Dear Elite Community,

First, how are you? We miss you and we look forward to when we can get together again. I know I can be long winded (my kids always remind of it LOL) but we want to be in touch with everyone in the community, to update you with where we are and find out how each of you are doing.

As many of you know, Governor Abbot has included gyms in phase 2 of his plan to re-open Texas. We were really bummed by this news, as we were hoping to open with our new safety protocols on May 1st. It looks like we will have to wait another two weeks before we can open, possibly around May 18^th.

On second thought, we are getting closer to being able to open!  We will open our “phase 1” of training with 4 levels of risk and we will ask that each of you choose the right program for you.  If that goes well, we will continue with more and more open levels of social interaction based on ongoing results. We will be sending out the 4 program level details, asking each of you which one fits your life situation the best, late next week. The entire staff have been working and brainstorming, I think you guys will be happily surprised by the programming available and associated safety protocols once the Government gives the OK for us to open. Of course, we love your feedback and suggestions as we progress through this journey together.

The 4 Levels we want to start back with include:

• I want to have minimum physical contact with the facility.
  1. Do our online classes: you get the physical, mental, and technical benefits of martial arts training with zero exposure from the Elite community.
• I want to train in a school that has been disinfected and only have a coach present or a coach and my family present.
  1. Schedule a private class with one of the instructors.
• I want to train in a disinfected school on a disinfected heavy bag which is appropriately social distanced from other class members who have their own “training square” / all classmates sport training face masks, etc.
  1. We will have squares that are socially distanced apart from one another.
• I want to train in a disinfected school with a designated “family member/training partner” utilizing our own socially distanced area with a list of safety protocols.
  1. Yes, if you have been quarantined with a family member or have chosen a partner that you trust to train with.

How this is going to work is we will have repetitive class times with the same students in each class.  Please keep that in mind when choosing your training partners and class schedule.  We are taking this measure to minimize any potential cross-contamination between training groups. Students attending certain class times may be asked to declare a group name and mascot for fun (my group will have to be the whales if I do not get to work out soon LOL).  

The governor’s delay also threw us a curve ball about how to bill our customers, we expected we would start classes May 1^st . Since we cannot start for a couple more weeks, we are asking you to tell us how to handle your billing for the month of May. As I mentioned in my last letter about billing, we want to accommodate each of you to meet your individual needs. Please let us know if you want to:

• leave it as is and receive credit toward your membership for additional training time.
• refund the transaction. 

Please continue to train online or in our locations whether you are paying or not. Working out during this time may be more important than ever and is some of the best medicine for mind and body. Please feel free to invite any of your friends and family members, anywhere in the world, to do the classes online!

We, as a community, want to make sure everyone’s 7 areas of life are balanced. We want to support you and your families with fun and educational PHYSICAL conditioning. Also, please reach out if you need help or need to connect with others in the community to visit and unwind – this supports one another’s MENTAL well-being.  We will prevail in the face of this adversity. Everyone in this email chain subjects themselves to exceptional amounts of self-discipline, rigor, humility, gratefulness, respect, and love on a regular basis while training. We all have the humility to tap for the brief moment, but we are trained inside of having a positive and problem-solving attitude – an attitude to persevere and win whatever comes our way. Stay the course, we are being trained for something bigger in life. I am grateful to take that journey with ya’ll. We look forward to training, at one level or another, very soon.

Godspeed,

Eric and Team Elite

PS. We’ve also attached a sample of what a location would look like for our re-opening.