Healthy cities have healthy people that create a healthy economy. Obesity costs money directly and indirectly. Influencing people to want to take better care of themselves will lower costs, create a more vibrant population, and increase tourism.
The Cost of Obesity
Direct Costs
The direct costs of obesity are medical treatments and examinations that people receive directly due to their condition. This will cost the city when municipal workers are being treated for being overweight. It will also cost the city when people need emergency or ambulatory care due to their obesity and are unable to pay for it.
Indirect Costs
Insurance
Insurance for the municipality will cost proportionally more the larger the number of obese people. Local businesses will also have to pay more in insurance costs, which is less money they have to put into their establishments and give their employees.
Wages
Wages in areas with large obese populations tend to be lower than in areas where more people are fit. This has to do with insurance costs as mentioned above, as well as lower overall productivity due to missed work and premature death.
Lost Work
Obese employees miss more work on average than employees that are not obese. They also use more short and long term disability. Overweight workers are also said to have higher rates of presenteeism, resulting in lower productivity.
As you can see, the costs of obesity are high to the entire population of any area. Municipalities with large populations of obese citizens should work to help the community become healthier. Doing so will increase productivity and juice up the economy in the medium to long-term.
Current costs are a concern, but another thing to keep in mind is that healthcare costs will continue to rise as they have been. Spending increased 3.9% over 2017 and 4.1% over the year of 2018. These are massive year over year cost increases. Can your city afford not to get healthy?
A healthy population will be less of a drain directly and indirectly on the wealth of a city. A healthy community can help a city to grow and attract more business than a population of people that are not taken care of. Think about the future and encourage health!
Planning a multi-family fitness center on your own is a big job. You will want to be sure to have all of your ducks in a row. If you are building a multi-housing fitness center, here are some tips to follow when planning out your multi-family gym.
Fitness Equipment
When it comes to choosing the fitness equipment for your new fitness center you are going to have to take a few things into consideration. First, you will want to think about how many people will be attending your gym during busy hours.
One way to get a handle on this is to check out other residential fitness centers in the area during the morning and the evening. You can get an idea of what your clientele load will look like by comparing the total number of residents to the total number of residents that you will have. Understanding your clientele load will give you an idea of how many treadmills, ellipticals, floor space, and amount of other popular equipment that you should have in your fitness center.
You will also want to go have a look at some of the popular commercial gyms to see what attracts clients to go out of their way to workout at that place. Once you get a good idea of what it is these places offer that others do not, you can model your fitness center space after it. For example, if one gym is famous for fire engine red kettlebells, then you could purchase all bright orange ones.
One important seemingly small piece of gym design is to ask yourself if the space is ADA compliant. Your property likely has some apartments that service the disabled; you will want to be sure that your fitness center will as well.
There are two critical components to design. One is traffic flow, and the other is grouping.
When thinking about traffic flow, you will want to be sure that there is adequate space for people to use each piece of equipment. You will also want to consider the amount of room that will be needed for people to travel from piece of equipment to piece of equipment. You don’t want to risk free weights being strewn in walking pathways where people can trip and hurt themselves.
Grouping equipment by type of exercise works great for most gyms. This works because it cuts down on the amount of space needed between each piece of similar equipment. Grouping equipment properly also encourages interaction between residents and creates better traffic flow in the whole fitness center space.
Infrastructure
Many people tend to overlook the underlying infrastructure of their fitness center until it is too late. They will get the space all set up, plug everything in and blow a fuse, people complain about lighting, or the place starts to smell like dirty socks right away.
Be sure to have a licensed electrician come in and install all of the proper elements for your gym to run smoothly. Also, the electrical configuration needs to be up to code with the city so that it does not get shut down upon the first inspection.
You will want to have proper lighting; lighting is essential in a fitness center. Most people do not enjoy working out in the dark; they also risk hurting themselves when the lighting is poor. Take the time to be sure each area is adequately lit and use green solutions when you can, such as natural lighting or eco-friendly light bulbs.
The case of the gym that smells like dirty socks is almost always the result of poor ventilation. Your multi-family fitness center is going to have to be well ventilated like the rest of the property. There are many ways to take care of this issue, talk to your HVAC service provider or consider purchasing a standalone air filtration system.
If you are planning to design your own multi-family fitness center in California or Nevada; be sure to do plenty of research. Many points to consider have been listed here. Should you have, more questions contact a Opti-Fit at 888-601-4350 or info@opti-fit.com for a FREE consultation.