While most of us are still asleep in our warm, "cozy" beds, dreading the incessant sounds of our alarm clocks, Aaron Moak and four or five other people are already up and on the turf, starting off their day with a rigorous boot camp work out.
Moak is a Johns Hopkins Alumnus of the class of 2002. He was once a member of the JHU wrestling team, and a former student of Reserves Officers Training Corps (ROTC). He leads the class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning at the break of dawn, otherwise known as 8 a.m.
Boot camp is a work out that successfully completes the five components of physical fitness: it works on strength, endurance, balance, cardiovascular strength and body composition. It is a high-energy workout that is based on calisthenics and basically your own body weight rather than weight training. That means that you're doing a lot of push-ups, sit-ups, jumping-jacks and sprint drills. It is a good workout for those who want to be in generally excellent shape.
According to Moak, if you want to be a "body builder or a marathon runner, you should not be focusing your daily routine around boot camp." Don't worry everyone, you can trust Moak as your leader in this masochistic class. His knowledge about boot camp and physical health stems from personal experience: the activities he participated in at Hopkins, such as ROTC and Wrestling, his experiences in the army and from materials he has taken the initiative to read.
So, why should you all be going to boot camp? I'm sure you all think that you can get the same if not better work out if you just do your own individual routines. You're wrong. Moak organizes the week so that every Monday they work on their upper body, every Wednesday they work on their abs and every Friday they do either their legs or work on agility.
According to Clarence Lin, a senior at Hopkins who attended some of the classes, it's a great way to "get you up in the morning." Especially, he said, on the Friday jog around campus as they sing the ROTC chants. The difference between the boot camp class and a regular workout, says Lin, is that the boot camp work out goes "all out, rather than a halfhearted effort that quickly dies."
In case you think you'll be bored within a few weeks because you think it will get monotonous, don't fret, Moak makes sure that the work out is different every time. So even if one Friday you work on your abs and the next Friday you work on your abs, you will never be doing the same abdominal routines. Most of the exercises, "involve a partner; you have be motivators for each other," says Lin.
The exercises are done on a time interval and sometimes in a relay format. For example, while one person is sprinting laps for two minutes, the other person is doing as many push ups as possible in the same amount of time. By doing each exercise in a specified interval of time, you get a better workout for your individual body type. By the end of the hour you're heart will always be pumping and you'll be breathing hard.
What makes boot camp especially different from most work out class routines? Moak seems to think it's the "team setting. It's the only work out class that you can do in groups." He notices that people who have never met get out there and urge each other on, as though they were friends. It's the team work that seems to get everyone going and helps everyone finish the class.
So, next time you find yourself up at 7:45 a.m. on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday, and you don't know what to do, step out of your non-working out comfort zone and go visit Moak on the turf. He'll be the blond kid with the jacked body and the friendly smile.
He needs at least two people to have the class, so go round up all the people on your hall, in your house or in your apartment. And if you're worried, don't be: even Lin admits that Moak is not a "drill sergeant ? he's very supportive." Moak will not be here with us next semester, so make sure that you take the class within the next few weeks while you still can.
