This small Detroit area gym is keeping doors closed - but hosting classes outdoors

FOX 2 - Gym owners say that they are excited to reopen,  they still have concerns about whether their businesses will be viable.

Many say it is not safe to wear a mask during high-intensity workouts inside.

Co-owners of Fuse 45 joined FOX 2 to talk about the announcement and their online classes.

"I know a lot of people are calling at Zoom fatigue, we choose not to do Zoom. We do Live," said Karen Kellman. "I would say they are every bit as robust as they were.

"We have not seen any plateaus," said Samantha Friedman. "The people who have been with us are still with us, and we're getting new people every day so that's been amazing. And we're excited now to really boost and ramp up our outdoor offerings. And also our online we're taking it to the next level, we're in the process of developing an app that is better testing so pretty soon we're going to have a whole 12-week online program."

On  Sept. 9 gyms can reopen at a limited capacity, but Fuse 45 will instead be conducting outdoor classes.

"Yes and no. It's exciting to see the world kind of inching towards normalcy," Friedman said. "But it's also scary because numbers are still climbing as far as coronavirus goes and we have a couple of issues with that. Our own safety and our clients' safety is of the top priority, so we're not going to jeopardize that at any expense. And then secondarily, wearing masks while doing a high-intensity interval training is just not safe. It's too high intensity and we don't want to put our clients at risk like that."

"Our clients' safety is always been our number one priority," said Kellman.

The outdoor classes will be amped up, they say.

"Luckily Michigan has a nice fall and our plan at least in the near future is to ramp up our outdoor classes," Kellman said.

"We'll be bringing out more equipment, more machines, really creating that studio atmosphere that our clients are missing so much, bringing it outside and then really ramping up our online program and our app because we know that's coronavirus proof," said Friedman.

But there is some disadvantage of being a local, smaller fitness facility, they said.

"We don't have the resources, we don't have the name we don't have the marketing budget but what we do have, loyal clients who trust in us," Kellman said. "Because it is us. We are a mother-daughter team, we live, breathe, and work in this community and we know they feel safe that we are going to take the very best care of them."

"We have our integrity at the end of the day," Friedman said. "A lot of gyms and studios have been open throughout this pandemic and we don't respect it we don't think it safe cool, we don't think it's fair to the general public in the wellness of our society."

TO LEARN MORE: Check out Fuse 45's Facebook page here.