The University of Minnesota’s physical activity program offers a vast array of courses for all students, aiming to keep students active.
From classes like curling to individual posture and exercise, students can try something new or hone existing skills.
According to the physical activity program webpage, the program collaborates with Intercollegiate Athletics, the Department of Recreational Sports and the University Equine Center to host courses in many University facilities, including Huntington Bank Stadium.
Curling instructor Lionel Locke said his class is held at the Frogtown Curling Club in St. Paul, the closest curling arena to the University.
At a curling club, Locke said the ice needs to be very flat and must have more texture than ice in a hockey rink, which is why the class is held at a curling arena rather than a hockey rink.
“It’s a very precise game,” Locke said. “Ice conditions change based on the humidity of the arena, the temperature of the ice, the temperature of the inside air, whether or not it’s drafty and how many players are curling at the same time. All that has an effect on ice conditions, which affect each individual curling shot.”
This curling class is mainly for beginners, Locke said. In the class, students learn the rules of the game, the history of the sport and how to play.
For part of their final grade, students will play a game of curling at the end of the course against a group of more experienced curlers, Locke said.
“That’s a good test for me as an instructor to see how well I have taught the students and how well they’ve learned in order to play an actual competitive game against someone who already played for five years or even more,” Locke said.
Locke started curling when he was eight and has stuck with the sport ever since. In addition to teaching at the University, he also teaches individual and group lessons at a couple of other curling clubs in the Twin Cities area.
“It’s a lifetime sport for me,” Locke said. “I’ve been a competitor my whole life, and I think I’m just giving back to the curling community, what I’ve learned and about the game as a curling instructor.”
The University also offers individual posture and exercise as a physical education class, which covers various exercise modalities students can do on their own, instructor Amanda Frayeh said.
Those modalities include yoga, pilates, resistance training and high intensity interval training.
“The idea is that all of these different exercise modalities help to develop body awareness,” Frayeh said. “We also talk about how these activities can help with stress management and overall just being more physically grounded and mentally clear.”
Frayeh was asked to develop the class in an online format and has been teaching it that way ever since, she said.
“Because this online format was so popular, we’ve just kept it and it seems like it’s really meeting a need,” Frayeh said. “So it’s just a great way that they can try out a new activity, and they can do the comfort of their dorm room, and not have to worry about other people judging them.”
Each week, the class does two exercise sessions, a goal-setting assignment and a weekly exercise schedule that students plan themselves.
Overall, Frayeh hopes this class can be a stress reliever for students.
“Students have so much stress and so many things that they’re juggling,” Frayeh said. “I think this helps them just carve out time to breathe and just take a little bit of a mental break from those things and be more mindful of their bodies.
