By Eric Renner
170,000 square feet sure is a lot of space for a recreation center. Illinois State University’s Student Fitness Center and McCormick Hall is a 50 million dollar, 170,000 square foot facility that has three levels of endless exercise equipment. While this is an incredible facility for Illinois State students, it can get pretty hectic during certain hours, causing a headache for those looking to work out.
Part of my responsibilities as Facility Manager is to walk around every hour and record how many people are in each area for a maintained building count. I have worked just about every shift during the hours of 5:30am-12:00am on weekdays, and I have a pretty good idea about how many people will be in each area during the day. From my experience, most people come between about 4:00pm-7:00pm. The weight room gets pretty packed during those hours, with endless amount of bros standing around waiting for a bench to open up. I cannot tell you how many times during my lift someone has come up to me and asked, “Hey man, how many more sets do you have left on here?”
There is a solution to this problem, and it’s really quite simple, ladies and gentlemen. Set your alarm, get up, and go work out in the morning. I started working out in the mornings last year, and it really has changed my lifestyle at school. Once you start doing it every morning, it becomes easier and easier. There are about the same amount of people every morning, and you are able to use almost any piece of equipment you want. No waiting, no standing around, just a fast paced workout.
So next time you go to work out in the late afternoon and get there to just stand around waiting, set your alarm two hours before your first class of the day instead. While that buzzing of your alarm may come too soon, just get up, put your feet on the ground and don’t look back, because you’ve got work to do. Go conquer the day and get that workout out of the way!
