SAN ANTONIO – The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on a wide variety of industries and small businesses have since had to pivot and adjust. So what about San Antonio area gyms?
The San Antonio Fitness Coalition is a group of local gym owners working together to help keep their doors open.
“It’s mostly because we’ve had to figure out how to stay afloat,” Alison Galvan, owner & founder of Energy X Fitness said. “Hopefully as the year goes on, more people understand how important fitness is to a healthy lifestyle.”
Galvan is a member of the area coalition group.
“We’re not supported by big business that gives us money to help us stay afloat. We’re little people here, and so we are banding together to make sure that we can support one another, get our healthy message out to the community and hopefully keep thriving past this pandemic,” Galvan said.
On the national level, Becky Cerroni, head of the San Antonio Fitness Coalition, said they haven’t had much in the way of support. But they are changing that by working with the city.
“I would say San Antonio has been incredibly supportive. We’re in the process of speaking with our city council about ARPA funding and making recommendations for gyms to receive grants in San Antonio. San Antonio of all places has kind of high rates of diabetes and other types of disease. We need to make sure that our community stays healthy,” Cerroni said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says obesity is a common, serious, and costly chronic disease. Having obesity puts people at risk for many other serious chronic diseases and increases the risk of severe illness from COVID-19.
And as for Alison, she has some big goals for the coalition for 2022.
“(We want to) bring more awareness about fitness. And not just fitness, but the lack of attention that we (the gyms) were given during the pandemic,” Galvan said.