STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) - It was a morning like any other for Quincy Johnson, a senior personal trainer at the Colvin Recreation Center at Oklahoma State. He was sitting at a table behind the front desk while he waited on a client.

“Our director for personal training, Jason Vlastaras, said ‘Hey, I have this guy who wants to train with you. It’s going to be early, are you interested?’” Johnson said. “I said sure, and the next morning I showed up at 5 a.m., and it’s one of the captains on the police force, and it kind of got rolling from there. I trained him for a couple of days and he said, ‘Well, I like your style, so we’re all going to come and train with you.’ It just came to me, but it’s been great.”

The Stillwater News Press reports Johnson has been working as a personal trainer with the OSUPD for more than six months now, and that time spent has translated to lost weight, improved physical fitness and - possibly most importantly— eliminating a common problem among the officers.

Sgt. Adam Queen has been with the department all of his 16 years in law enforcement, now wearing many hats for the program as he teaches courses about alcohol safety that requires visiting organizations, fraternity and sorority houses and staff training, as well as placing orders for the department and other roles. His desk is covered with paperwork of different varieties, something he said can be quite common for himself and other officers.

“In this line of work, unfortunately there are times where you’re sitting in a patrol car for hours on end,” Queen said. “Sometimes, we’ll get out and check buildings periodically or get out for a few minutes on a traffic stop, but if you get a report, you’re sitting. You’re going to be sitting in the patrol car, and it’s a pretty tight, confined space. I don’t know the right word for it, but it’s not good for you, I know that. We have some researchers here on campus who have worked with quite a few of us here because some of the officers have lower back problems.

“It’s not just, ‘We have to get out and exercise.’ We’ve got to counteract the negative effect that all that weight has on us, all that extra gear. It takes a toll on us.”

That’s where Johnson comes in, who played football at Midland University in Fremont, Nebraska, and is now at Oklahoma State. Academically, he works as a graduate teaching assistant with OSU’s Division of Institutional Diversity, mentoring and tutoring first-generation minority and disabled students. In the gym, he’s certified through the National Strength and Conditioning Association, along with another helpful area.

“I also have functional movement screening level 1,” Johnson said. “Basically what that is, is functional movement - how well do you move? So if someone was complaining of back pain, it may not be back pain. I passed all of my tests so I can put someone through an assessment and then say, ‘Maybe you have poor hamstring flexibility.’

“It’s been awesome, aside from getting the guys back physically active, we’ve lost weight, but they came in - veterans on the force have had back pain from sitting so long, we’ve almost alleviated the majority of that just from participation. We’ve asked guys to come off a shift and into an hour workout where we’re running and jumping and lifting. A lot of people can’t do that, but those have just been the perks of participation. They don’t make excuses. They come in and work hard.”

Chief Leon Jones echoed that the training has helped with officers who don’t necessarily know the dynamics of working out and now have someone to work with to better themselves. Having guys who care about themselves and their personal health means they’re going to care about their job and the department, Jones said.

“It’s very helpful as far as how it physically feels,” Queen said. “There might not be any weight changes or visual - if you look at us, there’s not a lot of major changes - but the way we feel after working out and having good direction from someone who knows what they’re doing, it’s a great thing. We’ve kind of been on and off with a few personal trainers over the last several years - of course a couple of them are better than the others, Quincy is one of the better ones - he keeps us on track and keeps track of how we’re doing with different weights, different movements and lifts. . It’s getting us pretty healthy.”

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Information from: Stillwater News Press, https://www.stwnewspress.com

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