USD Kinesiology and Sport Management Students Apply Learning Through Community Partnerships
As part of the program’s KSM 482: Theory of Strength and Conditioning class, students took their learning into the Vermillion community to visit Recharge Fitness for a group fitness session that gave them firsthand experience with interval-based training.
While many KSM students are familiar with traditional workouts such as strength training or using cardio equipment at the campus Wellness Center, KSM Instructor Austin Bauer ’23 wanted them to experience fitness through a different lens.
“The goal of partnering with Lizzy Bye at Recharge is to provide students with a chance to explore fitness from a new lens,” Bauer said. “By attending a fitness session at Recharge, the students are able to develop an appreciation for group fitness and interval-based training, which most students wouldn’t necessarily be exposed to in our standard classroom or wellness center setting.”
While at Recharge Fitness, students didn’t just observe.
They participated in the workout themselves, experiencing how higher-intensity interval training affects both the muscular and cardiovascular systems.
For Bauer, seeing students begin to feel those effects was an important part of the lesson, as the firsthand experience helps them better understand the concepts they study in class and eventually apply them when designing programs for others.
“By going through these kinds of controlled activities, students will have a better grasp of where the line is for appropriate and inappropriate levels of intensity,” Bauer said. “In turn, they will be better at programming group training programs in the future, having felt the impact that this style of training has on the muscular and cardiovascular systems.”
Learning Through Community
The visit also reflects a larger priority within USD’s Division of Kinesiology and Sport Management: creating connections between students and the community.
That commitment is shown through Recharge Fitness’s ongoing support of USD students, including opening its facility to the USD powerlifting team, providing space, basic equipment and resources for team members to train many of their competition movements.
These experiences, Bauer explained, expose students to different approaches within exercise science and sport management, helping them begin developing their own professional philosophies.
“One of the pillars of the Division of Kinesiology and Sport Management is to develop community engagement and partnership,” Bauer said. “Young professionals are impressionable. It is our goal as a department to encourage them to branch out and participate in a variety of experiences and exposures to help them develop a well-structured and well-rounded professional philosophy.”
This activity in the community is just one example of the many experiential learning opportunities that the KSM program offers for students. The program intentionally blends classroom lessons with real-world application—from student research opportunities to semester-long internships.
USD has placed KSM interns in hundreds of locations nationally and internationally, and on campus, students gain hands-on experience in a $100,000 biomechanics laboratory that offers a wide range of equipment and provides a versatile and supportive climate to equip students with research opportunities and prepare them to be at the cutting edge of their field.
Whether they are getting involved in the Young Professionals of Exercise and Sport organization or actively pursuing unique research, USD KSM students are thinking beyond theory, considering how different training approaches affect individuals and gaining practical insights they will carry into their future careers as they create effective training programs and work with athletes, clients and communities of their own.
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