EAU CLAIRE -- As the spring semester gets moving for the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, students of the kinesiology department are "warming up" for another round of their Community Fitness Program.

Ben Krings, Community Fitness Program director, said the program has been one of their significant outreach efforts for many years. It first started back in 1998. With a focus on fitness, Krings said they recruit community members to come in three days a week in the early morning for the entire semester.

"They will get paired up with our students in the kinesiology department, specifically our Rehab Science major emphasis, and what they will get is a full semester of personal training," he said. "[The community members] will go through different types of tests where they can monitor different types of change, whether it is body composition, muscular strength, muscular fitness or aerobic fitness."

On top of the individualized sessions, the program has also included a number of group fitness classes covering stretching, yoga, aquatics and more.

Since the students work directly with the community members, Krings said their program also accommodates for any people with disabilities or without at nearly every age.

"As far as the population goes, we are not specific to any age range," he said. "Anyone that is an adult is who we are looking for."

But while one of the main focuses is providing a service for community members, the program also serves as a benefit with student opportunities as well.

"You are getting very good training, but more importantly our students are able to learn from you," said Krings. "Here you are, actually engaging with student learning and helping them become professionals in the field. I think that is really the draw: we are giving back to the community by doing this, but also the community members are helping our students and giving them experiences to become professionals."

For that reason, Krings said the program is more so an academic program than one where costs are the main drive. For the kinesiology students, it is a full semester of training to become professionals in the field while members learn and train from students studying fitness. This is the case for Krings as well, who recalls being a student teaching in the Community Fitness Program when he was a student at UW-Eau Claire.

Having just started a graduate program with students helping out from there and steadily bouncing back from the Pandemic's impact on attendance, Krings said a goal of he Community Fitness Program is to bring in members while providing the opportunity for both community members and students. Their hope with the program is to continue to outreach and grow it, he said, with hopes that support can give them more opportunities of what they can do.

"I think that there is so much room to grow for this program," said Krings. "The sky is the limit in terms of us being able to get more members and getting our name out there, because it is only going to benefit our students and that is going to benefit the community members."

The program goes from Feb. 10 to May 7, with registration starting at $120 per semester and opening up two to three weeks prior to the start date. Members are invited to meet on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 5:30 to 7:30 a.m. at the Olson Complex in UWEC's McPhee Physical Education Center at the university's upper campus.

For more information about the Community Fitness Program, visit uwec.ly/GetFit, reach out to [email protected] or call 715-836-3840.