By Melissa Danzo, News Correspondent
This past Tuesday, in the shadow of Northeastern’s daunting Marino Center fitness classes, a group of dedicated health buffs gathered at the Speare Hall wiffle ball field for an intense and unique workout.
The group was participating in the Physical Therapy Club’s “Boot Camp,” a series of one-hour workouts the club will be offering free of charge every Tuesday and Friday evenings in honor of National Physical Therapy Month.
The workout started off predictably, with students lunging across the pitch to the beats of Jay-Z and Kanye West while donning large sweatshirts in response to the frigid New England wind, as personal trainer and second year physical therapy major Matt Fothergill directed them through the workout.
But within the hour, the chosen exercises took an unconventional turn.
Instead of push-ups and crunches, which are usually expected from a typical “boot camp” workout, students began to lunge through a series of strenuous angles, crab walks and crawls across the field. Unlike some workouts found in Marino, these different exercises all make up what Forthergill refers to as “sports performance” training.
“When people think ‘boot camp’ they think drenched in sweat, intense cardio workouts,” said Fothergill, who prefers to get his cardio through sport rather than strict cardio training. But this boot camp shows students that there are alternatives.
Fothergill emphasized the importance of exercise for health rather than aesthetic reasons, referring to the mindset of most Americans who stress over workouts to look good rather than feel good.
He said he feels that his workouts are designed to be an equal combination of muscle strengthening for injury prevention as well as rehabilitation for already formed injuries. Though he made sure to state he does not specifically treat symptoms with his exercises, he believes workouts such as these will help the body treat itself.
It is these personal injuries that cause so many to flock to the field of physical therapy in the first place. Fothergill suffered multiple injuries during his freshman and sophomore years of high school, worsened by the fact that he felt his physical therapists treated his symptoms but not the overall problem.
Meghan Johnson, a fifth-year physical therapy major and co-creator of the Physical Therapy Club’s outdoor Boot Camp workouts, entered the field in a similar manner. Athletics in high school resulted in years of knee problems that she still suffers from today.
Beyond a desire to heal injuries, it is a desire to help and care for people that attract these students to the field of physical therapy, Johnson said.
The boot camp is designed to give students the feel of a focused workout without the large costs and big groups of a normal fitness class or physical therapy session.
“Physical therapy is so personal,” Fothergill said. “It’s all about changing a lifestyle through your relationship with patients.”
Individual attention and care seemed to be a central goal of the session. Through his class, Fothergill trains participants in how their bodies work, along with offering that extra encouragement one cannot always get when working out alone.
Halfway through Tuesday’s workout, a representative of 5-hour Energy shots appeared bearing free samples of the drink for participants of the workout, adding swag to the list of reasons to work out with the PT Club.
The Physical Therapy Club’s free boot camps are provided for students every Tuesday and Friday from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Speare wiffle ball field, through the remainder of October.
