Taylor Gym encourages fitness with spring break incentive

Taylor Gym recently announced their “Heat up for Spring Break” incentive program, which encourages students to get active in a healthy and controlled environment.

Doug Strange, assistant athletics director at Taylor Gym, said the incentive program gives students the opportunity to earn 100 “degrees” over a six-week period to work toward earning a t-shirt as a trophy for their achievement.

Each workout holds different degree values. One can earn five degrees for 30 minutes of cardio, five degrees for 45 minutes of weight training and 10 degrees for a Taylor Gym group exercise class.

Throughout the six-week program, Taylor Gym strives to keep a controlled environment to ensure healthy and safe workout patterns. There is a monitored minimum of 20 degrees and a maximum of 30-degree workouts per week.

“The incentive motivates people to work out with their friend groups, and they get a free t-shirt too,” Corina Fitzgerald, ’17, said. These incentive programs are intended to create a positive and healthy reward system on campus while focusing on encouraging students to be active.

The program was first introduced 24 years ago when Strange brought the idea of incentive programs to campus.

Originally, faculty and staff were encouraged to participate. However, over the past two years the program has been limited to student participation.

“Typically we receive about 75-100 participants with each spring incentive program,” Strange said.

Not only does the program motivate individuals to lead a healthier lifestyle, it also fosters relationships between athletes, Greek and other non-Greek individuals on campus. It helps to put a larger emphasis on health and wellness.

“Often times people come in asking about the program because they’ve heard about it through their fraternity or intramural sports teams,” said Katie Koser, ’17, a Campus Athletics work study student.

The spring break incentive program also collaborates with many intramural sports teams to increase participation. Similarly, many students learn about the program on campus through different social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Campus Athletics encourages engagement by using the hashtag #LUCommitToFit.

Using spring break as an incentive to encourage students to join the program, Taylor Gym displayed promotional fliers around campus. “It’s never too early to start getting your beach body ready for spring break,” one of the program fliers read.