By John Meyer, The Denver Post
If your upper body is starting to look a little puny in the mirror because the coronavirus has kept you out of your gym for the past seven weeks, we have bad news for you: Colorado’s new Safer at Home restrictions do not allow gyms to reopen.
The same goes for yoga, Pilates, barre and other fitness studios; they all remain closed under state orders. You can play tennis or basketball with fewer than four people, according to a Safer at Home fact sheet on the state’s COVID-19 website, but they must live in your household. So playing doubles or two-on-two hoops is unlikely.
“You can do indoor personal training/classes with a maximum of four people unless everyone lives in the same household,” the fact sheet says. “For example, a family of five can train together. Those from different households must be physically distant and can have no shared equipment.”
Alan Watts, a semi-retired west Denver resident, drove by the 24 Hour Fitness location in Lakewood on Tuesday to see if it is reopening, and was disgusted to learn it is not.
“I am very ashamed to find out that our governor would not allow our places of fitness, spiritual well-being and that kind of thing,” Watts said. “There are thousands of people like myself that would like to go to their neighborhood gym. I’m just appalled at this. It’s been months, and now the governor is going to mandatorily require it to be closed for who knows how many more months? I’ve never seen anything like this. This is shameful.”
But Scott Olson, the director of Bladium Crossfit in the Stapleton area, is OK with the decision to keep gyms closed.
“I think it’s legit,” Olson said. “The problem is, this isn’t going to go away for a long time. Emotions are still running high on both sides. The economy is folding up, a lot of businesses going broke. The cure is almost worse than the cause. At this point I’m OK with us not opening for a little while longer. Certain types of gyms that do a lot of personalized training, or where people work out independently, I think they should experiment with those guys first. My kind of a gym is group classes, a little more dangerous, a lot more social contact. People are using the same equipment.
“This isn’t going to go away soon. We won’t really be out of the woods until we get a vaccine. We’re going to have to learn how to socially distance like we do at super markets or Home Depot. Those places are much more dangerous than a gym, because you have thousands of people going in and out every day. But this is going to drag on for such a long time, you just can’t put all these people out of business. They’re going to have to figure out something, and then the gym owners are going to have to figure out something to keep people socially spaced.”
Swimming pools and playgrounds remain closed under Safer at Home. State parks remain open but their campgrounds are closed. City and county parks will be open or closed depending on their jurisdiction.
You can play golf, though.
“Golf courses can remain open as an allowable outdoor activity,” the state fact sheet says, “however, physical distancing requirements must be strictly followed. Clubhouses, restaurants, snack bars and pro shops must not be open and tee times and golf fee transactions made only online. Only household members may share a golf cart or be a caddie for a golfer. Golfers are strongly encouraged to not touch any equipment that is not their own (for example, tees and flags).”
