Did you decide to go with the quintessential “get in shape” New Year’s Resolution for 2011? If so, we’re here to help you make sure your efforts make it past the two week mark! Purchase your gym membership and start planning your fitness routine for this semester.

Penn State’s four work out facilities are now open for their regular spring semester hours:

• The White Building: Open Monday – Thursday from 6:30am – 12am, open Friday from 6:30am – 1am, open Saturday from 4pm – 1am, and open Sunday from 4pm – 11pm
• Rec Hall: Open Monday – Thursday from 6:30am – 12am, open Friday 6:30am – 10pm, open Saturday and Sunday 10am – 6pm
• The IM Building: open Monday – Friday 11am – 10pm, open Saturday and Sunday 4pm-8pm
• The Fitness Loft in the Natatorium: Open Monday – Friday 7:30am – 9:50pm, open Saturday and Sunday 10am – 8:50pm

Additionally you can choose from a variety of fitness classes in the White Building that are taught by Penn State Fitness Instructors. The most popular classes are always Washboard Abs, Full Body Workout, and Kick-Boxing. For a slower pace try out Yoga and Pilates – but don’t be fooled, these are not easy classes, they are just focused more on muscle toning as opposed to the more intense cardio classes.

For the best results I have a few personal tips and tricks to follow:

• Pick times and classes to go to now and treat them like regular academic classes with mandatory attendance policies. If you have the mentality that your imaginary grade will suffer, you’ll be more likely to attend. In this case, your imaginary grade is your body.
• Find a workout buddy who will encourage you to keep working hard and. If a few of your friends want to all get in the routine of going together, that’s fine; but make sure you have that there’s one person you can count on to go 99.9% of the time.
• Lastly, set realistic long-term and short-term goals for yourself. This way you can measure your progress with the short-term goals while working to achieve the long-term ones. A good example of this would be having a long-term goal of being able to run a marathon; your short term goals could then be related to achieving certain mileage each week.

Best of luck with the beginning of your semester, and remember: “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands, they just don’t.” Bonus points for naming the movie…