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Activate your brain to activate your body

Mercedes Quinteros

Southern has been trying to find new ways to help motivate students to be healthy and workout. With the Hulsey Wellness Center, many students feel welcome to fulfill their wellness goals. Yet, some find it intimidating to set foot in a gym with weights and tons of machines. How can students who feel this way easily engage in fitness?

The answer comes in an unconventional program called Activate Southern, which was previously called Wellness Weekly in its first semester. Rodney Bussey, professor at the School of P.E. Health and Wellness, started the program to engage students with health and wellness. It is now run by co-directors Kye Hache and Michael Specht, two junior corporate/community wellness management majors. Activate Southern’s mission statement includes “creating a Christ-centered culture of inclusion through the medium of health and wellness.”

The program engages students in different challenges that they can complete in order to be entered to win prizes. This month, the challenge for students has been the plank challenge. Students can plank whenever they’d like, take a video and then post it on their Instagram account. In order to enter, students must tag their friends and @activatesouthern. This challenge ended on Jan. 28 and the winner will be announced shortly after. The winner will receive an Apple Watch Series 4.

These challenges are not just about the prizes that they include.

“The main reason for these challenges is so that we can find a common ground in the community,” Hache said.

Activate Southern allows all students, athletic or not, to feel welcome through their wellness journey by having fun. It is a movement on Southern’s campus to change its culture with wellness and connection. How will you activate your brain to activate your body?

“These challenges are not supposed to be super athletic,” said Specht. “They are supposed to help build a sense of community by making connections.”

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