Up and running: LS fitness centers offer inspiration for those with NY resolutions

Just in time for everyone’s New Year’s resolutions, three Lee’s Summit community centers have added additional fitness classes and increased their hours. Although they’re not yet back to the amount of time and offerings as before the pandemic, they’re headed in that direction.

“Compared to this time last year, we’re up. We saw a pretty significant reduction in memberships when COVID hit in 2020,” said Joe Snook, administrator of parks and recreation for Lee’s Summit.

That pandemic-prompted dive in memberships is something consistent with fitness centers all over the country, Snook said.

Lee’s Summit didn’t really see a rebound in memberships until after Jackson County removed its mask mandate.

“The biggest reason our patrons told us was, ‘Hey, as long as masks are required, we’re not going to come back and exercise’,” Snook said. “There was a short period that first summer where masks were not required. The Jackson County Health Department took those masks away, and we saw a nice uptick. And the masks came back, and we saw a lot of cancellations.”

Snook doesn’t think people necessarily had an objection to masks in general. They just didn’t want to wear them while exercising. Many instructors didn’t like exercising or leading classes with masks on, either.

“A number of our instructors said, ‘We’re not going to teach during pandemic, and we’re not going to teach if we have to wear masks,’” Snook said.

No mask requirement are now in place for using any of the community centers.

Most of the regrowth in membership has been people who are not senior citizens. Longview has struggled the most to regain its membership, Snook said, because it had re-opened following its renovation not that long before the pandemic started.

Harris Park and Lovell have returned to their pre-COVID number of hours, while Longview and Gamber are at 90% and 85% of their pre-COVID hours after reducing to around 75% earlier in the pandemic.

The more dramatic changes are in the classes offered. Gamber and Longview had each dipped to 32% of their normal fitness class offerings earlier; now, they’re respectively up to 80% and 68% of their pre-COVID class schedule. Lovell is also up, having increased to 52% of normal classes, up from 28% earlier.

Those who plan to exercise at one of the community centers have a wide selection of classes from which to choose. Snook said they’ve tried to keep their most popular classes available.

New classes of yoga have started at all three centers that offer fitness classes. Lovell and Longview both have new classes of Aqua Zumba, Aquafit, Bootcamp and Zumba, while Gamber and Lovell have new Silver Sneakers offerings for seniors.

Other new classes include cycling and high-intensity interval training.

“People that come to the class create a lot of energy in those (high-intensity and boot camp) classes. You burn a lot of calories in a short amount of time, because you are working your butt off,” Snook said.

On the other end of the spectrum, yoga is also very popular.

“People just enjoy the mind-body connection they’re getting from that class,” Snook said.

He hopes people will choose the community centers because of their varied offerings.

“It’s a different environment than you might find in the private sector. I think it truly is, as the name implies, a community center. So we have a lot of activities that are for people of all ages,” Snook said.

“We see a very diverse population. We’ll get basketball players, pickleball players and volleyball players all using the same space.”

The community centers are also hiring part-time workers, especially for positions in childcare and maintenance.