There was once a time where exercise wasn’t a punishment or something to check off a to-do list. When we all sat in class, watching the clock as it ticked at half the speed we felt it should while we counted down the minutes, the seconds, until recess. The second the clock struck that time, we raced out to the playground. We didn’t Strava our run to the four-square court, we didn’t track the calories we burned on the monkey bars. When cardio meant cartwheels and working out was synonymous with “playing.”
Have you ever gotten out of class, finished a meal or woken up and thought to yourself, “Ugh, now I have to go to the gym.” The thought of the mundane up-and-down movement of the weights or the slow ticking of the time on the treadmill screen as you run in place like a hamster on the wheel sounds just as dull and stress-inducing as the pile of homework sitting at your desk at home. With the load of exams and internships on our shoulders, who really wants to shoulder press added weight?
However, I never considered that there may be another option. UCLA’s open gym recreation hours offer something to college students many of us left in elementary school — movement for the sake of it. Where students can trade treadmills for trampolines and rediscover the joy of exercise.
When I walked to John Wooden Center to try out open recreation gymnastics, I didn’t drag my feet the way I had on this same walk to the gym many times before. For the first time in a long time, I felt like that little kid running to the playground again, excited for this new experience — excited to exercise.
When I walked in, my eyes lit up upon seeing a trampoline track, spring floors, balance beams, a vault, foam pit and uneven bars. The chalky smell filled the air and the sound of people bouncing off the spring floors transported me back to the gymnastic classes I took as a child. However, this time was different. There were no coaches yelling at me to start warming up, no pressure to get anything right, just other college students there for the same reason as me: to move.
Before I made my way onto the spring floor a student working at the center handed me a safety waiver to sign and requested that I complete a simple task upon entry: a back bend kickover. The requirement wasn’t fixed, she explained. It depended on what students planned on doing once they entered the gym. Those attempting more advanced skills were expected to demonstrate a higher level of control, while others could complete something more basic. The responsibility of safety is on individuals to keep themselves safe. The trust is in the students to know their own limits because now we are our own coaches. We are the adults.
When I stepped onto the spring floors, any stress I had melted away and in that moment, the whole world was in that room. It didn’t matter to me if my toes were pointed as I did my cartwheels or if I stuck my landings as I flipped down the trampoline track. What mattered was the feeling as my body left the ground, and the smile on my face when my feet reconnected with the floor.
As college students, almost everything we do has a metric. Everything comes down to calculated and measured productivity. The grades we receive on tests, our GPA’s rising or falling every quarter, the constant stream of LinkedIn posts of summer internships. Exercise, for many, has become another item on the never-ending checklist, measured by calories burned, weights lifted and miles run. However, during my time at open gym, those metrics disappeared. There was no way to measure this experience except for the lost and forgotten metric that used to matter most: fun.
So, if I can offer one piece of advice: take a trip to open recreation gymnastics at John Wooden Center on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays to rediscover the lost metric of fun. Maybe even hit a PR. No, you can’t Strava it, post it on LinkedIn or put it on your resume but you can enjoy it.
