Fitness center gets a face-lift

Donaven+Spencer+using++the+Cybex+machine+in+DVC+Fitness+Center+on+Thursday%2C+Oct.+8

Fidel Ontiveros

Donaven Spencer using the Cybex machine in DVC Fitness Center on Thursday, Oct. 8

Austin Lemak, Staff member

The DVC fitness center is in dire need of help. The center is outdated and doesn’t have everything a top of the line gym should have. With the changes being made it has a lot of potential to be that top of the line gym.

This past summer Diablo Valley College passed a grant for new equipment in the campus fitness center. As well as having outdated weights, the fitness center does not provide the equipment found in a standard gym.

The updated fitness center will be complete when students return to school for the spring semester. The center would have been completed when the grant was passed in the summer, but the district postponed moving in the updated equipment due to painting and cleaning the fitness center over winter break.

Shelly Pierson, a professor of Kinesiology at DVC, is the one that made the new fitness center possible. Pierson wrote the $58,000 grant presented to the school for the updated equipment. 

Pierson is the program director of the Fitness Instruction/Personal Training Degree/Certificate program. Pierson said,”I want to have the most up to date equipment for my interns so that when they apply and move on from DVC they know how to use all kinds of updated equipment.”

The new and improved fitness center will have brand new hand weights featuring a custom DVC fitness logo. The outdated equipment will be replaced by a nine station Hoist Rocket Fitness jungle pulley system. This one machine will do the job of all the outdated machines that are currently in the weight room.

Five new benches are also going in o the fitness center. There are currently limited benches in the center now and only one bench press and incline bench press.

The kinesiology department hopes that this is one of many phases in upgrading the fitness center. The goal is to make DVC’s gym more like an actual gym with high-tech equipment.

These will not be the only upgrades to the fitness center. There will be more additions to the center as more grants come in. The department plans to add new bumper weights and renovate the currently cracked floors.

The process of getting the grants passed for the new equipment will be long and difficult. As grants are passed we will not have to wait as we have had thus far. Once grants are received we will be able to add to the fitness center piece by piece.