The Rec Center has a lot going on at the moment with the opening of the outdoor workout space as well as a new partnership for students with the workout app called F45. 

Last week was the official opening of the Rec Center’s outdoor workout spaces for students. The space allows up to 10 students to workout with some of the Rec Center’s equipment. The space is only open to students and they can sign up for a time at the Rec Center engage pages.  

The outdoor workout space is available for all students and all they have to do is reserve a time slot at the Rec Center engage page. According to the Rec Center’s website, the available equipment will include, “Cycling bikes, rowing machines, dumbbells (not to exceed 20 lbs), medicine balls, bosu balls, stability balls, and other small equipment.”

Director of Campus Recreation Shelbi Long commented on the first couple days of the space and how it went: “I believe things have gone really well and we are providing students a variety of times and equipment to get their workouts in,” she said, “If there was anything we could improve, although we’ve had a handful of students show up, we would love to get the word out there more so we can have all 10 spots filled for each reservation.”

Bella Nolan was one of the students that attended the workout space last week and commented on her experience there: “The best part is probably that they have benches, so you can use them for abs/legs and arms, every body part can be worked out.”

While she enjoyed having the ability to use the Rec Center again, she also had some things she wished they would add to the experience: “They lack bars and plates and you can’t move into a different square to change equipment so you’re stuck with whatever is in your square and there isn’t much to work with.”

Long commented on potential improvements for the space as well: “I feel that students would want to have treadmills and heavier weights,” she said, “We would love that too, but at this time we have to bring the equipment out each day and inside at the end of the day, so some of this isn’t feasible for us.  We are looking into adding heavier free weights and are always open to suggestions.”

Also new to the Rec Center is a brand new partnership. The Rec Center has partnered with F45 fitness to give students a complete workout experience. 

F45 is a workout, challenge-based app that will give students, “…access to on-demand workouts, meal plans, personalized calorie guides, results trackers, and more,” according to the Rec Center webpage. 

Long was able to describe F45 in more detail for students to better understand what the app entails: “F45 is an app and they can look up F45 challenge and use their Sonoma email for access,” she said, “This provides them with a variety of workouts at beginner level and advanced as well as nutrition plans. We know students are looking for easily accessible workouts and we are hoping that this partnership will provide that to them.”

F45 is perfect for students who can not access the Rec Center’s outdoor workout space. F45 is a completely online program that will give students a complete workout plan they can do at home. This partnership gives students a way to access Rec Center services without having to be in the area or without having to physically go to campus. 

To sign up with F45, all students have to do is head over to the app store and download the app. From there, all they have to do is use their sonoma email to sign up and they will have access to all of the features. To sign up for the outdoor Rec space, head over to the Rec Center engage page to check the availability and to book a time slot.