By Kailyn Fournier
Volunteer State Community College has a fitness center located in the Wesley Pickel Field House building open Monday through Friday from 6:30 a.m.—9 p.m. It has a variety of equipment for students and faculty to use.
The room has treadmills, exercise bikes and cross trainers, as well as various weights. It also has stations for biceps, abdominal crunches, seated leg curls, leg extensions, biangular shoulder presses, seated leg presses, and tricep extensions among others. On each of these stations are instructions on how to set up the equipment, how to enter the equipment and how to actually do the exercise.
In addition to the equipment, on the walls of the room, there are posters with various warm up and workout information. There are also three T.V.s mounted on the walls.
The rules for the fitness center can be found on a sign near the desk, and on the wall in front of the treadmills. They are general rules apply mostly to using the equipment, such as taking care of the equipment and keeping the room clean.
However, no food and drink are allowed unless it is water, and since there is heavy equipment involved, parents are not allowed to bring their children into the room for the child’s own safety. The fitness center is also closed to others whenever a class is in session.
It should also be mentioned that the rules specifically state that the fitness center is for working out only, no socializing or loitering.
The fitness center is a public place, and though it is a workout room, proper attire is required. Shirts and shoes are necessary. Also, profanity, and screaming or grunting loudly is not appropriate or allowed.
Justin McKinney is an adjunct athletic trainer at Vol State and teaches a weight training class that takes place in the fitness center Mondays and Wednesdays from 10:10 to 11:05.
He says that the room is always fairly open. “Our athletes here at Vol State utilize the facility as well,” He says, “but the best time to come and work out is the afternoon, because they’re practicing.”
According to McKinney, the desk in the Fitness center is used whenever the Athletic Department has work studies. Occasionally there is someone at the desk who is just there to help and observe and there are routine checks of the room to make sure everything is fine.
If no one is there it still fine to use the workout equipment, but it is one’s own responsibility to make sure they are using the equipment safely.
Abby Hall and Melanie Wells are two of McKinney’s weight training students and thought they would be the only two girls in his class. They realized that the class was much more diverse and have a decent number of both men and women.
Though neither of the girls are involved in any sports at Vol State, they do coach basketball at Madison Church of Christ in Madison, TN. Hall says she specifically joined the class to use the room to help with a problem she has in her knee.
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