From Your Health Journal…..”A great story today on Yahoo about those who major in physical eduction or kinesiology. Many years ago, these majors were the butt of jokes on campus and on the workforce, but now, it appears it is a popular choice for many – as some have lucrative positions in the fitness industry, and can always fall back on possibly becoming a PE teacher. Of course, becoming a PE teacher has always been an honorable option. But for kinesiology majors these days, a potentially better-paying and higher-visibility choice is fitness training, a profession so popular that lawyers, dentists and English teachers are ditching those careers to become drill instructors at the gym. I strongly recommend your visiting the Yahoo link provided at the bottom of this page to view the full article.”
From the article…..
Once the Butt of Jokes, College Athletes Who Study Kinesiology Are Landing Plum Jobs
While playing quarterback for William & Mary College, Todd Durkin obtained a degree in health and physical education. In other words, he studied gym.
Don’t laugh. That much-maligned gym degree is one of the hottest sheepskins on campus today, and Durkin helps to illustrate why. After the fizzling of his lifelong dream to play pro football, Durkin used his phys-ed degree to fashion a career in fitness training—a practice that now includes a Pro Bowl-worthy list of NFL clients: Drew Brees, LaDainian Tomlinson and Aaron Rodgers, among others.
“Todd is a great motivator and having played ball he understands exactly what it is you’re training to do,” said the veteran NFL tight end Justin Peelle.
The college sports athlete who studies exercise has long been the butt of jokes and the target for critics who lament the fact that most athletic scholarships are wasted by people who are more interested in making the pros than getting a respectable education.
But increasingly that view underestimates the commercial and academic value of exercise studies. As the population skews older—and in many cases fatter—there’s a growing demand for fitness trainers, physical therapists, pre-med students and scholars who study the science of obesity, movement and performance. As a result, few majors on college campuses are growing faster than kinesiology, as the science of exercise is known.
In this new world, the jocks are no longer at odds with nerds. They are the nerds. In Auburn University’s fast-growing kinesiology department, 18 faculty members are former athletes, according to department head Mary Rudisill, a former swimmer.
Former college track star Matthew Miller, who calls himself the second-fastest faculty member in Auburn’s kinesiology department, runs a performance and “psychophysiology” lab that seeks to “uncover neurobiological mechanisms underlying psychomotor performance phenomena frequently reported in the sport and exercise psychology literature,” according to the lab’s website.
At the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology, freshman applications rose 30% last year, and for the last five years student athletes have represented about 20% of the school’s population—a percentage more than five times greater than the ratio of student athletes to the student body at large.
To read the full article…..Click here