~The cardio club is one of five incentive programs this spring

New to the Southeast Missouri State University Student Recreation Center-North is the cardio club. The cardio club is a group led by Sara Wagganer that encourages college students to stay active and fit.

Wagganer is the assistant director of fitness and wellness at Southeast. She is in charge of group fitness, personal training and student, faculty and staff wellness programs.

The goal of the cardio club is for each participant to go 100 miles before the end of the semester. This can be accomplished by running, walking, using the elliptical, riding a bike, rowing, swimming or any other cardio exercise.

Julie Shives, an intern who is helping to run the cardio club, believes the competition is a good thing.

"Having a competition gets more students involved because of the challenge. It'll help bring more people to the rec center," Shives said.

For every 25 miles a participant goes, he or she will get a certificate in honor of their success. When a person reaches 100 miles, they get a special prize. The prize has not yet been revealed and will be a surprise.

"If incentives get too complicated, people don't tend to do them, so we've kept it really simple and we've actually had a lot of people sign up for it, so it's been great," Wagganer said.

Two interns, Cory Brock and Shives, are in charge of heading up the cardio club, coordinating it and checking off the amounts of mileage that people do. They are working on a 420-hour internship for this semester.

"The ultimate goal of the cardio club is to get students involved and be more active," Brock said.

There is a bulletin board behind the cardio machines on the ground level at the recreation center where the miles are recorded. Everyone that has signed up has their own little cheetah on the bulletin board. Every time they go 10 or so miles, the participants get to move their cheetah that much farther up the path. At the end of the path, there's a little finish line marking the fact that they made it to 100 miles.

These miles can be performed at any point in a person's free time. There is no set time during which they must be done.

Signing up is also free. To sign up, a person must either go to the front desk at the recreation center or go to the bulletin board. There's a spot on the bulletin board for entrants to write down their name, email and other information.

The cardio club is also having a Spring Break Challenge. It includes challenges like how many fitness classes a person attends and a test to see if people can do 100 push ups or 100 sit ups before Spring Break. There's a checklist of challenges, and if a person does a certain number, he or she gets a slightly smaller prize.

The cardio club, along with the Spring Break Challenge, are only two of five incentive programs the Recreation Center-North currently has going on. Some of the other incentives are Move it and Lose it, a weight loss program, Shape up Southeast and the Noon Walk. All of these programs are designed specifically to help college students stay fit and healthy in their busy lives. The best way to find out more information about these programs is to go to the Student Recreation Center-North.

For more information, contact Wagganer at swagganer@semo.edu or call her at 573-651-2367.