After being forced to take more than four months off from the gym due to COVID-19 emergency orders, many Ontario residents are stoked to get back into a fitness routine and lose that fabled "COVID 19 lbs."

Or maybe they just really like working out, I don't know. Fitness is about so much more than weight.

Whatever the case, gym-goers are literally lining up outside fitness clubs in some parts of the GTA today as they enter Stage 3 of the province's economic reopening plan.

literally the first person in line for the first hour of the gym being open so clearly I didn’t miss it at all

— jessica mathers (@jessicamatherss) July 24, 2020

Seven more of Ontario's 34 public health regions entered the next phase of reopening today, in addition to 24 that have been open since last Friday.

Toronto (as well as Peel and Windsor-Essex) still remains in Stage 2, but the nearby regions of York, Durham and Halton are all celebrating the reopening of everything from gyms and spas to indoor restaurants and movie theatres.

It's not as if customers can exactly stroll right in, however — strict gathering limits still apply to higher-risk settings, such as gyms, capping the number of people allowed inside a single facility at one time.

Some of the GTA is now in Stage 3 incl Markham where people were lining up to get into this gym. Fitness Clubs can have max 50 users at a time with social distancing. The rules for bars incl no dancing. pic.twitter.com/WGl3bBAuWU

— carl hanstke (@carl680) July 24, 2020

Knowing that only 50 patrons, maximum, can hit the gym at once, people eager to workout in a formal setting started lining up outside an LA Fitness in Markham early Friday morning.

Gym-goers in other parts of the GTA also reported waking up early to line up for a chance to get their fitness on, later tweeting such things as "It felt so good to be back in a gym" and "WOOOOO. Feels so damn GOOOOOOOD to be back at the gym!"

Some people are still leery, however, to go back into a place filled with sweaty, heavy-breathing people in light of the ongoing pandemic.

Gyms were Petri dishes even before COVID. Sticking to my home gym for now.

— Sylvia Kane (@Syl_Kane) July 24, 2020

While public health officials have okayed gym use with proper health and safety measures in place, outbreaks linked to fitness clubs have been seen in other jurisdictions recently.

More than 40 people in Calgary are thought to have contracted the 2019 novel coronavirus from an indoor cycling studio between June 6 and June 13, according to the Government of Alberta. 

Hopefully the intense COVID safety policies in place at gyms resuming operations today will prevent anything similar from happening here.