The Up and Downs of Kinghorn

Here at ONU, there is an exercise room located within the football stadium reserved for athletes. As of this semester, the dance room has been converted into another exercise room specifically for athletes. Many residential halls have their own respective exercise rooms for residents as well.

So, where does that leave the rest of us?

If you're not an athlete, or a resident of a specific hall, you are given access to Kinghorn, along with other staff and family that work close with ONU, as long as one of the athletic teams doesn't decide that 2 dedicated weight rooms is not enough and refrains from reserving it.

This area is separated into three main areas, the weight room, the cable room, and the field house. The weight room has dumbbells, barbells, and squat racks, with a country music radio station that is impossible to turn off. The cable room has treadmills, ellipticals, bikes, and cable machines, where about a quarter of them are either dysfunctional or at the very least dangerous to use. The field house is a big track where they also hold every single university event, so it's often unusable.

Having access to a gym for free is very nice and completely outweighs every other option I could pursue in Ada, or Lima with potentially nicer equipment. But there are days where the downs do not outweigh the single up. 

On the other hand, some of the best bodybuilders and athletes trained in raggedy gyms, as the quality should not have an impact on the goals and dreams of anyone. Sometimes, I think about the bragging rights I'd have, as well as the feeling I'd feel when I complete my first marathon, knowing that I came from a gym that made me feel as if I smoked a pack a day just from the field house air. The hardships occasionally act as a catalyst for passion. When in an area where discomfort and useful pain is the goal, it's hard to complain about a few thinning cables.