The UBCO Student Guide to Getting Fit in Kelowna on No Money and Less Time

Every September a new batch of students arrives at UBC Okanagan, most of them living on campus or in Glenmore or Rutland, most of them with a bus pass, a budget, and good intentions. By November the good intentions have met midterms. This is the guide I wish someone had handed me at 19.

The gym is already paid for

If you’re a UBCO student, your fees include access to the Hangar Fitness and Wellness Centre on campus. It’s a decent gym: enough racks, a turf area, cardio machines, and drop-in fitness classes. You’re paying for it whether you use it or not. Go at 7 a.m. or after 8 p.m. and you’ll have the place mostly to yourself. Between 4 and 7 it’s a queue.

That means you do not need a commercial gym membership. If you want one anyway, the big chains in Kelowna run student rates; ask, because they don’t always advertise them.

A plan that survives a semester

Three sessions a week. Full body each time. Forty-five minutes including the walk from residence. Anything more ambitious than this will collapse in week eight.

• Session A: squat pattern, push, pull, carry. Goblet squats, push-ups or bench, dumbbell rows, farmer carries.
• Session B: hinge pattern, push, pull, core. Romanian deadlifts, overhead press, lat pulldowns, planks.
• Session C: whatever you missed, plus 20 minutes of cardio.

Write down what you lift. Add a little each week. That’s the entire secret; there is no other one.

Outside the gym

Campus sits on a hill above the city and there’s good running from the door. The Okanagan Rail Trail trailhead near the airport is a short ride away and gives you 50 flat kilometres if you want them. Knox Mountain is a bus ride downtown and the best hill workout in the city. In winter, the Big White shuttle runs from Kelowna and student lift passes are far cheaper than adult ones.

Eating on a budget in Kelowna

Protein is the thing students under-eat and it’s the thing that makes training work. Cheap sources: eggs, canned tuna, Greek yogurt, frozen chicken thighs, lentils, cottage cheese. The Superstore and Costco on the Highway 97 corridor are the cheapest bulk options; the Kelowna Farmers’ Market on Saturdays is good for produce in season and often cheaper than you’d guess in August and September when everything is coming in.

A simple target: a palm-sized portion of protein at every meal. That’s it. No powders required, though a tub of whey is cheap per serving and easier than another chicken breast.

Sleep is training

You already know this. I’ll say it anyway: five hours of sleep and a perfect program beats eight hours and no program on exactly zero days. Exam season is when people stop training and stop sleeping simultaneously. Keep two short sessions a week going during exams. Twenty minutes. It helps the studying more than another twenty minutes of studying does.

The social part

Intramurals on campus are free or nearly free and they’re the easiest way to make training something you look forward to. Kelowna also has a run club scene downtown that doesn’t care how fast you are, and climbing gyms that are a surprisingly good social scene if the bar scene isn’t yours.

The first-year weight

It’s real, it’s common, and it is mostly not about the gym. It’s about sleep going to pieces, meals becoming whatever is open at 11 p.m., and alcohol becoming a several-nights-a-week thing. You don’t need a diet. You need a bedtime most nights, one proper meal a day that you actually cook, and a rule about which nights are drinking nights. Three sessions a week in the Hangar on top of that will do more than any supplement anyone in residence recommends.

Injuries

If something hurts for more than two weeks, use the campus health clinic. Student health plans usually include some physiotherapy and it’s much cheaper to see someone at 20 than to be still managing the same knee at 35.

When you go home for the summer

Take the plan with you. Three sessions, full body, add a little each week. It works in any gym in any city. Come back in September stronger than you left.

If you want help

I offer a student rate on every program. Email from your UBC address. The reason is simple: the habits you build at 20 are the ones you’ll still have at 50, and I’d rather they were good ones.

Five hours of sleep and a perfect program beats eight hours and no program on exactly zero days.