Avoid Gym Germs on Weight Machines

Video Transcript

"Hi welcome back, my name is Meagan Moe and today I am showing you some tips and suggestions for keeping yourself safe from germs when you are working out in your gym. Now here we have another piece of equipment that does pose some specific risks so I am going to talk to you a little bit about that. This is just a weight machine. It is pretty standard but there are lots of different kinds and what I am going to tell you applies to all of them. Now you need to be very careful when using this because as you see there is a pad that people sit down on and a lot of times if people are wearing either a tank top or sometimes shorts, their skin is going to make direct contact with this so you need to be very careful. Now something that is good to do is like everything else spray it with ethanol and let it sit for about a minute before you wipe it off or you can use an antibacterial wipe if that is easier for you. And you want to be sure not to miss the handles which are right here and also if you are wearing shorts or something, you want to be sure if your leg is making direct contact that you clean this piece right down here as well. So just let that sit for a while and let that engage and kill all the bacteria and then something else that you want to be very weary of is the pin in the weight stack because this is probably a pretty dirty piece of equipment since people's hands are touching it all day long. And so something good to do is you don't have to necessarily disinfect the whole thing but if you are going to grab it and you have maybe an antibacterial wipe in your hand or a towel you can go ahead and just grab it with that when you pull it out and that way you don't have to make direct contact with it. Also if you are more comfortable you can always take a towel and if you are more comfortable when you sit down you can cover this part of the machine up here if your legs are exposed or if maybe you are wearing a tank top and your shoulders are exposed you can always put it up here. Basically wherever your skin is going to be making direct contact is probably your primary concern and where you want to put the most attention into. And so that's a weight machine and next I'm going to show you a little bit of information about the free weights and the dumb bells and what you can do to protect yourself from germs in there."