Photos by Karin Higgins/UC Davis Publications, audio by Tom Dotan, UC Davis News Service
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Campus promotes exercise to improve our health
Join Active Aggies Team Training
Walk, jog or run with other UC Davis staffers on Tuesdays and Thursdays after work in a new program called new program called Active Aggies Team Training, sponsored by the UC Davis Mind Body Wellness Group.
According to Brooklyn Mundy, program assistant for the UC Davis Work Life program, each session will be led by knowledgeable trainers on well-lit Davis trails, and participants will be able to go at their own pace.
On Wednesdays, participants will receive nutrition and training tips, and then go out for a light session. Weekend trainings will be organized by group members.
“Gradually, you’ll be faster and be able to extend your training sessions,” Mundy says, “You’ll also be able to participate as a team in a local run/walk event.”
Campus Recreation rocks!
Biggest. Most unusual. Unique. You name it, UC Davis’ Campus Recreation Department can stake a claim to some major superlatives. [more…]
Charley Hess, professor emeritus of plant sciences, plays a squash game three times a week with Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef. They have a friendly competition — Vanderhoef usually wins 4-2.
“It’s a great way to get a cardiovascular workout in a short period of time,” says Hess, who is acting chair of nutrition these days. “After a long day, I take some stress relief out on the ball.”
Hess and the chancellor are poster children for a new exercise promotion regimen that the University of California hopes will be a good fit with its staff and faculty.
The systemwide promotion, an extension of UC Living Well, is a personal health management program.
The benefit, offered through UC’s partnership with a company called StayWell, is for employees who are eligible for health benefits (except for those who are enrolled in Kaiser, which offers its own wellness program).
StayWell-eligible employees and their covered dependents, 18 and older, are invited to complete a confidential health assessment, online or on paper.
Each person who completes the StayWell assessment will receive a $75 gift card that can be redeemed at more than 300 businesses, including campus recreation programs.
If you spend your gift card at a campus recreation facility, the card will be good for a UC Living Well package valued at $90. Such gift cards cannot be used for membership fees.
(Also note: For union-represented employees, the StayWell benefit is subject to collective bargaining.)
The goal is to promote the institutional push toward fitness. At UC Davis, this works in nicely with the campus's already vibrant culture of healthy living.
A million exercisers
Hess and Vanderhoef are among the more than 1 million students, faculty and staff who annually click through the turnstiles of the ARC off La Rue Road to make use of the mega-facility's exercise opportunities.
Newcomers have more options than ever before. The ARC is introducing new classes, equipment and spaces for the upcoming year. Flashy additions are an instructional dance class, a cycling class with a live drummer, and complicated treadmills that hook up directly to your iPods and can play your music or save workout plans to a flash drive.
“There are lots of people who don’t feel like jumping on a machine and exercising like a hamster in a wheel,” says Elizabeth Marsh, a fitness and wellness coordinator for Campus Recreation. “We’re offering these new kinds of classes to appeal to all the different ways people use to feel healthy.”
The stumbling block for many prospective fitness buffs is finding the time to work out.
‘There are lots of people who don’t feel like jumping on a machine and exercising like a hamster in a wheel.’
Elizabeth Marsh, Campus Recreation fitness and wellness coordinator
No time for workouts?
Marsh herself is in a situation many people find themselves in: a well-stocked schedule that doesn’t always leave room for a regular workout plan. On top of being a personal trainer and fitness instructor at the ARC, she is a UC Davis graduate student in nutrition.
“You make the time,” says Marsh. “Free spaces won’t just present themselves, but if it is a priority, then things can be scheduled around it.”
Although students are the primary users of the ARC facilities, a smaller but equally committed and diverse population of faculty and staff work out there.
On any given day, professors, administers and other staffers can be found playing, sweating and mingling with the rest of the fitness populous.
It is a trend that finds its way all the way up to the school’s top brass, including the chancellor, who works with weights under the instruction of Jon Vochatzer, a physical education coach, as well as challenging Hess in the squash court.
Mind and reflexes in top form
Hess uses squash as his primary form of exercise and, at 75 years old, he says it has kept his mind and reflexes in top form. But don’t expect to ever see him playing racquetball: “Squash is just a better game,” he says.
Members of the UC Davis Fire Department might disagree on that point. They’ve been playing racquetball together since the ARC opened in 2004 and credit the game for keeping their squad in shape. Almost every day at 5 p.m., the team parks its blue and silver truck alongside the fire line and plays a few games in the Plexiglas cages upstairs in the ARC.
“It builds good teamwork and communication,” says UC Davis firefighter Jonathan Poganski. “We’ve challenged the police department several times, but they don’t seem to want to come out.”
The quest of daily fitness extends beyond the walls of the ARC’s fitness hanger, and into the far reaches of the campus.
Aggies on the Move
Aggies on the Move is an organization promoted by the campus that brings together Davis staff members who choose walking as their exercise.
They use the campus’s bike paths and arboretum as their gigantic fitness course. And before any doubters scoff at the notion that walking can be a true heart-pumping routine, realize that the Movers cover some serious ground; at least three miles per session.
“It’s nice to get out of the office at lunch time and still get a work out in,” says Russ Marsh.
He and Leah Thiel, who both work in UC Davis’ Human Resources Department, were taking a stroll on a nippy December afternoon heading west from their campus office on Orchard Road, past the Domes at Baggin’s End, across the Highway 113 pedestrian overcrossing and out to the planned West Village site.
“And not all the walks are just for exercise,” Thiel added. “It isn’t uncommon for us to have office meetings or important discussions during the sessions.”