When members enter the Schlessman Family YMCA, they’re greeted with new safety measures including getting their temperature taken at the front door.
“We’re just ensuring that members, guests and staff are below a 100.4 fever,” said Vanessa Pritchett, sales director with the YMCA of Metropolitan Denver.
She says most of the 24,000 YMCA locations across the country were shut down for nearly three months due to the pandemic.
Now, with many YMCAs reopening, staff are taking extra steps to ensure member safety like using protective plexiglass at the entrance and having more hand sanitizer stations in more locations.
“We really missed our members and we are so much more than a gym,” Pritchett said. “We are focusing on the mind, body and spirit of everyone in our community.”
Additional safety measures include mobile check-ins, closing twice a day for deep cleaning, and restructuring the layout of workout equipment to promote social distancing.
You don’t have to wear a mask while you’re working out at the YMCA but in between sets or if you switch to a new station, staff is asking members to cover up.
To help keep the facilities as clean as possible, the YMCA is encouraging members to clean equipment before and after using it.
“You are checking in via touchless system,” said Meredith Marshall, one the nearly 10 million YMCA members in America.
She’s been coming to the YMCA since she was eight years old and says these new changes give her peace of mind while working out her body.
“It lets me know that the YMCA has thought through what we are doing here,” Marshall said. “How we are to interact with one another.”
Interacting and reconnecting with the YMCA community as they move to reopen safely and responsibly.
