In Defense of Checklists

Fitness Management has published a lot of articles that deal with checklists. Equipment maintenance checklists, cleaning checklists, locker room checklists … the list goes on and on. I have to admit, after seven years, I’d gotten tired of them. Isn’t this common sense? I’d think. Don’t all fitness centers use checklists? Can’t we stop writing about them?

After reading a Fox News article about a dead man left overnight in a fitness facility’s steam room, I think it’s safe to say that the answer to these questions is a resounding NO.

Sixty-six-year-old Thomas Dodge, a regular member of the Coeur d-Alene Tribal Wellness Center, Plummer, Idaho, apparently suffered a heart attack in the center’s steam room after swimming. A janitor didn’t find his body until the next morning, almost 10 hours after his death.

This is inexcusable on so many levels, I don’t even know where to start.

The fitness center was likely helpless to prevent the heart attack, but it could have made a painful situation somewhat easier for Dodge’s family if staff members had found the body in a timely manner. Now the facility has made national news for poor maintenance practices, and its steam room will undoubtedly be deserted. What member wants to contemplate having an emergency in the steam room, then being abandoned by inattentive staff?

“Tribal spokesman Marc Stewart said closing procedures at the center require a walk-through to make sure no one is in the building,” reports Fox News. “Center officials will decide whether to change procedures after an investigation.”

Might I offer a suggestion? How about using … a checklist?

Learning a Valuable Lesson in the Fitness Center

Just when your members thought it was safe to go to the gym, it is reported that a series of larcenies at fitness centers in the Ballston and Clarendon areas of Arlington, Va., is being investigated. According to a news release sent out Aug. 9, 2007, from the Arlington County Police Department, at least 10 incidents of stolen wallets and/or credit cards in locker rooms have been reported since June 20. In most cases, those items were taken from unlocked lockers, and the culprits quickly used the credit cards to make expensive purchases after stealing them.

While this string of thefts seems to be limited to the Arlington vicinity, theft in fitness centers is nothing new, and it occurs in facilities everywhere. In January 2004, our publication reported on an FBI investigation into locker room crime in an editorial titled Locker Room Crime Alert. In this operation, the thieves made it a point to not disturb any contents of lockers so that members were unaware that their belongings had been tampered with. All they would take is one credit card from each wallet, and only if that wallet contained multiple credit cards. They would then use the credit cards at casinos to make multiple cash withdrawals until the credit line on the card was reached. This string of crimes began in the early 1990s, and occurred in states all across the U.S., even those that didn’t have casinos.

While one of the perpetrators has been arrested in the Arlington investigation, the others are still up to no good. And, I am unaware of what happened with the FBI investigation, or how many other types of operations are now going on. Therefore, it’s up to fitness center management to let their members know that they need to be extra cautious about their valuables when in the facility. First of all, it would be wise for staff to suggest to members that they not bring any valuables to the fitness center. If that’s not possible, then provide a safe place for them to lock up their valuables near the front desk where they will be supervised by staff members at all times. Or, better yet, encourage members to keep their valuables on them, if possible. If they do store their valuables in lockers, by all means be sure to tell members to lock them!

Other tips for helping your members to avoid getting ripped off in your facility can be found in a recent article in FM titled Locker-Room Crime: The Aftermath.

Making Sense of Staph

At a recent industry trade show, the FM booth had a prime location: right next to Gojo Industries. People flocked to the booth next door with hands outstretched, eager for a product sample. Guess what were they were selling? No, not beer, though the product does give off a faint whiff of alcohol. Gojo Industries sells hand sanitizer and related accessories.

It’s no wonder fitness facilities are enamored with hand sanitizers. The recent drug-resistant staphylococcus aureus outbreak — and subsequent media freak-out — has shoved fitness centers into the same dark corner as school locker rooms and hospitals. Suddenly, working out in a fitness center — where people, God forbid, sweat — is now perceived as potentially dangerous to their health. Therefore, facility managers are eager to show proactivity and awareness of their members’ concerns — and complimentary hand sanitizers are an easy and relatively inexpensive way to accomplish this.

Unfortunately, the industry’s lack of regulation continues to haunt it. According to an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, “There aren’t any state-mandated regulations or routine inspections of [fitness] facilities, except for those with pools, spas and hot tubs. … And they’re not required to report staph infections, because most infections are very mild and result in skin irritation.”

Still, no matter how mild a rash may be, if a member thinks they got it at your facility, you’re in trouble.

It’s likely that your facility has measures in place to combat infections of all kinds — and it’s also likely that most of them rely on members doing most of the work. You probably have signs endorsing frequent hand washing, towel requirements or services, and available disinfectant sprays. But, what should members expect from you? What are you doing to show members that you take the staph outbreak — and every disease concern — as seriously as they do?

For more information about Staphylococcus aureus, visit the CDC
website.

Will ‘Roid Rage’ Happen at Your Facility?

With two recent deaths in the pro wrestling world related to steroid use, and the scandals in baseball and the Tour de France, the fitness industry should get a wake-up call. Although most fitness center members don’t use steroids, human growth hormone or testosterone, some do — especially athletes and serious weightlifters. Even child athletes have been known to use steroids to increase athletic performance. Some estimates suggest as many as 7 percent of high school students have used steroids.

