Facility Hours

Monday – Thursday
5:00 AM – 9:00 PM

Friday
5:00 AM – 8:00 PM

Saturday
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Sunday
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM


The Family YMCA
3719 Veterans Memorial Dr
Hattiesburg, MS 39401
601-583-4000
fax 601-584-8349

Petal Family YMCA
547 Hillcrest Loop
Petal, MS 39465
601-583-9399
fax 601-583-2055

YMCA Preschool
3719 Veterans Memorial Dr
Hattiesburg, MS 39401
601-268-0808
fax 601-584-8349



New to Fitness PDF Print E-mail
A Personal Guide for Reaching Your Fitness Goals

Congratulations for taking the first step toward achieving a healthy, balanced lifestyle by incorporating physical activity as part of your daily routine. The Family YMCA of Southeast Mississippi is dedicated to helping you realize your maximum fitness potential.

A balanced fitness program will include the four components for complete physical fitness:
  • Cardio-respiratory endurance
  • Muscular strength and endurance
  • Flexibility
  • Acceptable body composition
A well rounded program of physical activity includes aerobic exercise and strength training exercise, but not necessarily in the same session. This blend helps to maintain or improve cardio-respiratory and muscular fitness, overall health and function. Regular physical activity will provide more health benefits than sporadic, high intensity workouts, so choose exercises you are likely to enjoy and be consistent with.

For healthy adults, the American College of Sports Medicine and the YMCA recommend 30 minutes of moderate-intensity, physical activity (working hard enough to break a sweat, but still able to carry on a conversation) five days per week, or 20 minutes of more vigorous activity three days per week. Combinations of moderate and vigorous intensity activity can be performed to meet this recommendation. Typical aerobic exercises include walking and running, biking, stair climbing, rowing, elliptical trainers, aerobic exercise classes, and swimming.

In addition, strength training should be performed a minimum of two days each week with 8 to 12 repetitions of 8 to 10 different exercises that target all major muscle groups. This type of training can be accomplished using combinations of body weight, free weights, balls and bands, or weight machines.

The Family YMCA offers many opportunities to assist with your fitness goals.

We suggest a three step approach to beginning your program:

  1. The Body Composition Analysis (appointment required): Make your appointment in  either fitness center or alpha room for your free body composition analysis. This test is done by ultrasound and is a painless, accurate way to determine your lean to fat ratio, your basal metabolic rate, and more.
  2. The Cardio Training Session (no appointment needed): Begin your cardio-respiratory workouts with the assistance of a YTrainer. Our trained staff can show you how to use any or all of the equipment needed for your workouts. Some of the options are treadmill, track, upright and recumbent bikes, elliptical trainers, rowing machines, ARC trainer and stair climbers. Remember that many of our classes include cardio training, for example: Spinning, TurboKick, Hip Hop Hustle, and any class that states the word CARDIO. Swimming also has excellent cardio-respiratory benefits. After your second cardio workout make an appointment for your strength training session (orientation to the weight machines).
  3. The Strength Training Session (appointment required): This session (orientation) begins your muscular strength and conditioning workouts. Your YTrainer will show you how to perform a full body workout using the varied equipment in our fitness centers  or the alpha centers. Remember to include stretching after each workout to maintain flexibility.
Within 12 weeks of beginning your program you will notice changes in how you feel and look. Some of the initial changes include looser clothing, increased muscle tone, better circulation, increased lung capacity, improved psychological and emotional well being, loss of fat tissue, and improved immune function.