Campus Rec offers chances to stay fit

Campus Rec is now providing students with more opportunities to stay fit than ever, including fitness classes, personal training sessions, club sports, intramural sports, trips with Outdoor Adventures, massage sessions, and coming soon, nutrition counseling. Its goal is to provide quality, diverse programming, intentionally creating an environment that fosters leadership and social development, healthy active lifestyles and lifelong wellness for the N.C. State University community. 

Campus Rec offers an assortment of intramural and club sports. Through this, students have a chance to meet people and compete in a fun environment, no matter what their skill level is. Some of the more popular sports are flag football, basketball and soccer.

"For mostly flag football, soccer, and basketball the men's open and fraternity leagues are definitely the most competitive," student director of administration Lauren Roper said. "The women's leagues, there are a lot less teams so they aren't as competitive, but volleyball is a really competitive women's sport."

New to the intramural program are the elite leagues. Unlike the regular intramural league, the elite leagues have the most experienced officials, the best time slots, and participants are guaranteed all of their regular season games. And if competitors make it to nationals, Campus Rec will pay for the team to go. 

If team sports do not spark an interest, Campus Rec offers more than 50-group exercise programs suitable for all skill levels. Instructors work to find a balance in creating a challenging workout for those who are more experienced while at the same time making the class easy enough for beginners to enjoy themselves as well.

"For each exercise, as an instructor, you need to make sure that you have a way to take the intensity down and take the intensity up so you can cater to everyone in the class, so that it is not so one way and everyone gets the workout that they need", student director of fitness Leia Eldreth said.

With all the classes offered, students have a lot of options based not only on skill level but also on what their individual fitness goals are. Focuses of the classes range from strength training, to balance, to cardio. 

"We try to find out what is going on in the fitness industry and keep up with the trends as well as getting input from our participants, seeing what they like and don't like," assistant fitness director Natalie Freeland said. 

 Some of the more popular classes are Ab solutions, yoga, and zumba.

"Ab solutions is a great class and is always packed," Patricia Thompson, a sophomore in biology, said. "It is really intense but it is short enough that by the time I get tired it is almost over."

Since Carmichael's expansion into the new gym, participation has increased along with the amount of classes offered.

"Our participation numbers have grown tremendously," Freeland said.  "We were over in the older building and had maybe four classes a night, that was like 20 classes. Now we have 50 to 70 classes a week. Since we have been in the new facility our numbers have constantly increased."

New to the program is TRX suspension training, a program where participants use their own body weight and resistance training to get a full body workout.

"We do a full body workout, upper body, lower body, core and also some cardio," fitness instructor Thanh Tran said. "It is a very good workout. You will definitely be sore."