Media Advisory: Fitness program helps people with Parkinson’s disease

April 05, 2022

Media Advisory: Fitness program helps people with Parkinson’s disease

Reporters, photographers and news crews who are looking for a great way to recognize that April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month will find it in Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s Rock Steady Boxing program, an ongoing community initiative that has helped people with Parkinson’s disease since 2018.

Thanks to SIU’s Student Recreation Center, people with Parkinson’s disease experience an improved quality of life by participating in noncontact boxing-based fitness classes that help enhance motor skills, balance, speech and overall functioning. Recreational Sports and Services offers classes on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings.

Sydney Devine, fitness coordinator, can arrange for members of the media to attend a session and secure interviews, photographs and video. Devine said one current participant was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, another was a state trooper and all of the participants have “amazing stories to tell.”

For more information about SIU’s Rock Steady program or to arrange a visit to a class and/or interviews with participant(s) and the instructor, contact Devine at sydney.devine@siu.edu or 618-453-1275.

See https://news.siu.edu/2018/10/101518-rock-steady-boxing.php for additional background information about SIU’s Rock Steady program.