Another Successful Year for Summer Fitness

Another Clay County Summer Fitness and Nutrition Program (CCSF) is in the books! This year for the first time since its inception, CCSF was funded solely by Manchester Memorial Hospital (MMH), which gave us the opportunity to restructure and reintroduce a program with our participants best health in mind.

Summer Fitness, unofficially dubbed fat camp by participants, is a free 8-week program for people in Clay County aged 16 and up. This program is designed to get Clay countians active through a variety of different physical exercises and provide lessons about health and wellness.

This year, Summer Fitness was held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 5:30 to 6:45 pm at the Clay County Middle School Gym. The first day of class participants were given an initial screening and written test to gauge where they ranked on nutrition and wellness. The screening included body weight, body mass index, and body fat percentage, while the test covered material pertaining to nutrition. Every class after that followed the same structure, which consisted of two sessions

• Nutrition lecture, 5:30 5:45pm
• Exercise session, 5:45 6:45pm

Over the course of the program, CCSF saw 71 unique participants, with an average of 35 per session (sometimes reaching as high as 50). Of the 39 that showed up for the final weigh-in, there were 137 total pounds lost!

It was really great to see a fitness program that increased in popularity as exercises became more difficult, said Randy Craft, Community Outreach Coordinator at MMH. That's how you know you're doing something good for people- when they invite their friends to come sweat and work hard then go home feeling good about their day.

To celebrate program success and the hard work amongst participants, MMH catered a grilled chicken and vegetable dinner after the final weigh-in. Participants in the CCSF program were also given their yoga mats as a parting gift in hopes to inspire them to continue exercising on their own time.

*published in the Manchester Enterprise