The Department of Southern Miss Campus Recreation announced the opening of the new F45 Training Studio located in the Hattiesburg campus’s Payne Center. The program, mixing circuit training with HIIT (high-intensity interval training) exercises allows users to work on strength and muscle training.
“Right now, we have three classes a day [and] we could have them every hour on the hour,” Mark Crager, Director of Campus Recreation, said. “We have the ability to expand[,] so it won’t take anything away from students by allowing the community to do it.”
Each F45 group class is 45 minutes long. Currently, classes are offered at 6:30 a.m., at 12:15 p.m. and at 5:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. A class is also offered at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday and at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday.
Chancee Davis, the Graduate Assistant of Marketing, said she loves F45.
“I was actually really scared at first because I knew it was kind of like crossfit, but it was really easy to follow [and] the trainers were awesome,” she said. “I burn 500 [to] 600 calories every time I go[,] so I’m addicted to it.”
Davis, who has gone to the program since it started, said she’s since noticed a difference in her strength and has lost five pounds.
“Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are our cardio conditioning days and Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays are the resistance training,” Davis said. “It’s really easy because of how organized it is and they modify [F45] to how you like it.”
F45 is COVID-19 friendly, offering socially-distanced stations during all available sessions. Participants use individually sanitized workout equipment to promote a germ-free environment, and the classes have been modified in accordance to social distancing guidelines.
“Normally a class would hold 27 people[,] [but] right now we are down to nine [people],” Crager said. “Each [person] has an assigned box so the center of each box is over ten feet from the other person.”
Each class, there is specific equipment assigned to one person. The equipment will be set up near a person’s box before class begins. Crager said the only thing they ask each person to do after their F45 class is to clean their equipment.
“We’ve had a few of our patrons who were afraid to come back [to the Payne] and work out in general because of COVID,” Crager said. “They have come back and have now signed up [for F45] because they feel safe in that type of environment.”
F45’s membership is separate from the Payne Center. A membership for Southern Miss students is $40 per month and $50 per month for members of the Hattiesburg community. A payroll deduction option is also available for Southern Miss faculty and staff. Crager mentioned that allowing the community to take part in F45 now will benefit students in the future by keeping the cost down.
For more information about F45, students and community members can go to https://www.usm.edu/campus-recreation/f45.
