Caity Adams (left) instructs Valaida Wise during a personal training session at All in Fitness. Adams opened the Bethesda studio in May 2020 after being furloughed from her job at a fitness center. Photo by Skip Brown When the pandemic forced Life Time fitness center in Gaithersburg to close temporarily in March 2020, Valaida Wise knew she needed to find a way to keep exercising. Deeply committed to the weight loss program that she began after hitting 260 pounds a few years earlier, Wise had been working out with Life Time personal trainer Caity Adams as often as four times a week.
“I was now addicted to fitness and knew how important it was because I had lost about 60 pounds and I wanted to keep going,” says Wise, now 65, who lives in Bethesda.
Wise didn’t have to worry. Adams, who was furloughed from her fitness center job, quickly began offering outdoor sessions for clients who wanted to keep working out. “My brain immediately went to: What can I do for these clients who still want to stay healthy and work toward their goals and have something they can go do safely that’s not sitting at home at their desk?” she says.
Adams packed a collapsible red wagon with assorted equipment, including weights and ropes, and met Wise and other clients for individual masked sessions in parks from Chevy Chase to Gaithersburg. She and Wise once worked out on the playground at a local elementary school. The wagon had “all these weights in it—plates, dumbbells, you name it—and I would roll it around from park to park,” Adams, now 25, says.
“I literally did not miss a week,” says Wise, who prefers powerlifting. “Except for heavy rain—you have to understand, rain and my hair don’t mix—we were outside the entire time.”
Adams had worked as a personal trainer since she was 16 and had long dreamed of opening her own full-size gym that offered memberships. As the pandemic progressed, she realized it would be difficult to train people outside in colder weather and that it might be a long time before it would be safe again to work in a big gym. So she decided to shift her focus to serving individual clients and to move ahead with her plans after contacting her regulars and learning that some would be comfortable exercising inside. In May 2020, she opened All in Fitness, a personal training, nutrition and wellness studio in downtown Bethesda. Allowing only one client in the studio at a time, Adams trains up to 20 weekly, including Wise, who works out five days a week.
Adams, who was investing her own money to pay the rent and buy equipment, worried about taking the plunge. She knew the pandemic could upend her plans at any time. “I was rolling the dice and risking losing my 401(k), because if we were to be shut down, I would have been in trouble,” she says. “But I went for it, it has not been shut down, and everyone has stayed safe. Don’t get me wrong. This pandemic is awful. But it was a driving force for me to start the business because had it not hit at that time, I likely would still be at the gym. I saw it as an opportunity, and it worked out.”
Two years after the arrival of COVID-19, Grace Studios in downtown Silver Spring is still trying to rebuild its clientele, with about half as many students attending in-person classes in yoga, Pilates and strength building as before the pandemic. “We definitely are not at the level that we were before,” owner Michelle Radecki says.
The pandemic shutdown in the spring of 2020 and the ensuing months of changing government guidance over how to keep patrons safe upon reopening has left many gyms and fitness centers scrambling to stay in business. IHRSA, the Global Health & Fitness Association, says data collected during 2020 and 2021 shows that government-mandated shutdowns and operating restrictions have had a devastating financial impact on the U.S. fitness industry. Of the more than 40,000 fitness facilities that were open in the U.S. in 2019, over 20% had closed their doors by July 2021, according to the 2021 IHRSA Media Report: Part 2. In Maryland, 25% of fitness centers have closed, while 26% have been shuttered in Washington, D.C., and 18% in Virginia, according to IHRSA.
Many of those that have survived so far initially pivoted to providing fitness classes and training on social media or through various online platforms. […]
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