I am writing in response to Kaitlyn Richert’s article titled “Spring Into Shape: Mixing up workouts keeps your muscles guessing,” which suggests different types of exercise to keep students from doing the typical gym workout every week. I enjoyed this article and loved the language, but I didn’t think it was very helpful to Ohio University students.
The author provides nice ideas for workouts, but to encourage students to follow through with them, she should have mentioned how OU has opportunities to try out these activities.
For example, Richert could mention in her swimming portion of the article that OU’s aquatic center has open swim hours for all students. Also, she could include that Ping Center has boxing and spinning classes with a small fee, compared to community classes. Let’s face it — the reader may not act on these suggestions of workouts unless the accessibility is bluntly stated.
In the columnist’s section “Jumping on a Trampoline,” she does address that there are no trampolines in Ping Center, but this could be a form of exercise in the summertime. However, this section could be better used on a workout that students can do during their time on campus. Students are not going to care about a workout that they cannot do right now.
This is a school paper and should include topics that will be relevant to students.
Lastly, this article came out on Tuesday of week six and the author includes a suggested workout for week six, which includes Monday. This is not applicable because none of us have a time machine in our dorm room to travel to Monday to go “swimming for 30 minutes.” To fix this, the columnist should have left out the words “Week Six Workout.”
Although this article did a good job of addressing how these workouts are fun for men and women, the workouts should be more accessible on-campus to students. Honestly, I probably will not try any of these workouts.
Rebecca Curry is a freshman studying chemical engineering.
