People lost more than fitness when their favorite gyms shut down. On Wednesday, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela got in a line near her home in New York City’s West Village that snaked down the sidewalk and wrapped around the corner of the block. New Yorkers will queue up for virtually anything; I was once velvet-roped outside a budget pasta joint, among other indignities. But at 5:45 in the morning, Petrzela and her neighbors weren’t anticipating a sample sale or a particularly good bagel. They just wanted to work out. That was the first day the city’s gyms were allowed to reopen at diminished capacity after nearly six months of pandemic shutdown, and people were really excited to get back on the elliptical before dawn. “I don’t know if I’m proud of that or not,” Petrzela, who worked at the gym years ago as an instructor before becoming a history professor at The New School, told me. Either way, she was happy to be back. As soon as she got through the door, she said, “the guy behind the de

  You probably did not know it then, but the gym classes you took during your school years influenced the person you became. If you had well-taught stimulating classes in the gymnasium, you learned valuable physical skills, set a pattern for lifelong fitness and grew socially from your experiences. For the same reasons, children still benefit from gym class at school. Physical Exercise Gym classes provide students with physical exercise on a consistent basis. It is particularly important for the physical well-being of children who do not engage in physical activities outside of school. A good physical education class will feature activities that raise the heart rate, increase the pulse rate and rev up metabolism. According to the American Heart Association, gym classes can help teach children skills that can help them be active their whole lives. The physical exertion also helps the mind, as children will find they are able to think more clearly and are able to focus better in other cl