Join our Jogging, Please!

By Vic Odarve

How to get the students in shape, stay fit, and have fun? Madonna University has an answer… jogging! Every Monday morning for girls and Tuesday for boys! At 7am, around 5000 students must go out from the hostels and prepare for a 1.0 kilometer run affair. It’s a jogging time! Jogging keeps students always in shape; thus, promotes healthy life, and improves study concentration. It also keeps students stay fit; burning excess fat and enhancing the immune system. It is fun, and promotes camaraderie, as well. Now, join our jogging, please!

Morning Jogging-Madonna University,Africa

Jogging is running at a slow or leisurely pace; thus, increasing physical fitness with less stress on the body than from faster running, or to maintain students always in shape for healthy life.  Virtually all the students can do it. The school, on the other hand, believes that regular exercise enhances the student’s mental well-being along with their physical health. In fact, numerous studies indicate that a student’s achievement and physical fitness are positively related. It also helps to boost self-esteem, relieve depression, and improve concentration. That’s the way the students should be!

About 5000 students jogging

 It also keeps students stay fit; may enhance the immune system. It stimulates the brain to release chemicals which reduce anxiety and create a sense of well-being. The study demonstrated that regular exercise such as jogging brings considerable health gains that emphasized cardiovascular fitness. During jogging, sympathetic nerve fibers increase heart rate. For a 90- kg students running at 9 km/h (5.5 mph),

Manny Pacquiao jogs before fights

approximately 880 calories are burned per hour.

But for some of the students who joined jogging with thousands of their classmates are for fun. After a few minutes of important announcement the game started by stretching exercises evidently to loosen their muscles prior jogging properly. Then the students, with a loud voice chanting jogging along the 1.0 km circuitous paths in an oval university playground,

Bruce Lee jogs to keep his fighting form

offered the visitors a thousand smiling faces; and laughter could be heard along the way. It promotes camaraderie and friendship.

Today, jogging is established as both a recreational pursuit and a training tool; it is practiced by boxers and martial artists and similar sports minded individuals to get in shape, stay fit, and have fun. Manny Pacquiao, a Filipino professional boxer,  the first and only eight-division world champion, in which he has won ten world titles, as well as the first to win the lineal championship in four different weight classes, used to jog everyday in a high altitude mountain in Baguio City, Philippines months before the fights. Martial artists Bruce Lee preferred to run every day, rain or shine to maintain his fighting form. He used to run at Big Bear Lake because of the altitude-- it makes it an ideal location to train for any event. Running at high altitudes is one secret to building endurance for any fight.

For the students, jogging, as a physical education course, forms part of their curriculum. But the benefits are keeping the students in shape, stay fit, and have fun. Since physical exercise such as jogging and spiritual health are both important, one need to strike a healthy balance. 1 Timothy 4:8 puts it,” For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all affairs, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come”. So, it is clear that jogging is not only for students. God wants all people from all walks of life to have physical exercise to become physically and spiritually fit. So, join our jogging, please!