Answer To Your Fitness Questions" />Aerobics Program Keeps Students Fit
April 6, 2008
The Aerobics Program at BYU is something the program’s director, Barbara Neal, said she recommends because the classes fulfill the recommended amount of exercise for adults. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, adults should be exercising a minimum of three times a week for 20 to 60 minutes each time.
The classes offered use a variety of different methods to tone and strengthen muscles. One class, yoga, is aimed specifically at increasing flexibility as well as strength.
Yoga is an aspect of the program that Neal said has become particularly popular in recent years.
The origins of yoga are unclear, but its techniques have existed for over 5,000 years. It incorporates meditation, exercise and breathing to improve overall health and well-being.
Deni Preston, an instructor of StepKardio Fusion and Power Yoga classes for the BYU Aerobics Fitness Program, said she thinks the poses in yoga make it easier to focus the mind, thereby improving study skills. Yoga is “a total mind, body, spirit workout,” Preston said. It can also help students let go of things that are unproductive.
“We’re always so busy paying attention to the past,” she said.
Preston also said she believes that yoga forces participants to keep their minds focused on events occurring in the present.
Yoga also has physical benefits and can help anyone from athletes to those with physical disabilities, Preston said. She said she has had several BYU football players come to classes.
“It enhances their sport plus it decreases injury,” Preston said.
For those with injuries or disabilities, Preston said yoga can act as a means of physical therapy.
In the past, yoga has sometimes been associated with femininity, but Preston said she encourages both males and females to attend yoga classes, pointing out that yoga was initially intended for men.
“It is wonderful to have the men,” Preston said. “A lot of people think flexibility is too feminine, but it is a very important component of exercise.”
Despite yoga’s current popularity and apparent health benefits, some physicians have suggested that it should not be the only component of an individual’s personal health regimen.
“The foundation [of an exercise regimen] should be aerobic exercises like running and walking,” said Spencer Richards, a sports medicine physician at Utah Valley Sports Medicine Clinic.
Although Richards said he has had many patients tell him they have received health benefits similar to those described by Preston from participating in yoga, he said he knows of no studies that have been performed to prove that yoga helps focus the mind. However, Richards said he agreed that yoga exercises would add to an individual’s overall health.
For more information about the Aerobics Fitness Program at BYU, visit aerobics.byu.edu or call 422-3644.
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