Make no mistake, college can be a stressful time. But don’t worry, it’s nothing that a healthy mind and body can’t handle. USC offers an abundance of resources to help its students stay healthy, physically and mentally; I outlined the Health Center in my last post. This post will focus on USC’s student gym and workout facility, the Lyon Center.
The entrance to the Lyon Center, located on the North side of campus.
First of all, the Lyon Center has really convenient hours. On weekdays, it opens at 6am and closes at midnight. On weekends, it opens at 11am and closes at midnight. If you want to go, I promise you’ll be able to find a schedule that works for you. The first floor of the Lyon Center is filled with ellipticals, treadmills for the cardio-centric, and a huge variety of free weights and bench press stations as well as bars for pull ups and other weightless resistance machines. On the first floor you can also find the lockers rooms as well as a rental booth where you can rent anything from rackets to tents. There are also several racquetball (sidenote: racquetball is the most fun racket sport. if you’ve never tried it, you simply must) courts as well as a rock climbing wall.
The second floor is every bit as eclectic. It has a huge gymnasium used for intramural sports like basketball and volleyball. It has a large workout room like the first floor, but it has more cycles, resistance weight machines, and more treadmills, as well as a large floor mat for calesthenics. The second floor even has a room of ping pong tables. And, for the aquatically inclined, students have access to the Macdonald Swimming pool, as well as a viewing deck on the second floor of the Lyon Center to watch USC’s world-class water polo and swimming teams.
Another way USC helps its students stay fit and healthy is by offering a large variety of group exercises and intramural sports at no or little cost to students. For more information on the Lyon Center and USC’s recreational sports, check out the RecSports website.
