HOUSTON (CN) — Cast adrift by state-ordered gym shutdowns, Houston personal trainer Joseph Supercinski started working with clients at parks and tennis courts. Then he settled on a spot just steps from his front door, his carport, where he has set up a squat rack and bench press and added several neighbors to his clientele.
With gyms across the nation limiting their foot traffic and the size of their fitness classes in compliance with social-distancing orders, and some yet to reopen, people sick with cabin fever, who have been laid off or are working from home, are exercising outdoors like never before.
They are buying bicycles instead of renewing their gym memberships and buying scooters for their children.
Sales of bicycles, stationary bikes, bike parts and gear reached $1 billion in April, nearly double the typical April sales of $575 million, according to NDP Group, a market research firm.
The boom is evident in the empty bike sales racks of Walmart and Target stores in Houston. And it is not just a local fad.
“There’s a shortage of bikes nationwide. The Chinese shipment is kind of iffy and it essentially shut down for a while. So we are getting some bikes built in South Carolina and Canada, not just from China right now,” said Daniel Kan, a mechanic at I Cycle Bike Shop in Houston.
Kan said the shop’s bike sales have doubled since March and it has cut its hours Monday through Saturday, and now closes on Sunday so its small staff can rest.
Repeated inquiries over the past two months to see if the shop was accepting bikes for tune-ups were met with the same response: Not right now, check back in two weeks.
“We accepted bikes for one week and we got 60 bike repairs. So we are a little behind,” Kan’s colleague said on the phone Thursday.
Supercinski, a 23-year-old exercise science graduate of the University of Texas-San Antonio, said the pandemic has opened more people’s eyes to the fact you don’t need a gym to work out, and you can get a workout with just the space you have.
“I definitely noticed when I go to the park,” he said. “You see families out there with their kids going bike riding more often. You see the parents out there with their kids playing and they are exercising as well. And I feel like a lot of people are going to lean more toward that because at the same time you are spending quality time with your family.”
Supercinski sees clients in his townhome’s 20-by-20-foot carport.
He does not seem to notice the neighborhood hubbub, the din of the trash truck lifting and shaking out the Dumpster, the dogs running and back and forth fetching tennis balls thrown by their owners, and the screams of children playing tag.
Hip-hop music playing on his phone, he keeps his eyes focused on his clients, pushing them with a steady stream of encouragement, “Come on. Three more. … Good. Just like that.”
A neighbor complained about the DYI gym, but the homeowners’ association president said because the carport is part of his townhome property, she could not stop Supercinski from running his gym there.
It started out small, with a few dumbbells and yoga mats.
In May, he said equipment was hard to find. “A lot of places are sold out,” he said at the time.
Since then he has added a squat rack, a bench press and Olympic-style rings attached to straps that he ties onto the carport’s undergirding, which he and his clients use for dips and rowing exercises.
Personal trainers could see a bump in business as the chains Gold’s Gym and 24 Hour Fitness filed for bankruptcy, on May 4 and June 15, both citing loss of revenue due to forced closures.
Gold’s permanently shuttered 30 gyms; 24 Hour turned out the lights for good on 100, but its CEO vowed to open new ones when the 35-year-old company emerges from bankruptcy.
"If it were not for Covid-19 and its devastating effects, we would not be filing for Chapter 11," 24 Hour’s CEO Tony Ueber said in a statement.
Debbie Silva, 41, said she decided to hire Supercinski, her neighbor, because the YMCA gym where she was a longtime member is temporarily closed.
At the gym, she said, she would use an app called Beachbody that provides users with exercise programs to follow. But she appreciates Supercinski’s emphasis on form.
“Before I was always thinking ‘I don’t even know if I’m doing it right, but I’m getting a workout.’ With him it’s like ‘Today we are going to work on our backs and this and that,’” she said.
The family atmosphere is reinforced by Supercinski’s mother and his cousin working out alongside his clients. He guides them too, but his clients come first, Silva said.
“When [his family] wants to talk to him and ask him something. He’s like, ‘Hold on.’ He’s real serious, like, ‘Hold on I’m with a client,’” Silva said.
Supercinski said his high school basketball coach helped develop his passion for fitness, and he sees his clients as his canvases.
“To me it seems more like a form of art because it’s more than, ‘Here do this.’ It’s about trying to target different parts of the body. I find that fun and that’s what drives me to keep doing it,” he said.
Supercinski said the week the Houston gym where he was working shut down, he lost two clients who had just hired him, but many stayed with him, some receiving instructions online via Facetime; he made house calls to others and others visited his carport gym.
Now with 14 clients, the pandemic has given him the confidence to work independently.
“It definitely started off as a negative. But just with the support, I was able to make it a positive. And I feel like it’s best for the next step of my career,” he said.
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