When you go to a health club or fitness facility in Canada, how do you know it is safe?
Between 1980 and 1987, there were six deaths in fitness facilities in Ontario alone. They included:
- drowning in a pool
- drowning in a whirlpool
- heat prostration in a sauna
- cardiac arrest with no CPR trained staff on site
- barbell falling on an individual in an unsupervised weight room
There was a consensus at the time that some of these deaths may have been prevented, so the Ontario Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (OASES) established a Fitness Safety Standards Committee (FSSC). The main goal of the FSSC program, Canadian Fitness Matters, was to develop safety standards for the fitness industry so the fitness community could conduct its activities in a safe and orderly environment. The first set of standards were available in 1990, the second in 2004 and the third and most recent set of standards was revised in 2004. There are 20 standards and 26 recommended guidelines.
Patricia Clark was on the Fitness Safety Advisory Committee that developed the Canadian Fitness Safety Standards and was the past executive director of OASES. As Clark pointed out during our phone interview, the third and newest revision of the fitness standards includes a section on communicable diseases. “We included a section in there this time on communicable disease because that has become huge. You could be sitting on a bench without your clothes on or no towel is down or spread through your hands on the equipment and you wipe your face or in the sauna. There’s a lot of opportunities to spread communicable diseases. Twenty years ago it wasn’t as evident and in our face so now because it is such a concern for public health, we put a document in these standards specifically dealing with communicable diseases and it was written with a public health professor and another fellow.” Communicable diseases aren’t just a concern in swimming pools and hot tubs; pathogens can lurk in locker rooms, showers, floor mats, equipment, water coolers, saunas and the like.
What is Included in the Safety Standards
There are six categories in the standards:
- communicable diseases – Employees need training as to the awareness, prevention, and control of communicable diseases.
- fitness related personnel – All staff need to be properly certified in first aid, CPR, and in the area of the facility in which they are providing services.
- emergency procedures – Facilities need procedures and equipment in place for when an accident, injury, or an emergency arises.
- fitness environment – This category deals with ensuring the facility is clean and safe.
- pre-screening and informed consent – Pre-activity screenings procedures need to be in place and participants need to be informed regarding risks in using the facility.
- special exercising populations – People of certain ages, women that are pregnant, and people with physical limitations need to be advised about medical risks and/or encouraged to consult a physician before using the facility.
This third revision of the safety standards underwent national review by over 300 fitness practitioners in all sectors of the fitness industry and were completed in 2004. Significant changes were made from the previous two sets of standards to keep up with current fitness industry trends.
Patricia Clark gives us an example, “Some of our recommendations are from the survey findings that a lot of injuries were based on flooring. People were not doing exercises on wood sprung floor. So if they don’t have running shoes on and they are doing it on a cement floor or just a hard floor, there were injuries from that from the constant pounding. So there were some injuries that were prevalent so the Standards tried to answer to that.”
Two of the facilities that have complied with the Fitness Safety Standards are in Ajax, Ontario; the Ajax Community Centre and McLean Community Centre. They have approximately 3,500 members combined. Kevin Smith, the Active Living Co-ordinator for the Town of Ajax, says this is their second year of being accredited. He admits not many customers ask if the facilities follow the Safety Standards. “But we make it part of our orientation and any marketing initiatives to highlight the fact that we do meet certain criterion for our facilities.” As well, the two facilities display the Safety Matters icon on their entrance doors and in their fitness appraisal offices.
Canadian Fitness Matters Web Site
One of the major ways the program is promoted is through the Canadian Fitness Matters web site. Patricia Clark explains the web site, “What we were providing on the web site was a listing of facilities across Canada (over 10,000 are listed). We wanted to draw people to the site when they were looking at joining a facility or a health club or something. We put all the facilities on there but the promotion for our program was to actually get facilities recognized for their compliance with the standards so they had to complete an application form, prove that they were in compliance with all the standards, and then they would be recognized differently on the web site.
It’s like the big yellow pages ad where you’ve got the big box and the logo versus the one liner with the name of the club. The premise behind it was if you are going to look for a facility, you can search for the city and put in the criteria for what kind of club you are looking for. If a facility is recognized by the Canadian Fitness Matters program, it is the first one at the top and it’s in a big blue box. It talks about the facility; it’s got the designation of the logo from Canadian Fitness Matters which is the Canada flag, a link to their web site, and it indicates that they are recognized for their compliance. The rest (the unrecognized facilities) simply have their name and address and phone number but you don’t get any information about the club or details about it."
Toby Welch - Toby is a full-time freelance writer who specializes in magazine articles, online writing, e-books, and manuscript editing.
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