Q: How can you organize a citywide
campaign to get healthier?
A: First of all, decide on one mission and
involve everyone you can.
In 2002, the
Mayor’s Fitness Council was developed in
collaboration with ChicagoWorksout,
which is Mayor Richard M. Daley’s initiative
to promote, educate and motivate
healthy lifestyles for Chicagoans of all
ages.
This is a citywide campaign that
many can relate to and recognize.
It is a
shared mission by all Chicago Citywide
agencies, including the Mayor’s Office,
the Chicago Park District, the Mayor’s
Office of Special Events, the Chicago
Department of Public Health, Chicago
Youth and Family Services, the Chicago
Fire Department, and many more notfor-
profit and for-profit health-orientated
organizations.
The Mayor’s Fitness
Council Mission reads: “The Mayor’s
Fitness Council promotes, encourages
and motivates the development of a
physically active and healthy lifestyle for
Chicagoans of all ages. The Mayor of the
City of Chicago appoints all members of
the MFC. The MFC will recruit the support
of individuals, community-based
organizations, corporations and others to
help promote physical activity and a
healthy lifestyle for the people of
Chicago. The council increases awareness
of the importance of exercise and good
health through public appearances and
the distribution of relevant information.
The MFC encourages private and public
agencies to promote physical fitness and
the awareness of the benefits that come
with living a healthy life. It also assists
educational organizations to understand
the importance of physical activity and
good health. The MFC strives to help all
Chicagoans to enjoy a physically active
and healthy lifestyle.”
MFC has created
and produced two annual Chicago Moves
Day events to demonstrate there is an
active choice for everyone in Chicago,
whether that may be taking the first steps
to get off the couch or running your first
marathon.
MFC also strives to promote healthier
nutrition choices and teach Chicagoans
the basic equation of energy balance, in
other words to eat better and move more.
The MFC also has done a great job of collecting
basic health assessment questionnaires
and offering health screenings at
their events, to assess which communities
are at risk.
Once more data is collected
the MFC hopes to reach out to these communities
with resources, be it educational,
access to classes, or giving information
about low-cost fitness centers, like those
found in the Chicago Park District.
—Colleen Lammel-Harmon is Fitness
Senior Program Specialist and Co-Chair of
the Mayor’s Fitness Council for the Chicago
Park District. Colleen is scheduled to give
related presentations at Parks & Rec
Business LIVE! at Deer Creek State Park,
near Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 19-20.
Q: How do you attract seniors to your fitness
classes?
A: Keep it simple, social, consistent, and
most of all, fun!
Offer a non-competitive class that
also offers a challenge to active seniors. A good senior class should have music from
an era the seniors can recognize. Utilizing
resistance bands can reap the benefits of
minimizing osteoporosis and increasing
bone mass without heavy and cumbersome
weights.
Keeping up with the
trends, such as Pilates and yoga, is a fun
way to mix beginners and seniors into
one class. The low-impact, basic-to-follow
scheme is perfect for a beginner level
and senior participant.
Encourage instructors to teach seniors
on a very personal level and remain open
for feedback, which will make or break a
class.
Many seniors like a challenge.
However, the instructor needs to use
active listening before increasing the
choreography and intensity.
—Colleen Lammel-Harmon
Q: How do you stress the importance of
maintaining fitness center equipment to
unmotivated staff?
A: Educate them first on the importance
of the fitness equipment and get them
involved in trainings. This should be
based on both how to use the equipment
correctly, and methods to get them
involved in their own health using these
machines.
Possibly host an employee fitness
day. Make it easy to keep duties routine,
create incentives, develop daily
cleaning logs, and have random spot
checks.
—Colleen Lammel-Harmon
Q: Can you have kids’ fitness classes
that are not marked as an “exercise
class”, which may turn kids off?
A: Introduce non-traditional fitness
opportunities. These can include Fitness
Inflatables, ranging from Jumping Jacks
to Blow- up Obstacle Courses, Fitness
Arcade style pieces like Dance Dance
Revolution, Game Bikes, and other interactive
video style games.
Some fun classes
to implement should focus on engaging
children’s interest, as well as their
heart rates.
These may include sport specific
drill games (like drills and skills),
dance orientated (like music and movement)
or even a circuit style class using
fun fitness tools where children move
from cardiovascular stations to resistance
stations when a whistle blows or music
starts.
Other classes that have worked
well are kids’-based yoga or animal-shape
yoga poses.
—Colleen Lammel-Harmon
Q: Some of the adult softball players in
our leagues drink beer after the game in
our parking lots. This is against department
rules and the litter left behind is a
problem. Short of intervention by law
enforcement does anyone have any
other ideas?
