Students, teachers, classes and sports teams all use the weight room and its related facilities.

The weight room is one of the most used spaces in the building, with physical education classes alone accounting for hundreds of students who  use the weight room equipment. A typical P.E. class has about 30-40 students and eight P.E. periods a day. In total, there are about 1,700 students who use the weight room over the course of a week.

Historically, the weight room’s space has come a long way.

The weight room used to consist of six upright bikes, four recumbent bikes and five stairmasters.

“It’s probably doubled in size now than it was 20 years ago and has three times as much stuff,” P.E. and strength and conditioning teacher Anthony Furman said.

Even though improvements have been made in the weight room, the issue that rises is that it gets used more often now than it has ever been used.

“It’s definitely an uphill battle just because of the amount of traffic that goes through there daily,” Furman says.

The weight room has not only increased in size but in quality as well.

“There’s some odds and ends of machines that programs have wanted,” director of athletics and activities Robert Murphy said.

The weight room now has a class set of cardio equipment, 13 power racks and a variety of supplemental fitness equipment.

Since so many students go through the weight room every day, finding a way to balance and spread out students with the available space can also be a challenge.

From a lifting standpoint, ideally there’s three students per rack in a class period. However, classes sometimes go over 39 students.

The variety of P.E. classes that are available are helpful in spreading out the number of students that use the weight room.

With zero hour, APPE (athletic performance P.E.) and strength and conditioning, classes are scheduled in the weight room at different intervals during the week.

“I think APPE helps because it spreads the amount of kids that go in there,” Furman said.

With a variety of classes, students are spread out into smaller classes. With smaller classes, students can get more quality workouts.

Sports teams used to be scheduled in 40-minute slot times after school. Although it didn’t always fit into the practice time, each team was given two lifting times.

The weight room has already gone through a lot of changes from size, quailty and scheduling and Murphy said that there is always conversation about making improvments.

Some students have echoed that the weight room could use improvements, but students still find it to be accessible and convenient.

“Not a lot of people can work out on their own and they have [the weight room] which is good,” junior Emily Head said.