One of the best things available to students at McDaniel? Gill. Gill is our lovely gym on campus (we probably have the Ravens to thank for that when they trained here), beautifully new and up-to-date. Best of all: it’s free!!
Now that I’m a senior, I’ve been realizing that this whole having a gym twenty feet out my door that is free will not last in life…time to actually take advantage of it! Our gym is divided into a few main parts: Old Gill, which is essentially a large gymnasium that is a basketball court, used for indoor soccer matches (groups of friends) and anything else we feel like. It can be reserved for something in particular, such as Ultimate Frisbee practice, or you can just walk it and hope it’s free. Then there is New Gill, the nice shiny wood-floored gymnasium where all the actually basketball games, volleyball games and such take place with the bleachers- you can also reserve certain courts in New Gill to play at.
And last, but certainly not least, is the actual I’m-going-to-go-workout gym. Enter through the glass doors and get your student ID card swiped and it’s all yours. The ground floor is the weight room area with all the machines you could possibly want to lift weights with and you typical dumbbells, barbells and free weights in the following room. Up the modern glass stair case and you come to the cardio floor full of treadmills, bikes, ellipticals and these intense stair-stepping things (I genuinely have no idea what they’re called but it’s kind of like running bleachers and being able to control the height of the steps and their resistance). There are also several TVs that you can change the channel on to watch a show or a game while working out which is really nice, as well as lockers to put your stuff in. On the second floor is also a nice area for stretching, as well as mats to do floor exercises like crunches on, exercise and medicine balls and more free weights. All in all, pretty much everything you could ask for in a gym!
This being my last semester, I have really been taking advantage of the gym for once, and can now appreciate it a lot more for being able to do whatever sort of combined workout you want- cardio plus abs and lifting, why not? The gym is also a great space to meet up with friends to work out together and spur each other on, just watch out for the busy waves of people that tend to come between 3pm and 4:30pm!
Enjoy your workout! If you’re looking for some swimming to exercise though, don’t be confused… the pool is quite naturally not in the gym but under the dinning hall.
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