Campus collaboration to stay health with fitness series

Aaron Johnson – General Assignment Reporter

Loud music, fast-paced exercises, and sweaty students were all on display this past Wednesday night in the Michael J. Adanti student center as the Fitness Center and Office of Campus Recreation kicked off the new “Fit 4 Fun” workout series with a group Insanity session.

“This is the first part of our four month fitness series that we’re doing,” said Willie Epps, graduate intern for Campus Recreation. “We’re starting off with Insanity. Then we’re doing Zumba for February, Yoga for March, and for April lastly, we’re going to do a hip-hop series. So it’s pretty awesome.”

The event was free for all Southern students with the first 25 students receiving free t-shirts. Allison Blacker, graduate intern for the Fitness Center, said that the idea for such a series was a collaboration between both the Fitness Center and Campus Recreation with the goal in mind to bring students together and give them an opportunity to workout and stay health.

“I think that people are starting to realize that in an attempt to help themselves feel better and to keep up with the wellness aspect of your life, being physically active is one of the things that can help

reducing stress and helping you to feel more energetic and just helping your body,” said Blacker.

Students worked through the insane workout for about an hour in total. Eric LaCharity, assistant director of the Office of Student Life, said that with fitness being the growing trend of what students are doing now it only seemed right to put on an event here at Southern.

“The Director of Student Life Denise (Bentley-Drobish) approached me one day saying how there was a lot of this kind of thing going on statewide and nationwide so let’s make something like that happen here,” said LaCharity. “So that’s how we started talking about it seriously. We figured doing one a month try and make them as big as we can and just see where that goes from there.”

During the night about 65 students were on hand to take part in this first session of the series. A number Epps said he was excited and happy to see.

“I really didn’t expect this many people to be here. This is great though. This is a great turnout. I was sitting at the door trying to count how many people were in there but there were too many people,” said Epps.

During the workout, three different instructors were seen doing three different levels of the Insanity workout based off a student’s physical skill level. Epps said that this was done to help of the students that may not be physically able to do some of the workouts and to show that fitness can be fun.

“In the front, you have the instructor but also there is someone who is doing a modified version and this is just for the students that may not be physically capable. So you know if you can’t do the extreme part of Insanity. There are modifications that you can do,” said Epps.

Junior Deanna Brightman was one of the 65 who participated in the workout. She said that although the workout was difficult it was also very rewarding.

“I saw the posters to come tonight and a whole bunch of us from my Rugby team came to do it so it was kind of a team bonding thing. I liked it though, it was hard but it was good. I would tell people that the workout was difficult, but rewarding and I know it was worth it,” said Brightman.

Freshman Alicia Waldner also said that she enjoyed the workout, especially since it was in a group setting like this.

“I’ve done Insanity, the DVD, a few times,” said Waldner. “But doing it in a group is definitely a lot more motivating. You have a lot of people around you and a lot of people you know too. And when you know people and you’re working out it makes you want to work even more hard.”