This number should shock you, especially if you work with child athletes. And, a quick search on the Internet reveals that it is surprisingly easy to buy steroids without a prescription.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the major side effects from abusing anabolic steroids can include liver tumors and cancer, jaundice, fluid retention, high blood pressure, increases in LDL (bad cholesterol) and decreases in HDL (good cholesterol). Other side-effects include kidney tumors, severe acne and trembling. In addition, there are some gender-specific side effects. For men, shrinking of the testicles, reduced sperm count, infertility, baldness, development of breasts and increased risk for prostate cancer. For women, growth of facial hair, male-pattern baldness, changes in or cessation of the menstrual cycle, and a deepened voice. For adolescents, growth can be halted prematurely. This means that adolescents risk remaining short for the remainder of their lives if they take anabolic steroids before the typical adolescent growth spurt. Scientific research also shows that aggression and other psychiatric side effects may result, including extreme mood swings and manic-like symptoms leading to violence.

While these symptoms and statistics may seem out there for the mainstream fitness industry, I assure you they are not. I know at least one woman at my fitness center has taken some sort of male hormone in her life. (Either that, or she is a post-op sex-change patient.)

So what are fitness professionals to do? To start, your facility should have clear and posted rules about selling steroids while on your property. You can also post warning signs in your locker room about the dangers of taking anything for enhanced athletic performance. Your trainers should also know the signs of steroid abuse, and warn clients about taking them. The last thing your facility needs is a member harming themselves or others because of “roid rage.”

Dangerous Trash

Do you like to dig in the trash? Me neither, but if you had some time on your hands, lived in North Texas and didn’t mind the smell, you could have found enough personal information to steal the identities of dozens of people. If you’re in to that sort of thing.

And you’d owe it all to one company: Life Time Fitness Inc.

Life Time Fitness in Fort Worth, Texas, was hit with a lawsuit after investigators found more than 100 records with customers' personal information that were dumped in publicly accessible trash bins in six different North Texas locations.

It seems Life Time Fitness discarded the personal information of people who had discontinued their memberships by simply tossing them in the trash. Nothing was shredded. Nothing was blacked out. No effort was made to protect (or respect) the sensitive information contained on those discarded documents.

Now Life Time Fitness says it intends to work with the Texas Attorney General's office to ensure that members' sensitive personal information is properly protected. Sounds like too little, too late, to me.

What is your club’s process for discarding (or, better yet, destroying) personal information? Identity theft isn’t just the subject of a techno thriller coming to a theater near you. It’s a real concern for people who put their personal information into your hands — whether or not they’re still paying dues.

Key Board Security

Whatever happened to cat burglars? They were the Cary Grants of the burgling profession, suave and sophisticated, gliding into fancy soirees to delicately lift a heavy jeweled necklace off Grace Kelly and make off with her fortune.

Now, they’ve been replaced by a new breed of burglar: the less elegant, but just as effective car burglars. The Venice Gondolier Sun reports that car burglars are sly and swift, walking into fitness facilities to casually lift members’ keys off a key board and make off with their keys, cash and ID.

Lifestyles Family Fitness, Venice, Fla., and a local YMCA were targeted, and both provide a master key board where members can leave their keys before working out.

Gondolier Reporter Tommy McIntyre says, “Police advise members who use fitness centers to keep their car keys with them while working out, if possible.” I don’t know about you, but the sound of car keys jingling in my pocket doesn’t exactly motivate me to train longer. Heck, I don’t think my gym shorts even have pockets. But, thankfully, the Venice police offer a solution for that particular wardrobe shortcoming: A waistpack.“If the waistpack is not comfortable while working out, throw it over your shoulder as you go from machine to machine and set it down where you can watch it,” the article suggests. Sounds convenient for members. Keep track of your heart rate, your hydration and your valuables.

Why don’t these facilities provide a safe, secure area for members to leave their keys while they’re working out? Are key boards, fannypacks or gym shorts with pockets really the only options?

Does your facility use a key board? If so, why? And how do you keep it secure?

Expect the Unexpected

Several years back, when I walked into my fitness center, the front desk staffer told me that the facility was closed for a few hours because a nest of bees was found in the women’s locker room. Yikes! I didn’t get the story on how it was discovered, or if anyone had actually gotten stung, but a situation like that could be costly for a business (an injured member, loss of business, reputation, etc.).

Another unexpected emergency happened recently at a fitness center in Immokalee, Fla. The Immokalee Sports Complex was closed for three days when a leak was discovered in the chlorination tank for the pool. A hazardous materials team was called in, and three staff members and a contractor who were exposed to the vapors were taken to a hospital. A clean-up company determined that the chlorine tank was contaminated by an acidic solution.

While these two situations may seem extreme, they did happen at fitness centers, and can happen at yours. In fact, you need to be prepared for any number of strange occurrences – both in terms of member injuries or to the actual building itself. And while you can’t possibly prepare for every scenario, you can (and should) have a risk-management plan in place.

Do you and your staff members know what to do in an emergency? For some tips on how to create an emergency plan, search FM’s Article Archive for "risk management" or "safety."