By Amanda Hoover, deputy news editor

While many students flock to Marino to get in a workout, a new club is bringing students to sites around campus and the city to sweat it out.

In November, senior communication studies major Sarah Gaines founded Fit NU, a fitness club open to all Northeastern students. The group is the first collegiate chapter of Fit University, a blog Gaines started in 2013 that focuses on maintaining a healthy lifestyle on a college campus.

“My thing is that I want it to be the largest community of fit and healthy students at Northeastern,” Gaines, 21, said.

Gaines began her blog as a sophomore at Northeastern, featuring workout routines, healthy recipes and tips on staying motivated. While catering to her online community, Gaines also wanted to foster a group on campus that could meet and put healthy ideals into practice together.

She first tried to connect to campus by contacting the New Student Orientation Office, hoping to create a brochure of healthy meals that freshmen could prepare in their dorm rooms. The office told her that they could not accept student submissions to orientation materials, so she came back to the idea of starting a group committed to student fitness. In November, Fit NU received university recognition and became a student club.

“It’s Fit NU, but my actual goal is to, or my long-term goal is for there to be a Fit BU, UCLA, FSU – to have all these fitness clubs all around the country because the blog is called Fit University, but I’m really trying to turn it into an actual business,” Gaines said.

Since November, Fit NU has participated in a Turkey Trot 5k, hosted yoga workouts in the Sacred Space and pop-up workouts around campus. They have also held a workshop on sustainable goal-making, encouraging members to make health-related New Year’s resolutions and work as a group to maintain their goals.

“We just really want to encourage anything that’s fit and healthy and have fun with it,” Gaines said. “So many people are so intimidated to go to group fitness. We want everyone to be comfortable.”

In the coming months, Fit NU plans to move beyond campus and begin hosting workouts around the city in fitness studios. Gaines has planned a workshop before Valentine’s Day to discuss healthy alternatives to candies, a Tough Mudder run in June and follow-up workshops to evaluate and maintain the New Year’s resolutions made by members. The focus will remain on having fun and supporting each other as a group.

“It was the first club I saw at the activity fair geared toward getting fit together that wasn’t a sports club,” Roisin Floyd, a freshman bio-engineering major, said. Floyd was interested in group fitness and liked the easy-going atmosphere provided by Fit NU, she said.

Gaines, along with her executive board and instructors are focused on creating workouts that cater to all fitness levels.

“I actually came to Northeastern kind of wanting to do something like this – even thinking about starting a club – so just finding something that was like exactly what I wanted,” Savannah Ng, a freshman pharmacy major and coach who designs and leads the group’s workouts, said.

Ng adapts her own workouts to address different levels of fitness. She also considers ways to train without using equipment, as the group often meets in classrooms and other spots on campus rather than in a gym. She hopes to take the group out to locations around the city to learn new techniques and styles.

“Everybody doesn’t know exactly what’s out there. If they want to try spinning and don’t know what it’s really about or something, [it’s important] to get everybody introduced to the different aspects of it so they’re not just thinking ‘oh, this is all there is to fitness,’” Ng, 19, said. “There’s so many other fun things that can get you active.”

While students have the option to participate in group fitness classes at Marino for a flat fee of $50/semester, Gaines said she takes a different approach. Fit NU is free to attend and does not require members to sign up the night before, like students must do when they plan to attend classes at Marino. She also avoids setting a cap on the number of attendees at each workout and tries to eliminate any intimidating factors that keep people away from group fitness classes.

“I think it’s a great institution – fitness in a fun way,” Jimena Navarrete, a freshman international affairs major, said.

Navarrete has been to the gym, but finds attending Fit NU workouts a better way to workout with friends and meet new people.

“That’s the beauty of Fit NU. It’s open to everyone: all fitness levels, guys, girls, all fitness interests,” Gaines said. “We just really want Fit NU to be a place where you can always count on that you’re going to be able to have a good workout and have a strong community of healthy students to work out with and support you.”

Photo by Arzu Martinez