When Payton Phares enrolled as a kinesiology major at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, she understood health, fitness, and wellness only through her experiences as an able-bodied competitive athlete.
Then she took a course with Master Instructor Lisa LeBlanc.
“She put a new perspective on health for me,” says Phares. “I knew a lot about working out, but I didn’t know a lot about diet and all the other things that go into being healthy and living in a healthy community.”
Flourishing with Flexibility
As program coordinator, LeBlanc and her colleagues have designed and refined the Health Promotion and Wellness online program for more than a decade.
Students gain a complex understanding of world health issues, environmental health, stress, and nutrition, as well as business principles for success in corporate and nonprofit organizations, all through 100% online classes.
In moving to online learning, Phares learned how she could best manage online coursework and in doing so she gained insight into her natural study habits.
“I go in waves of productivity and not productivity,” says Phares. “And the online classes allowed me to work ahead whenever I’d have those productive spurts of energy so I could stay on top of my work instead of playing catch up when I felt productive.”
Having greater control over her schedule also made it possible for Phares to find work that dovetailed with her interests and complimented her studies.
By the time she was preparing to graduate in Spring 2022, Phares was working as a part-time supportive caregiver as well as a fitness coach and trainer at Unique Fitness, a gym designed to make exercise and fitness accessible to people in every kind of body.
“People that have exceptionalities, all shapes, sizes, everything,” says Phares. “The gym caters to them and creates a positive environment for them to feel celebrated and welcomed.”
Building on LeBlanc’s lessons on the impact of many small factors over time, Phares and her team celebrate the “small wins” their clients reach.
“Everyone wants that big capital W win, but we focus on the small wins,” says Phares.
From nutritional choices to improved form, trainers emphasize the importance of sustainable improvements.
“If they do push-ups wrong for a month and then one day they get their hips off the ground, we go ecstatic,” she says.
Choosing Between Paths
Just as Phares learned there were many facets to health, she’s also learned there are numerous applications for her skills.
“I feel like life — just like health — does not go down only one path, and I’m trying to find the path that I want to choose first and see where it leads me,” she says.
Phares is hopeful moving forward because she feels prepared to succeed across a range of opportunities.
“Health Promotion and Wellness has given me that opportunity to explore everything really because it’s so broad,” she says. “It gave me that opportunity to really sit down with myself and see what I’m really interested in.
“I can work in a gym; I could work in consulting; I could further my education and go get my master’s. I can do all these things.”