A: We had this problem too. We have
changed policy and now allow players to
drink beer in controlled and secured
areas after games.
A special permit is
issued to each team wishing to socialize
in this manner. The permit is issued at a
cost to the teams that covers administrative
overhead, a refundable damage
deposit, opportunity costs, and the cost
of an onsite security person to help keep
order and enforce other park rules.
It is
quite popular with some of our adult
teams while generating additional revenue
for the programs.
—William Potter is the parks and
recreation division manager for Orange
County Parks, Florida. He can be reached at
William.Potter@ocfl.net. Bill is scheduled to
give presentations on park and facility design
and trails and wetlands at Parks & Rec
Business LIVE! at Deer Creek State Park,
near Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 19-20.
Q: How has recreation programming
changed in your community during the
past several years?
A: We serve a community of 25,000 residents
as the city’s Parks, Recreation &
Forestry Department. We compete with
the local YMCA (who will break ground
soon on a new $4 million facility), the
state’s largest private health/fitness club
(who added a $3 million outdoor water
park in 2004), and local associations representing
Little League, hockey and soccer.
Our department also runs an outdoor
family aquatic center (required to break
even operationally) and several other
sports-related programs in baseball, softball
and basketball.
As you can see there
are a lot of choices with some overlapping
of programs.
As a result, our department
has chosen to offer a very highly
respected swimming lesson program that
has set records each of the past three
years for registration and a greatly
revamped recreation program, centered
on enrichment-type activities.
We have
found great success with our enrichment
programs. Although we still offer traditional
programs, including limited youth
sport programs and a large adult softball
program (over 1,000 players) we are
emphasizing this new direction.
Similar
to the swim lessons, we have set records
for both registration and revenues the
past three years for the enrichmentprograms.
Programs we offer now
include drama, Spanish, science, parent/
child classes, craft classes (a really big
hit), themed programs such as Hallowiener,
which includes games, craft and a
snack, music classes and Thursday afternoon
early release programs that include
entertainers and performers.
Names of
some classes are Rock Hounds, Magic
School Bus, Junk Box Wars, Ooey Gooey
Day and SuperKids.
Programs serve the
age range of 2-12 along with parents.
Another change we are seeing are parents
attending, both moms and dads.
There is
a fairly strong desire to offer more programs
during the time period of 4-7 p.m.
so adults can see their kids participate.
Going to the enrichment program concept
has benefited our city, its residents
and our department greatly. The positive
response by the community has solidified
our department’s role in the programming
area of citizens’ needs.
Additional
information on our enrichment programs
and swimming lessons can be obtained
from our Recreation/Aquatics Supervisor,
Sherry Herwig, sherwig@cityof
sunprairie.com.
—Robert M. Holling is the Director of
Parks, Recreation & Forestry for the City of
Sun Prairie, Wis. For further questions, Bob
can be reached at rholling@cityofsunprairie.
com. Bob will be giving presentations
on parks and playgrounds at Parks & Rec
Business LIVE! at Deer Creek State Park,
near Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 19-20.
Q: How do you attract teens to your
youth programs?
A: Attracting teens to our youth programs
has been a challenge, but we have found
that teens will participate if they play an
important role in the coordination, implementation,
advertising, or volunteering for
the actual event.
For example, we coordinate
a local event for teens called the In the
Spotlight Teen Talent Show. This event
showcases the various talents of area teens,
and winners are judged and are awarded
prizes in categories such as Best Band, Best
Musical Performance, Best Dance, and so
on.
Teens are used as volunteer judges
during the audition process to decide who
goes on to the actual show.
These teens are
encouraged to help promote the event to
their friends, hence our advertising is
increased via word of mouth to other teens
at local schools and teen hangouts.
Teens
are also solicited to help run the show,
such as backstage hands, performer
check-in, VIP escorts, and other duties as
assigned.
Another popular teen event that
we coordinate is our Back to School Fest,
which is a festival that includes live teen
band performances, food, games, and
other activities.
This year the event highlighted
five local teen bands that have large
teen followers, so to increase our attendance
we asked each band to promote the
event to their friends and followers by distributing
fliers to them at their schools,
hang-outs, the local mall, and to whomever
they could.
This gives the sense of ownership
to the teens and in return helped us
attract more teens to this great teen event.
—Devon Jorden, Recreation Superintendent,
Community Associations of The
Woodlands (Texas), Parks and Recreation
Related posts:
- Senior Health & Fitness Day
- Community Fitness Challenges
- Fitness Cycles
- BCI Burke Adds Fitness Stations
- Seniors Go Wild For Wii
