SCHS’ athletic physical education class has introduced a new workout program, Volt, to its student athletes. Those students have the opportunity to work out more intensely compared to regular physical education students. The app gives the user specific exercises to do within a certain time span.
Some faculty act as coaches, giving athletes an advantage with their coach. Physical education teacher and varsity softball coach, Julie Kawamoto, believes Volt will give all athletes from all sports conditioning opportunities during the school day.
“It’s for everybody, even if their coach isn’t a teacher on campus. In order to do that, there’s going to be individuals who are in football, or a tennis player who’s in the water, like in Mr. Kendall’s (class),” Kawamoto said. “It’s important to incorporate a program that does incorporate their (student athletes) sport or does deal with their sport, so that’s why I think our program is more suited for all sports rather than just sports specific.”
This year, there are three periods of Athletic PE classes, taught by Adrian James Castillo, Pedro Martinez and Gene Kendall. Castillo believes the accessibility within each class leads to the benefit of having various athletes together.
“I think having it mixed is nice because students get to have the classes offered throughout different periods of the day,” Castillo said. “Whereas if we did the sports-specific class, like just football or just basketball or whatnot, then offering that class to those students becomes much more limiting because all the different schedule parts have to be factored in.”
By allowing student athletes to condition for their season throughout the year, Martinez pointed out, athletes will benefit from Volt since the program is fitted more to their capabilities.
“It should help reduce injuries because if we’re (student athletes) exercising and strengthening our muscles, we will hopefully have less injuries in our sports athletes, so we’re hoping for that,” Martinez said.
Students are only enrolled in Athletic PE if they are on an SCHS sports team. According to Kawamoto, Volt strives to keep students occupied with their assigned workouts throughout the entire year.
“When kids are not in season, they are sitting around just hanging out and not actually working out,” Kawamoto said. “Whereas the program that these guys are going to do for Volt – even if you’re off season – you’re still going to have a workout to do.”
Many students and P.E. teachers pointed out issues within the program’s design of workout durations. Junior varsity football player Gregory Silva criticized the breaks the program gives after a set.
“I found out that I could change all the settings on it, so if I don’t like a workout, I can just switch it out, but it should be easier to change how long the workouts are,” Silva said. “They make you do five reps and then take a 1:30 min break, which I don’t understand.”
Similar to Silva, sophomore varsity girls volleyball player Linnea Martin wants the program to allow students to manually edit the length of the workouts. A block period for athletic classes is 90 minutes, and the workout provided takes a majority of the class time to complete.
“For me, it’s 60 to 75-minute workouts, which are nice, but at the same time, sometimes I want to put in my own workout for conditioning, like doing squats or RDLs or whatever I want to do,” Martin said.
The app gives students a certain amount of repetitions to do per set for an exercise, including a model to show the correct form. Martin appreciates how simple Volt is to use for workouts.
“It gives you little visuals of what you’re supposed to be doing because it just gives us the name of a workout. Like box jumps, do you want us to squat at the bottom, or jump?” Martin said. “It gives you little specific details, which are nice to have every workout.”
Some are hoping the program will be used district wide to incorporate a sport aimed-workout class at other schools. Many P.E. teachers, however, want Volt to be adopted outside of their sports physical education classrooms as well.
Coaches are hoping to see less injuries with better season results as athletes get more conditioning opportunities during the school day.
“Our coaches don’t have to worry about making their kids run or condition, so essentially, the coaches are getting the best and most in-shape athletes that they can,” Castillo said.