Anytime Fitness Fairy Meadow club manager Tinnielle Loxley has been able to keep the gym running 24 hours for its members in recent months but says keeping the business afloat has been challenging.
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Being a large gym where people are able to space out means it has been able to stay open all day and night when many others have not.
Which means members of gyms in other suburbs have been coming at all hours to maintain their fitness and Ms Loxley has had to cover the costs of rostering on enough staff for everyone. She said her team had been happy to do the work but it hadn't been easy managing the 24/7 staffing.
"It has been quite hard. Costs have been a massive imposition on this business and I don't know how long we will be able to manage to continue it if things don't change."
Ms Loxley said at a time when many other businesses were returning to near normal, gyms were still struggling.
"I think we are an essential service. Being able to exercise is very important for people's physical and mental well-being. And I do believe gyms have drawn the short straw in this whole situation. There has been no community transmission in a gym. Everyone keeps to themselves."
Ms Loxley said the fact many people, including shift workers, had travelled so far to be able to exercise was a reflection on how important Illawarra residents thought that was.
"My staff are stretched very thin at the moment."
Ms Loxley was grateful when Keira MP and Shadow Minister for Health Ryan Park visited on Friday to tell her that, after five days with no new community transmissions of COVID-19 in NSW, he was calling on the government to review present restrictions.
Mr Park said gyms were small businesses and they were doing it tough. He said NSW Labor was urging the government to further ease restrictions. From August 1, all NSW gyms and fitness centres have been required to have a dedicated "COVID-19 Safe Hygiene Marshal" on duty at all times.
Mr Park said after a week of zero community transmissions it was time to look at the strain that is causing. He knows of other 24 hour gyms that have been forced to scale back hours to limit costs. He said many owners were desperate to recover from closures earlier this year.
"We need to look at sensible changes to restrictions to support jobs and small businesses. If you can have 40,000 people at the footy grand final, why not look at what we can do support hard-hit small businesses?"
Mr Park is encouraging the NSW government to adopt South Australia's COVID gym model which would mean gyms and fitness centres would only require COVID-19 marshals during "peak hours".
"We don't want to see small business owners who operate gyms close their doors simply because they have to have these onerous restrictions in place. We understand why they were put in place originally but we have come through the worst of this."
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Greg Ellis
Almost four decades in electronic, print and digital media. A writer, presenter, emcee, photographer and videographer with degrees in business management, marketing and human resources and tertiary qualifications in photography.
Almost four decades in electronic, print and digital media. A writer, presenter, emcee, photographer and videographer with degrees in business management, marketing and human resources and tertiary qualifications in photography.
