By CHLOE TROFATTER
Capital News Service
LANSING — Michigan fitness experts and gym owners are expressing concerns about the rise in obesity, addiction and depression rates following last year’s pandemic-related lockdowns.
The Michigan Fitness Club Association, an advocacy group for gyms and fitness and health centers, recently conducted a virtual town hall to discuss the importance of physical, mental and emotional health coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have been pushing for a long time that exercise is medicine. Not just physical medicine, but emotional and mental medicine,” said Steven Todd, the owner of Powerhouse Gyms and president of H&R Wellness in Milford.
According to an October study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 37% of Michigan adults have reported symptoms of anxiety and depression since the beginning of the pandemic. And 27.4% of them said they had an unmet need for therapy.
The Mayo Clinic recommends physical exercise as a tool to reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression because of its endorphin-releasing qualities and as an avenue for social interaction and healthy coping mechanisms, according to a 2017 report.
Alyssa Tushman, the owner of Burn Fitness in Metro Detroit, said there is inequity in access to physical health.
Not everyone has a home gym, a safe outdoor space or access to high speed internet to stream workouts, said Tushman, the vice chair of the Northville-based Fitness Club Association.
The association panel expressed frustration with capacity limitations for gyms after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer allowed restaurants a 50% capacity limit, but kept gyms at 30%.
“It sends a message: ‘Go eat and drink, but don’t take care of your body,’” Tushman said.
“We need to be a part of the solution because, statistically speaking, we are not part of the problem,” said Michael Stack, an exercise physiologist and owner of Applied Fitness Solutions in Metro Detroit.
Bryan Rief, chief executive officer of PF Michigan Group, which operates 45 of the state’s Planet Fitness locations, including ones in Metro Detroit, Grand Rapids, Kentwood, Wyoming and Bay City, detailed safety measures gyms have been taking to ensure safety and encourage membership.
He discussed the visit-to-virus ratio, the number of positive coronavirus cases in a location versus the number of check-ins it has. “Since reopening Michigan in September, across 140 (association) member clubs, that ratio is .0051%,” he said.
Rief, who chairs the association, has commissioned air quality studies in his gyms and offered them to other association members.
“We have performed over 30 of these air quality studies and have yet to find coronavirus either in the air samples or surface samples we were taking,” he said.
“We want to demonstrate that our gyms are safe and work collectively with public health and elected officials to move our businesses in the right direction,” he said.
According to Stack, the association will continue to work with the state to provide safe access to physical health.
“People are products of their environment,” Stack said. “Gyms and fitness centers need to be a part of that environment.”