Physiotherapy and sports rehabilitation students at The University of Nottingham are to attempt to climb stairs to the height of Mount Everest in a bid to promote exercise in the workplace.
The event on Tuesday 15 November 2016 will see around a hundred first, second and third year students climbing a 12-feet-high flight of 24 steps in a lecture theatreat the Clinical Sciences Building at Nottingham City Hospital. The students hope that if enough people take part, they will climb 29,030 feet – the height of Everest, in just three 30 minute sessions.
The attempt is part of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy’s Work Out At Work Day – an initiative to raise awareness and highlight the benefits of physical exercise during the working day. The students want to help raise awareness of the large impact that small changes to our lifestyle can have on health, physically and mentally.
Organiser, 2nd year physio student Alec Newton said: “As physiotherapists and sports rehabilitators our job is to help people achieve the seemingly impossible. Everest represents the impossible. At times everyone faces that thing which they think is going to stop them. By doing this, we’re trying to make two points. First, that small changes to our lifestyle, like using the stairs regularly, can make a big difference to our health, and secondly that with support we can achieve great things.”
Other events taking place on the Work Out at Work Day in the University’s Division of Physiotherapy and Sport Rehabilitation include a yoga class, a tai chi session and walks around the City Hospital campus.
Head of Division, Grahame Pope, said: “Sedentary lifestyles and lack of exercise are leading causes of death worldwide through non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, and type-2 diabetes and but also have been linked to a number of mental health problems. Our students encounter these issues every day, not just whilst on placement, but also in their personal lives. Work Out At Work Day provides an excellent opportunity for them to raise awareness of some very simple things we can all do to improve our own personal levels of activity, the activity of the general population, and thus deliver a real health benefit.”
The students will be posting updates about their progress on Twitter @UoNPhyiso and using #WOW and #workoutatwork.
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Notes to editors: The University of Nottingham has 43,000 students and is ‘the nearest Britain has to a truly global university, with a “distinct” approach to internationalisation, which rests on those full-scale campuses in China and Malaysia, as well as a large presence in its home city.’ (Times Good University Guide 2016). It is also one of the most popular universities in the UK among graduate employers and was named University of the Year for Graduate Employment in the 2017 The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide. It is ranked in the world’s top 75 by the QS World University Rankings 2015/16, and 8th in the UK for research power according to the Research Excellence Framework 2014. It has been voted the world’s greenest campus for four years running, according to Greenmetrics Ranking of World Universities.
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