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Move more with Healthy IU: Six beginner exercises demonstrated

Jan 10, 2018

It’s the time of the year when individuals are setting New Year’s resolutions to move more. Being comfortable in a fitness setting and knowing how to properly use your gym’s workout equipment will make it much easier to keep that goal all year long.

Healthy IU partners with the School of Public Health students to offer an Intro to Fitness Equipment program to ease beginners into a fitness routine. The spring course will kick off with a mandatory orientation at noon Monday, Jan. 29, in the Indiana Memorial Union Dogwood Room.

Register for the course

During the course, students enrolled in the Individual Physical Activity/Exercise Instruction course in the School of Public Health-Bloomington will coach participants through basic fitness instruction. Students are able to apply evidence-based classroom knowledge under instruction supervision. Participants will learn how to use cardio equipment, such as the rowing machine, and strength training equipment, such as the lat pull-down machine.

Students, who meet academic requirements by taking this course, will focus on safe and effective workouts and helping participants feel comfortable working out on their own.

Can’t fit the course into your schedule but still want to learn more about using fitness equipment? Watch students and participants from last semester’s program demonstrate six common exercises of a beginner workout routine.

Description of the following video:

[Music plays in background throughout]

[Video: A blurred image of two people appears]

[Words appear: Sit-Back Squats]

[Video: A male student coaches a male participant through a squat exercise in a gym]

[Student speaks: Today we are going over the sit-back squats, kind of a level one version of the squats. So you are going to start out positioned in front of the Smith machine here you are going to have your feet about shoulder-width apart, toes slightly angled out. You’re going to start by extending down here. Perfect, just like that. you want to keep a straight line here from your hips to your shoulders to your ears, just like Roger is doing here. And that’s how you do a sit-back squat.]

[Video: A blurred image of a man stretching his legs appears]

[Words appear: Stationary-assisted lunge]

[Video: A male student coaches a male participant through a lunge exercise in a gym]

[Student speaks: This is a stationary-assisted lunge. So you’re going to start off by just setting up two benches on either side of you, and you’re going to take a staggered stance in-between them. Make sure that stance is nice and wide, because when you’re going straight up and down you want to make sure that front knee isn’t going to come forward of that front toe, and you want to make sure your legs are lined up with each other in a nice straight line. When you’re going up and down, you’re just going straight up and down so you want those hips, shoulders and ears to all be in a straight line. And then obviously you would switch legs to hit the other leg. And that’s how you do an assisted-stationary lunge.]

[Video: A blurred image of a two people working out in the gym appears]

[Words appear: Rowing machine]

[Video: A male student coaches a female participant through how to use a rowing machine in a gym]

[Student speaks: I’ll be showing you how to use the rowing machine for a cardiovascular exercise routine. You’ve got a couple of basic things with the rowing machine. We’ve got a display unit to show your distance that you can do, and a couple of games you can play. You’ve got a handle to hold onto that incorporates the upper body into the exercise, then a foot anchor that’ll make sure your feet don’t go crazy when you’re performing the row. We’re going to make sure when we get on the machine we have a nice neutral spinal alignment here, and when we go ahead and perform the exercise we’re going to make sure the knees are not hyper-extended in any way. We’re going to keep a nice flex to them, and we’re going to make sure we’re pulling that bar straight to the chest, kind of mid-level there. Looks good. And that’s how you’d use the rowing machine for a cardiovascular exercise.]

[Video: A blurred image of a person doing a crunch on the floor appears]

[Words appear: Abdominal crunch]

[Video: A male student coaches a female participant through how to perform a crunch exercise while lying on a mat in the gym]

[Student speaks: We’ll be looking at how to do an effective abdominal crunch today. As opposed to a traditional abdominal crunch, we’re going to have the feet up on the wall. And this makes sure to protect the lower back pain, and this is also a useful exercise if you do have lower back pain. You won’t experience any of that during the abdominal crunch. We’ll have Cindy start with her hands behind her head here in the supporting position, and she is going to go ahead and do the abdominal crunch, only coming up to about thirty or forty degrees of spinal flexion here. She’s making sure that she’s not going to pull with her hands on her head to ensure that her chin is off of her chest here. And that’s an effective way to do an abdominal crunch.]

[Video: A blurred image of two people working out in the gym appears]

[Words appear: Seated High-Row]

[Video: A female student coaches a female participant through how to perform a seated high-row exercise in the gym]

[Student speaks: So today we’re going to be doing the seated high-row. So before we even get started we want to get the weight set up. So you can pull this weight out and put it at the weight that you feel comfortable with. Perfect. We’re going to start with the back straight and put your feet up on that back board, about shoulder-width apart. Now we’re going to lean forward and grab the handles, and focus on keeping the shoulders down and the elbows up. And you should feel that squeeze right in-between your shoulder blades. Perfect. How does that feel? Alright, and that’s how you do a seated high-row.]

[Video: A blurred image of a person working out in the gym appears]

[Words appear: Lat Pull-Down Machine]

[Video: A female student coaches a female participant through how to perform a lat pull-down on a machine at the gym]

[Student speaks: This is the traditional lat pull-down machine, and we want to make sure everything is set up right and make sure she’s comfortable. So her knees are at ninety degrees, the pads are touching the top of her thighs and the weight is set to where she’s comfortable with. She’s going to reach and grab these handles, making sure her wrists stay neutral, exhaling on the way down and inhaling on the way up, keeping her shoulders down. How does that feel? Great. She should be feeling it right in here. And this is the traditional lat pull-down machine.]

[Video: The Indiana University trident appears.]

[Words appear: Indiana University]

[Words appear: Fulfilling the Promise]

[Music ends]

[End of transcript]

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