From city to bay with UniSA
by Andrew Lees
At
UniSA we know real life experience is the best way for students to learn
real life skills.
So when an opportunity arose for Professor Kevin Norton’s students to work as personal trainers for people taking part in the City to Bay Fun Run he jumped at the chance for them to put theory into practice.
Six ABC Radio 891 programs have chosen a reasonably unfit listener to represent them in the run on September 18. The ABC is tracking the runners’ progress as they work with UniSA students to get in shape.
With competition between radio programs fierce, and only weeks until the race, our human movement students are cracking the whip to take six sedentary Adelaidians and transform them into asphalt pounding exercise machines.
Prof Norton, however, was confident his students would achieve results.
“We ran something similar last year with a six-week program and got very significant changes in just about everything,“ he said. “You just can’t buy experience like this. The more experience they have as students, the better they will be. They assume a level of responsibility that we shouldn’t underestimate.”
One such student is Mario Maiello, who hopes his experience will help him to help others lead a better life.
“Our society needs exercise,” he said. “Everything for us is packaged and presented – too many people spend a lot of time watching television or playing video games and I want to encourage people to get out there.”
Maiello has been assigned to ABC Radio listener Jenny O’Loughlin, and her goal is simple – to stick at it.
“I hate running full stop, so I need something or someone to motivate me,” O’Loughlin said. “It helps out tremendously to know someone else is relying on you to exercise regularly.”
ABC Radio 891 reporter and competition instigator Tim Noonan was full of praise for Prof Norton and his students.
“The listeners just love the program, I think they like the idea there are regular Adelaide people who are willing to get themselves out there and be open about themselves and honest enough to make an improvement and state what their goals are,” Noonan said.