Bringing a Facility to Fruition

Troy University in Troy, Alabama, utilized cooperative purchasing to bring its new, 78,000-square-foot Trojan Fitness and Wellness Center to life.

Vision and Layout for the Trojan Fitness and Wellness Center

Life Fitness has been fortunate enough to work with Troy University in Troy, Alabama since 2005. Most recently, we worked with Dr. Shane Tatum, Director of Recreation and Wellness at Troy, to bring his vision of this new facility to fruition.

Tatum’s vision for the Trojan Fitness and Wellness Center was for it to be bright, open, and airy—symbolic of a healthy community. The efficient layout and design create an emotional energy that users and eyes from the outside can recognize as a lively workout space. The high visibility of active spaces combines with community areas and lounges to make the facility welcoming for anyone who wants to utilize these areas for a variety of different purposes. This structure is truly a hub at the entrance of the campus that frames other campus elements such as the baseball and football fields.

Trojan Fitness and Wellness Center Overview

The Life Fitness Family of Brands (including Hammer Strength, Cybex, SCIFIT, and Indoor Cycling Group) outfits the facility with the most functional and durable workout equipment in the market. The first floor offers a strength training area complete with plate-loaded, free weights, and Olympic lifting. The HD Athletic Combo Racks, Signature Plate-Loaded, as well as HD Elite Racks, and dumbbells and plates make this floor perfect for those that emphasize the “classic” lifting style in their workouts.

The cycle room offers ICG IC5 Bikes that feature Coach by Color and ICG Connect to provide a digital cycling experience. The second floor emphasizes cardio with Elevation Series treadmills, ICG bikes, and more. Finally, the third floor takes portions of both the first and second floors to provide equipment that allows exercisers to complete a full workout when the rest of the facility is occupied.

The Future of Campus Recreation

In addition to a tour of The Trojan Fitness and Wellness Center, Dr. Tatum provided his insight on how the fitness world, and specifically campus recreation, is rapidly changing. He understands that it is difficult to attract students to campus rec centers when they are living off-campus. Therefore, offering virtual fitness and wellness programs should be an initiative of the future. Online fitness courses, as well as interactive workout videos, help settle the issue of students being too far from campus recreation centers. New programming and virtual applications, utilized in the gym on different pieces of equipment, offer students a greater incentive to travel to campus facilities. Regarding this virtual aspect, he described Life Fitness as going above and beyond with the HALO Fitness Cloud offering such innovative technology.

Partnership with Life Fitness

Troy University has remained with Life Fitness because of the honesty and customer service that has been provided. Regarding the quality of Life Fitness equipment, Tatum sent out a survey to students and found that the equipment was popular on campus because of the familiarity of Life Fitness equipment from other facilities across the U.S. This confirmed the fact that they were using equipment that was nationally known. Tatum stated, “When we went into the project of outfitting our new rec center, it was a no-brainer who we were going to go with.”

Utilizing Sourcewell to Make the Purchasing Experience Seamless

The purchasing experience that a Sourcewell contract provides from a university perspective excels because the customer knows that the contract is set. With set prices, the customer knows that they are getting a good price and quality equipment. The purchasing process is expedited as the customer is not forced to look at multiple different vendors and gets a much quicker turnaround to receive equipment in their gym.

Added Tatum: “Our purchasing department highly recommends this… it makes it a lot smoother when you are purchasing equipment in bulk.”