Gym owner takes workout online after closure
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Evolve Fitness manager Emmy Winzler responded to the governor's order to close gyms last week by taking her workout class online.
MOSES LAKE — When Gov. Jay Inslee ordered gyms closed last week in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, Emmy Winzler wasn’t sure what she was going to do.
“Last Sunday was a long night down here. I was crying all night,” said the manager of Evolve Fitness in Moses Lake. “I was seriously worried about the business, my staff.”
“I was down here praying. What was I going to do? This is my life, my family is the Evolve family,” she said.
She came in early Monday to lock the business up and pray, she said, adding that as she prayed, it came to her.
“Just because the gym is closed, it’s not going to stop us from serving the community,” she said.
After talking to one of her trainers, Winzler said they decided to go live on the gym’s Facebook page and offer a daily online workout free at 9 a.m. to anyone who wants to participate.
Inslee ordered bars, salons, gyms and entertainment venues closed a week ago in order to keep people from congregating and spreading the COVID-19 virus.
Winzler said the “whole body workout” doesn’t require a lot of room and is appropriate for all ages and all fitness levels. It will include stretches, warmups and basic calisthenics like squat thrusts and burpees, though she added that people will be surprised at how creative it will be.
“Sitting on the couch all day is hard for me,” she said. “I move, move, move all day. I tell members I do this for you, but I also do this for me.”
Winzler also said exercise is important to keeping people healthy, especially so in a stressful time.
“In this challenging time, everybody’s stress level is going up. And stress isn’t very good for your immune system,” she said. “My goal is to keep the Evolve family active and healthy so they are at their strongest.”
So far, Winzler said she’s found the daily online workouts a lot of fun to lead and hugely successful, reaching far more people online than she could in the gym.
It also keeps with her upbeat, can-do approach.
“Life happens for you, not to you,” she said. “Maybe this is the chance for me to reach out to people I’ve not had the opportunity to reach out to before, and maybe it’s your chance to say, ‘I don’t have any other excuse, so let’s have a workout.’”