Wang YMCA's Strength & Conditioning Program

One big aspect of this past week that was extremely exciting for myself was getting the approval of my supervisor at the YMCA for a new program that I hope to get started in the coming weeks. My very last gym class of the days runs from 130-230pm and consists of a number of 11th and 12th graders. Having been with them for a couple days I’ve noticed that they prefer to work out rather than shoot a basketball or play kickball. Many of the kids participate in after school athletics such as volleyball and wrestling and use their time in gym class to train for these sports. I’ve also noticed that the weight room seems to get packed full of high school aged teens immediately following their release from school. In an effort to appeal both to the YMCA and to these kids, I have developed a new program that will serve as a Strength & Conditioning club that will lift and run together three days a week from 3-5pm. I hope to work in collaboration with Northeastern athletics’ Strength & Conditioning department in developing a curriculum and learning how to best approach the situation. I have noticed how much these kids want to lift and work out but do not have the proper knowledge and utilize very old equipment. I hope to work with them and tailor individualized workouts for each of them to further help them with their lifting techniques. After getting approval, I distributed a bunch of flyers and signup sheets in order to gather the interest of those kids in the weight room. Hopefully I can solidify a set number of kids and get the program off the ground sooner than later. I’m eager to see the response from kids, if they don’t sign up then I will have to be more active in recruiting, time will tell.