After stretching with a foam roller in the John Wooden Center, Alex Lee spends a few moments wiping it down with an industrial-strength disinfectant.
Lee, a second-year mathematics student, said the procedure, which is required for all equipment rented from the Wooden Center, can be inconvenient.
But, she said, helping keep others healthy is more important.
“After a while, you totally get used to it,” Lee said. “If everyone does their part and cleans up after themselves, it’s just a cleaner, healthier place.”
This mandatory sanitation of rented equipment is just one of the precautions employed daily by Wooden Center staff. Germs are common in a gym environment, where people are sweating and coughing around others, said Kyle Lau, building supervisor at the Wooden Center.
“People are just working out, and not necessarily being cognizant of being clean,” Lau said.
Operations and FITWELL staff of the Wooden Center are primarily responsible for the facility’s sanitation, said Lau, a fourth-year communications student who has worked at the Wooden Center for the last year.
The key element of this challenge, Lau said, is constant cleaning throughout the day and sanitizing machines whenever they are open.
“We try to just eliminate every possible way of spreading germs,” he said.
Even with this caution, however, patrons may be unintentionally exposing themselves to more germs than they think.
“A lot of people will use their towel to wipe down their bike and then go to the next thing and use that towel to wipe their face,” said Christina Lewis, director of nursing at the Arthur Ashe Center.
Lewis said exercisers should avoid using their towels in this way because it transfers all the germs that were on the machine onto the user’s skin.
Instead, Lewis recommends keeping sweat towels clean and avoiding touching one’s face as much as possible at the gym.
“The best thing to stop the cold and flu is keeping your hands and other people’s hands away from your face,” she said.
The contaminants that may be lurking on gym surfaces, however, can reach beyond simple cold and flu germs, Lewis said.
She said the most common culprits on exercise equipment are fungal infections and bacteria. The most common of these is Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause everything from minor skin infections to life-threatening diseases like pneumonia, she added.
And while Wooden Center staff attempt to sterilize equipment and destroy these germs as frequently as possible, Lau said that gym-goers need to be independently aware of their impact on the gym’s cleanliness.
“It would be nice if people are just conscious of what they’re doing and wipe up after themselves, especially if they’re super sweaty and lying on a bench,” he said. “That would just save everyone a whole bunch of trouble.”
Lewis said that, regardless of the vigilance of staff and patrons, complete sterilization of such an environment is impossible.
But she added that the physical and psychological benefits of working out far outweigh the risk of picking up germs.
Exercise changes the levels of norepinephrine in the body, which reduces stress and increases both mood and the body’s ability to defend itself, she said.
“I wouldn’t worry about getting sick from what you touch in the gym because exercise helps your stress level and helps build your immune system,” Lewis said. “You’re still better off doing your exercise.”