As COVID-19 pandemic winds down, gyms welcome back members at full capacity

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. (WMBB) — With vaccines going into arms and states reopening, gyms in our area are open and are back to operating business as usual.

Workout Anytime General Manager, Brad Selph, said their staff and members are like one big family.

“Everyone was excited to get back and get back to the setting of normalcy and interaction cause we are a tight-knit group here,” Selph said.

Selph said Workout Anytime closed for a couple of months as a result of the pandemic. At first, he said members slowly returned to their gym to workout.

During the first stages of reopening, Workout Anytime had social distancing measures in place. Now, Selph said it’s up to the members.

“If they wanna be on the last treadmill or right dead in the middle with someone on both sides of them, it’s a personal choice,” Selph said.

Sequence Fitness Manager, Jason Russell, said they’re busier now than before the pandemic.

“It really hasn’t slowed us down, we did at the end of last year but as of this year, I believe even our guests coming in, it’s been increasing,” Russell said.

Russell said he feels physically coming into the gym is great for people’s mental health.

“Going to a gym and just relieving the stress, people love it this is like a therapy place,” Russell said.

Rachel Tersigini is a member of Sequence Fitness and said working out with a mask was a big of a challenge.

“But the masks, yeah cause it was hard to breathe even more than like normal so that was definitely interesting too,” Tersigini said.

She said she’s glad gyms are back to business as usual.

“Just like, being able to see my friends and all that and actually like I don’t know be able to lift weights and do my thing here, it’s definitely a lot better,” Tersigini said.