By Daniel Anderson
SAIT’s campus centre was torn down to make room for a proposed new building, meaning many of the facilities services have been temporarily relocated.
The gym, alongside the basketball court, has been moved to a tent behind the east hall residence. Classes that had to use the activity centre now use the temporary wellness centre.
Eric Poupart is a first year SAIT student studying to be a paramedic. He uses the wellness centre for both working out and for his classes. We interviewed him about his thoughts on the wellness centre.
Daniel Anderson: “you mentioned your next class is on the basketball court?”
Eric Poupart: “Yeah. So my next class is our fitness and wellness class for the paramedics course and pretty much the way it works is our class is so big they split into two. So the first class uses the gym in the morning they do like a workout Dodge ball basketball whatnot and then the other half the classes in the classroom working on projects but I've already finished all mine so we've got to deal with my teacher if I finish my projects then I can work out in the morning too.”
DA: “What do you think of the gym?”
EP: “When I started off I was gonna be a lot bigger not knowing that the basketball court took up like 80% of the dome so I was pretty excited and then I'd gotten in there and realised how small it was so it was a little underwhelmed not gonna lie. So I come in the morning, it's less busy, if you come on lunch or after school it's pretty much like a zoo and then you can't get anything done.”
DA: “How long have you been working out for?”
EP: Consistently? About a year and a1/2, 2 years.
DA: “What got you started into it?”
EP: “I just want to have better physique be kind of happy with the way I look but also gain that strength for my future career”
DA: “What are you planning for your future career?”
EP: It’s 50/50 right now but I'm studying to be a paramedic so being able to Lift heavy patients stuff like that and then I want to switch over into firefighting so being able to lift people out of buildings and carry people on just have to strength to maintain.”
DA: “So how does this gym compared to others you might have used?”
EP: “I used to go to good life fitness and I'd say it's nowhere near good life so with my other gym: every workout that you wanted to do there was a machine specific for it so if you want to do chest there's a chest machine, if you want to do lats there's everything. where here you're coming Taylor equipment your workout you have with to the fit those specific needs so rather than having one piece of equipment for 1 workout you just kind of have to figure out how to use dumbbells to receive those same results.”
DA: “OK and final question, what do you think could make a good workout area?”
EP: “More equipment or maybe some music playing in the gym as we're working out like other gyms do and yeah just more equipment honestly.”
