By Gabriella Payne
As Melbourne eased its way out of its fourth lockdown last week, people breathed a sigh of relief as venues began to reopen their doors once again – but not everyone has been able to do so.
Fitness centres and gyms across Melbourne have been forced to remain closed for fears of spreading the virus, but many local business owners feel their industry has been dealt an unfair hand.
The owner and founder of Berwick’s Personal Performance Training Centre, Locky Burke, said it had been devastating to see the impacts of yet another lockdown on his business – something he has been pouring his heart and soul into for the past eight and a half years.
“I accept and embrace what’s going on in the world, but I just felt helpless,” Mr Burke said, when he heard the news of Melbourne’s fourth lockdown.
“It’s not a feeling I’ve felt before, it feels like I’m swimming and every time I go to take a breath I am being pushed back under.
I feel like I’ve been working so hard and I’ve seen my finances go backward so much, it’s like I’m throwing money into a fire pit every single week,” he said.
Mr Burke said that when the easing of restrictions were announced, it felt like yet another blow to discover that gyms and fitness centres were among those forced to remain closed.
“Our industry has been the first to close, the last to open and it’s very demoralising and insulting the way our industry has been looked at,“ he said.
“It’s like our industry has been forgotten about and thrown out the window.
I take extreme pride in making sure this place is 1000% neat, clean and a safe space for my clients, and so for the government to say that gyms are not allowed to open as they’re unsafe – I just couldn’t believe it.”
Mr Burke estimates that since the pandemic began, he has easily lost tens of thousands of dollars due to forced closures, and he’s not the only one in the fitness industry who’s struggling to stay afloat.
One of the owners of Beaconsfield’s Flow and Co. Pilates studio, Tiffany White, said that the lockdown was taking a huge toll on her business and it was “frustrating” to have to remain closed when they were taking all the relevant steps to ensure their clients safety.
“Everything is set up with all the Covid practices, so you’ve got the hand sanitising, everyone’s checked in, everything’s wiped down constantly – but we still can’t be open, so it’s a real shame,” Ms White said.
“Myself and my business partner Sarah aren’t angry that other businesses are open, we’re just upset that we can’t be.”
Ms White said that lockdown had been extremely “challenging” for their business, and although they had been running a number of online Zoom sessions for their members, it just wasn’t the same.
“We’ve got over a thousand members here who come in not only for their physical health, but for their mental health as well, so to be shut is a massive thing,” she said.
“If the number [of Covid cases correlated with gyms] was high and they could see that there was a reason for it, we wouldn’t mind closing but when there’s no evidence behind it to say that ‘that’s the reason why’, then as a business owner, it becomes very frustrating.”
When Melbourne’s eased restrictions were announced last week, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, said that gyms would remain closed as they were “high-risk environments” for the spread of Covid-19, stating that “it is that aerosol spread when you’re exerting yourself that’s very hard to mitigate”.
Professor Sutton acknowledged the regular cleaning and density rules that gyms across Victoria were adhering to, but said it was important that they remained closed at this stage to help stop the spread of the virus.
It is expected that these rules will be amended later this week – news that can’t come soon enough for business owners like Mr Burke and Ms White.
