 |
|
|
|
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
After checking out the new equipment at the Wellness Center, De Anza student Shanni Hender says she wants to sign up for PE 70.
|
New De Anza gym strives to get that '70s edge back
Ron Warnock envisions wellness center as a healthier health club
By Sam Scott
It's the first day of classes at De Anza College, and PE instructor Ian MacKenzie is showing off the school's new wellness center to any students who wander by. At a glance, it's difficult to tell how the center, funded with $200,000 from the De Anza student body, differs from any other gym. The neat rows of treadmills, stationary bikes, stair climbers and weight machines facing the mirror-lined wall seem standard issue for any health club.
MacKenzie, who also serves as De Anza's football coach, says the component that makes this more than a mere workout room is invisible. It's not the machines, but the center's educative focus.
Besides just trying to break a sweat, students using the center will learn some of the issues involved in getting healthy. He says, for example, that a lot of his football players work out a lot, but they don't grasp some of the other aspects of being healthy--like a maintaining a proper diet. "I know what most of my students eat is terrible," he says. "If they start keeping track of what they eat, they can make changes."
This is just the thing that Ron Warnock, the college's dean of physical education and athletics, would like to see: jocks paying as much attention to their diet as they do to their max on the bench-press. Warnock, the man who proposed the center, wants to broaden popular ideas of fitness beyond the scope of bulging biceps and six-pack bellies. He wants De Anza students to begin thinking about the big picture.
"Wellness is keeping people healthy," Warnock explains. "It's the total makeup of those things which make you well."
Warnock, who has been at his position since March of '98, first visited De Anza more than two decades ago, when he was sent by his employer to learn about the cutting-edge facilities at the college.
"De Anza was a benchmark in the '70s," he says. Since then, however, he says it has fallen behind. He aims to bring back the status it had in the disco era.
With that in mind, students who take PE 70, the class required to use the gym, will be assessed on a variety of qualities: flexibility, aerobic capacity, strength and body-fat ratio. Once a week, a class will teach proper workout techniques and help students chart their improvement.
Three hours of time in the gym will put those techniques to use. It could be just the thing to motivate students who have sat on workout machines and wondered what the heck they were really doing.
"The class will give a lot more meaning to exercise," he says. "People will understand the basic principles."
With sections available from the early morning to the evening and on Saturday, Warnock hopes to see community members who otherwise aren't students taking the class. Once students take the class, they will have access to the center as long as they are enrolled at De Anza.
In the future, Warnock plans to include classes on other wellness issues such as stress management and nutrition.
He'd also like to install windows, so the folks in the center can look out at the pool as they work out.
|
|
|
|
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
