Fit for Life!

I'm not sure how much you've looked into the curriculum requirements for graduation but at Transy one of the classes that every single student with hopes of graduating must take is Lifetime Fitness.   The university says it's important because it,  "underscores the University's belief that a sound body is the natural complement to a sound mind. The class emphasizes that physical activity leads to improved cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, strength, and endurance for everyone. Proper nutrition, stress management, and other wellness concepts are also key to this program."  Or in other words, it's kind of like a health class and a PE class all rolled into one.

At the beginning of the semester you take pretests in both your cardiovascular health (1.5 Mile run) and your muscular health (a variety of weight lifting, push-ups, etc.) the pretest is supposed to show you where you need improvement and allow you the ability to reflect on the progress you made at the end of the semester when you take your post-tests in the same areas.  In my case, I was not surprised that I felt like death after my run and I couldn't hardly bench press 10 pounds, I scored among the very low on the proficiency scale in my weight lifting ability and was in the slow part of the class on my run.  Now, don't get me wrong, I use to be an active athlete in high school and has intended to swim at Transy but as it goes so often with the best intentions, I didn't swim and my activity was limited to walking around campus, walking downtown to work, and dancing on the weekends.  The idea of a post-test is what motivated me to get my butt in shape and to work hard to become more fit (well that and the fact that my sister is getting married in June.)

At the beginning of the semester I was, no joke, afraid of the weigh machines; I though I would hate every minute spent on them but I soon found that I got to move up in weights when I got strong enough and it became a competitive game for me.  I got to focus on the muscle groups that I wanted to tone (my arms for the strapless bride's maids dresses) and was set free to work on my own pace.  The professor monitored our activity through fitness journals so I also wanted to show him that I was making advances so that was another motivator to do well.  I enjoyed the weights but still loathe cardio, thankfully the Beck Fitness Center has an amazing assortment of machines to work out on so I got to use the elliptical (or the stationary bike if I had some homework to catch up on) and got to avoid running until our post test.

We had lecture once or twice a week and covered topics from cancer to STI's to cardiovascular health to nutrition.  Our professor, Don Lane, was the basketball coach at Transy for many years and had a lot of interesting stories as well as a lot of practical knowledge both in the gym and in the classroom.  After my post-test run, I was having a lot of trouble breathing and he hypothesized I was having an asthma attack and helped me regain the ability to breathe and sent me to the nurse who confirmed his diagnosis of exercise induced asthma (something I had thought was a possibility since my swimming days in HS but had never had checked out.)

I had put off taking Lifetime for sometime but I'm glad I took it when I did because it really did get me back into the shape I was when I was a high school athlete, I lost 5 lbs and two pant sizes, gained a lot of muscle, feel much better about myself.  It's a class that a lot of students think is unnecessary but for the .5 credits and pass/fail grade it was worth it for me.