Some of the students at UNC Wilmington are better qualified to get you in shape than you might think.

UNCW’s personal training and group fitness programs, which take place in the Student Recreation Center, have helped thousands of students get fit and learn how to stay that way for a fraction of the cost that you would normally pay at any other public gym.

“Hopefully, they (students) learn how to have fun with exercise, meet new people and learn habits to help them stay healthy for life,” said Michele Martin, the Assistant Director of Campus Recreation who has also been in charge of hiring instructors and overseeing the fitness programs since 2009.

The programs and training sessions are designed for students and taught by students. All of the fitness instructors and personal trainers that work for UNCW are nationally certified with CPR, First Aid and AED certification, as well.

Currently, there are 12 fitness instructors and four personal trainers on staff. All of them are required to go through intense training before they are hired and given clients to work with on a day-to-day basis. After they are hired, they go through a five-week mentor program to ease them into their own class or client.

“We have a ‘Train to be a Trainer’ course and a fitness instructor training course that we do each spring to recruit from,” said Martin. “These courses are designed to prepare students for a national personal training or group fitness certification.”

The personal training and fitness programs have been available to UNCW students since 2001 but have really flourished in the past two years. The personal training program has grown 25 percent in the last two semesters and last year UNCW had over 18,000 participants for the year in group exercise classes, which was a new record for the program.

When they are with clients, personal trainers are responsible for giving the client their full attention and making sure they are safe during the workout. Each training session is one hour long and that includes a warm-up, workout period, cool down and stretching.

“Students have a great opportunity by getting a personal trainer here at UNCW, because we have fully certified, knowledgeable, and effective personal trainers and the cost of sessions at UNCW are a fraction of what they would be at any other gym,” said James Cook, a personal trainer for UNCW.

Students who are interested in getting personal training must first fill out a detailed application, which helps identify their goals and make sure they are a good candidate for the program. Then the student must turn the application into the main office at the Recreation Center and purchase however many sessions they would like. They are sold in increments of four.

Personal trainers usually work with five to eight clients in a given semester, with some of them being long-term clients who train with the personal trainer for more than one semester.

Once a client is approved for the program, their assigned personal trainer meets with them, determines their physical fitness through a fitness assessment and then they customize a workout based on the client’s needs and goals. Once the client has finished the training period, the personal trainer conducts a post-fitness assessment to measure the improvements the client has made. The initial fitness assessment and post-fitness assessment are included in the session package purchased by each client.

Teaching styles vary from trainer to trainer and the way they motivate their clients depends entirely on the personality and physicality of the person they are training.

“Because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all method of training, how I motivate a client depends greatly on their personality and goals. With some clients I can simply say, ‘go all out’ and they will; others require more convincing,” said Colton Tessener, senior personal trainer and student manager of the department. “My style of teaching is based on my opinion that the goal of training should always be to help the client reach exercise independence…to achieve this, I always tell the client why something is done rather than just how it is done and educate them, to a reasonable extent, on new developments in the field of exercise science.”

Cook has a slightly more aggressive stance on how hard he chooses to push his clients during training sessions.

“I try to push my clients to their limit. Improvements in physical fitness come with hard work, so I try to make my clients work as hard as possible so they can achieve the results they want,” said Cook. “I preach hard work. Nothing happens without hard work. Therefore, I try to get my clients to push themselves to their limit each session.”

Tessener also works for O2 Fitness as a personal trainer and he described the deal students get at UNCW as an “absolute bargain.” He explained that he offered the same service level at O2 Fitness as he did at the Rec Center, but the price was $60 per session at O2 Fitness compared to $15 per session at UNCW.

Many students aren’t even aware that personal training and fitness classes are available at UNCW. Those that do know, oftentimes judge the program to be a step down from off-campus gyms such as O2 Fitness or Gold’s Gym. However, personal trainers at UNCW, such as Tessener and Cook, are working to change the image people have in their minds when they think of a university fitness program.

“I think that because of our low cost, our services are often presumed to be of lesser quality than off-campus gyms, but I’d argue that our trainers are equal or better,” said Tessener. “Our trainers also undergo evaluations every semester from myself and their clients to ensure the highest possible quality is being offered.”