Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and campus closures, NC State Wellness and Recreation is unable to offer in-person group fitness classes at this time, but has recently transitioned to creating online content for students and Carmichael Gym members.
Anna Beach, fitness instructor and third-year studying business IT, said her experience with the transition to an online format has primarily been positive.
“As far as the community and actually teaching the classes has gone, it’s been really great,” Beach said. “It’s been really cool to see how dedicated people are and to see that people are still showing up and coming to these classes, and how much they still really enjoy them.”
Beach became certified by the American Council on Exercise last fall, and began teaching cycling and F45 last spring. She now leads group high intensity interval training (H.I.I.T.) classes over Zoom through NC State’s Wellness and Recreation platform.
Beach described the change as pretty seamless overall, the only hiccup being the initial transition to teaching online.
“The only difficulty has been the technology itself, and kind of getting over the hurdle of just starting,” Beach said. “Once you start and have things rolling like we are now, it’s really rewarding.”
Following the transition to online academic classes last spring semester, Wellness and Recreation continued to pay all of their employees through the entire semester regardless of whether they were able to physically come in to work or not.
Naomi Matley, fitness coordinator for WellRec, said continuing to offer these classes is important for the wellness of the NC State community.
“We wanted to offer something to our members and the students at Wellness and Recreation, and just the NC State community as well just because people are at home and not able to get to the gym,” Matley said. “We wanted to make sure that people were able to get their workout in or to attend a class they might like.”
Matley said NC State Wellness and Recreation put a lot of thought into what platform would be best utilized for the transition to online content before deciding on Zoom, which allows participants to receive feedback on their form and interact with the instructor before and after the class.
“We took some time to research what’s the best platform for virtual content and virtual group fitness to be held,” Matley said. “We decided that offering Zoom classes makes group fitness a bit more personal.”
According to Matley, participation in online classes has been relatively consistent with past summer sessions. She said on average there are 1,189 people registered weekly, in the spring and summer while they’ve had virtual programming.
“In-person participation is a little bit higher because people use fitness as a way to interact, so there’s a social piece as well,” Matley said.
The opportunity to create online content has NC State Wellness and Recreation considering continuing virtual classes for the upcoming fall semester, according to Matley.
“When we get back in the fall, we have been talking about continuing to offer some virtual group fitness classes, which will hopefully allow anybody who might not be comfortable coming into the facility yet that option to continue to interact with other participants and the community,” Matley said.
Matley said NC State Wellness and Recreation is dedicated to providing its members with content no matter the circumstances, and also said that since the transition, their priority has been to help the community keep moving despite what is going on.
“We want to offer content as much as we can during this time to help our community connect,” Matley said.
Students can access the classes through the Wellness and Recreation app where they can sign up for classes and learn more about the content offered by NC State Wellness and Recreation.
