College and University recreation facilities can offer different challenges than those of other markets. The student and staff population at a college often includes a wide variety of fitness levels and interests, and while paid memberships are usually less prevalent (or completely non-existent), it is still important for facility managers to do their best in meeting the needs of the school’s fitness community. Precor recently took a look at this problem, and were able to determine 4 major factors that play a large part in determining a top-notch recreation center. Below are those four factors, as well as our personal experience with how they play out in this market.

People have been performing push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups for as long as we can remember, but the recent trend toward “Functional Fitness” has brought bodyweight training back to the forefront of daily workouts everywhere. With this in mind we thought it was a good time to bring attention to a product we consider the king of body weight training, the TRX Suspension Trainer. 

One of the hardest tasks for all fitness managers is deciding how to best program their space to match user demand. However, in this constantly evolving landscape, it is not enough to know what that demand is today but also where it is headed tomorrow. Any new space, brand new or renovated, must be carefully planned out to make the best use of its budget, while maximizing the use of every square foot in meeting changing user demands.

An “interactive” piece of fitness equipment implies there is input from a user that is reciprocated through the machine’s response.  In other words, it’s a two-way street.  Not only will the machine respond to your input, but will reciprocate with input of its own.  Whether it changes the resistance, changes the visual path, or awards you “points” during a game, the machine is changing your experience based on your input. It sounds pretty straight forward, but confusion arises when we try to differentiate between a platform that is interactive and a platform that is strictly reactive.