As a free exercise program, the Biola chapter of 100 Citizens contains sessions for anyone over the age of 18 to learn beneficial exercises. The program has their first consistent participant after only a week and a half, in comparison to other schools gaining one participant after two or three months, according to Scott Flowers, a student leader of the program and senior kinesiology major.
Through tons of research
The program first started with students from California State University Northridge and then began spreading to several other universities around the state, with Biola’s first session on Oct. 10. Kinesiology students lead sessions at the La Mirada Community Regional Park every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 6:30-7:30 a.m..
“We focus on a couple of things. Generally every exercise session is a brief warm-up. We do a little bit of cardio and we focus on some upper body, lower body and core resistance exercises and then follow that with a cool-down,” said Jacob Gardner, advisor for the program and assistant professor of kinesiology, health and physical education.
One of the main goals of the program includes encouraging participants to meet the Center for Disease Control’s recommendation for weekly exercise of 30 minutes a day for at least five days a week. Although this is the minimum recommendation, many people do not meet or exceed these requirements, Gardner said.
“We’ve seen through tons and tons of research that [exercise] reduces risk for heart disease, reduces risk for diabetes, for various types of cancers, there’s so just so many chronic conditions that we have a reduced risk for as a result of physical activity,” Gardner said.
bringing Biola into the community
To align the community with the many benefits of exercise, Gardner and senior kinesiology major Christina Wiese and Flowers hope the program will encourage the community to exercise. Wiese and Flowers learned many exercises to actively engage the community.
“What I enjoy about it is that I’ve gotten to learn a lot of exercises that I didn’t know before. Learning them myself was hard. We had one of the professors go over them with us and that was a struggle just for me to learn all those exercises and have the correct form and everything. And then it was even more difficult to learn how to give someone else those instructions,” Flowers said.
The exercises help the participants to meet the CDC exercise recommendations and also allow the kinesiology students internship credit, but both Flowers and Wiese declined because of the required additional course. However, they still have the chance to practice what they have learned in the classroom as well as for their future jobs.
“I want to be a physical therapist and so that’s going to be important in my future career and just knowing what the body’s supposed to be doing and how the muscles are supposed to be working,” Wiese said.
As Flowers and Wiese teach the exercise sessions, they not only engage the participants with new exercises daily but also by simply interacting with them.
“I think bringing Biola into the community is really important for this program. Especially for a Christian school like Biola, going out into the community and interacting with the community, I think it’s really good practice just for doing life after Biola. And just being able to give time back to the community, I really like that aspect of it,” Wiese said.
