bike from SoulCycle that will be available for pre-order starting March 13. (A spokeswoman for SoulCycle said that the timing of both products was “in no way a result of Covid-19.”)
But there are those in workout-related industries who say little has changed, at least for now. Joshua Somers, the executive director of Indoor Hoops, a pickup basketball organization service with a membership of about 30,000, said that he and his colleagues were continuing to monitor the virus’s progress but saw no reason, as of Tuesday, to halt games.
Mr. Somers said that while his network had seen a slight dip in overall reservations, only a handful of the 125 games scheduled for this week in New York City had been canceled.
“As long as the doors are open, were going to keep playing and be an outpost for people to have interaction and exercise,” he said. “It’s easy to get panicked about this stuff but we’re trying to stay positive.”
