Health and fitness have never been more important than during the recent pandemic. As more of us live longer than ever before, it’s vital to maintain a robust level of health during our later life, helping lessen the strain on our health service.

Unfortunately, the pandemic stopped many of us from going out to gyms and fitness clubs to get our regular fitness fix during the week. Total Fitness is just one of the brands which suffered as a result, but a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) is on the cards, to restore it back to full health.

CVAs as a solution

CVAs are procedures allowing insolvent businesses or those in distress to come to an agreement with creditors, allowing them to pay off debts over a fixed period of time. For businesses such as Total Fitness, it gives breathing space, allowing for the necessary changes to be made to ensure future viability.

In the case of Total Fitness, a CVA has been employed as the brand seeks active assistance from landlords and suppliers, in a bid to return back to some kind of new normal as lockdown restrictions ease. Operating across 17 venues in the UK, Total Fitness was enjoying a bumper year in 2019, as a new management team reversed a decline in memberships which had beset the brand in 2018.

The CVA is reported to leave the majority of operations at Total Fitness clubs unaffected, but will result in the closure of the Huddersfield club.

Fitness clubs feel the pinch

Going into its CVA, Total Fitness reported that its clubs had been closed for eight months, and membership payments had been paused to ensure customers weren’t being charged for facilities they couldn’t use. This may have been a way to keep customers sweet, but left the brand with diminishing returns and growing overhead costs to account for.

Many hundreds of leisure centres, gyms and clubs are reported to have closed completely during the pandemic for similar reasons, despite millions of Brits being eager to keep on top of their fitness regimes. Ironically, in a bid to maintain the health of the overall population, lockdown has restricted access to the very facilities many of us require to stay active.

One bright spot for Total Fitness is the prospect of that aforementioned breathing space offered by the CVA, plus the ability to reopen from 12th April, as COVID-19 cases continue to drop. Total Fitness is a lucky outlier in a sea of collapsed fitness brands which could be turned around into lucrative investments, so long as you know where to look.