Fitness
A Guide to Pottruck Health and Fitness Center
Pottruck Health and Fitness Center on Sep. 15, 2019.
Credit: Annie Luo
During the early going of one’s time at Penn, nearly every place on campus feels unfamiliar. And whether exercise is a staple of your daily routine or just a hobby you’re interested in exploring, it’s always helpful to understand a new space. Let’s break down the layout of Pottruck Health and Fitness Center, Penn’s premier place for exercise and recreation.
Entrance
Pottruck is located at 3701 Walnut Street, across from the Graduate School of Education and beside a parking garage and Hello World. The main entrance is located up a small set of stairs and is unlocked during operational hours. Below is Pottruck’s current schedule:
Monday – Friday: 6 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Saturday: 8 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Sunday: 9 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Once inside, guests will be asked to sign in to the facility. Pottruck is free to all PennCard holders, and students can either scan their PennCard at the front desk or sign in via the campus recreation app. All front desk staff are friendly and willing to assist in the event of any trouble.
For those who are not students or staff and are visiting campus, guest day passes can be purchased at the front desk for $15. Equipment such as basketballs can also be rented at the front desk free of charge. Guests can also access Pottruck’s Lost and Found by speaking with front desk staff.
First Floor
The first floor of the facility contains two main sections: first is the main atrium that encompasses the front desk. Here, guests can find a small collection of tables and chairs, as well as a set of couches and a television that usually shows live sports or sports talk shows. This section also formerly housed Sweet Treat Hut, where guests could purchase smoothies, protein shakes, and other food/drinks before its sudden closure in April.
Also in the atrium is the facility’s climbing wall, which reaches 40 feet into the air and accommodates climbers of all experience levels. All necessary equipment is provided by Pottruck and can be rented at the front desk.
Next to the atrium is the Katz Fitness Center, Pottruck’s largest collection of cardio equipment, complete with treadmills, ellipticals, stairmasters, and other machines. The area is complete with floor-to-ceiling windows that face the neighboring parking garage.
The first floor also contains offices and meeting rooms used by Penn recreation staff, as well as the newly-renovated Rec Lounge, a space behind the climbing wall that contains board games, bean bag chairs, and a study area.
In a typical year, this floor’s staircases would provide access to Pottruck’s basement, which houses Sheerr Pool, additional locker rooms, and a sauna, but the facility is currently undergoing renovations that will keep it closed for the entirety of the 2024-25 academic year.
Each floor of the facility also has lockers where guests can store their belongings as well as men’s and women’s restrooms in the back left corner.
Second Floor
The second floor is perhaps Pottruck’s busiest, housing its primary weightlifting area as well as the Avnet Basketball Courts. The weightlifting room, which covers over 8,000 square feet, is located to the left of the staircase, and contains equipment such as dumbbells, barbells, bench presses, power racks, deadlift platforms, cables, and a number of additional machines. The weightlifting room also contains windows that look out onto Walnut Street and the surrounding buildings.
To the right of the staircase is the Avnet Basketball Courts, where guests can play during any time the gym is open. Guests may bring their own ball or rent one from the front desk. Open shootaround is available, but guests are permitted to share the courts during peak hours. Pickup games are common and open to players of all experience levels. The basketball courts also occasionally host vaccine clinics, including the flu vaccine.
The second floor also houses Pottruck’s multi-purpose room, which is located down the hallway immediately to the left after entering the basketball courts. The multi-purpose room features additional cardio and weightlifting equipment, as well as a turf area for stretching and exercising, medicine balls, kettlebells, and several punching bags and a speed bag. The multi-purpose room is often less crowded than the main weightlifting area, and also contains additional lockers.
Third Floor
The third floor is regarded as Pottruck’s “quiet floor” with no music playing overhead. It contains additional cardio and weightlifting equipment, including a condensed set of free weights, as well as a number of rooms designed to enhance the facility’s recreational experience.
These include the Cycling and Pilates studios, which hold group exercise classes throughout the week and can be booked for private sessions for a cost. New to Pottruck is the third floor Recovery Room, a recently renovated space that features reclining chairs, compression boots, and massage guns. Bays are available on a first-come, first-serve basis, but can also be reserved for 30 minutes at a time for a cost.
Fourth Floor
The fourth floor also contains additional cardio and weightlifting equipment, including a CrossFit area. It also offers additional studios that offer group exercise classes throughout the week, including a HIIT studio. These rooms are generally closed to the public outside of class times but can be rented for private use for a cost.
Clubs
Pottruck is home to many of Penn’s recreational clubs, including many club and intramural sports. These include club and intramural basketball, Climbing Club, Penn Barbell Club, and many more. First-year students can learn more about these clubs and explore campus recreation’s offerings during “Night at the Rec,” which will take place at Pottruck during New Student Orientation on Friday, August 23 from 7-9 p.m.
General Advice
Below is a list of general tips for those new to Pottruck:
- During the week, 5-8 p.m. is generally the facility’s busiest time, with 6 am to 8 am being its slowest. During the weekend, traffic is more evenly distributed.
- Guests are forbidden from cursing or fighting during games at the Avnet Basketball courts.
- Wipe down all equipment upon completion of a workout — each floor contains multiple conveniently located wet wipe stations for sanitation.
- Only occupy one piece of equipment at a time.
- Guests in the weightlifting areas are generally friendly and willing to “work in” with one another, meaning share pieces of equipment by switching off sets.
More information on all of Pottruck and other recreational offerings can be found on the campus recreation website.
The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.
Donate
Fitness
Business News Today: Stock and Share Market News, Economy and Finance News, Sensex, Nifty, Global Market, NSE, BSE Live IPO News – Moneycontrol.com
While exercise is known to improve memory, scientists have mostly studied this effect by using behavioral tests or brain imaging methods like MRIs, says Michelle Voss, PhD, one of the study’s authors, a professor, and the director of the Health, Brain, and Cognitive Lab at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
But she says these approaches can’t precisely identify where “ripples” originate, particularly in the deep brain structures like the hippocampus, a part of the brain strongly connected to memory and learning, she says.
The current study, published in Brain Communications, recorded electrical activity directly, using surgically implanted (intracranial) electrodes. “This allowed us to observe how exercise changes the brain’s memory circuits in real time,” Dr. Voss says.
20-Minute Bursts of Exercise Increase Brain Ripples
The participants performed a 5-minute warm-up and then rode a stationary bike for 20 minutes at a pace they could maintain. Researchers recorded their brain activity before and after the biking session.
The electrodes showed an increased rate of so-called sharp-wave ripples from the hippocampus and connections with cortical regions of the brain, which are involved in learning and memory.
“Sharp-wave ripples have long been known from animal studies to play a central role in memory,” Voss says, adding that recent studies using intracranial recordings in humans also support the importance of ripples for human memory.
“Our findings are the first to show that exercise can modulate these ripple signals in the human brain,” she says.
Researchers also observed that larger increases in heart rate during exercise were associated with larger changes in ripple activity in cortical networks, Voss adds.
What’s Already Known About Exercise, Memory, and Learning
Exercise helps build connections between neurons, which deepens and strengthens brain networks, Franssen says.
Physical activity also improves metabolism, which improves insulin sensitivity, helping blood sugar regulation and giving the brain a “more stable and reliable supply of fuel,” Dr. Perlmutter says.
“This is critically important because the brain is an energy-intensive organ, consuming roughly 20 percent of the body’s energy despite representing only a small fraction of body weight,” he adds.
The Research Has Limitations
Voss says researchers were careful to “exclude signals that contained epileptic activity. However, of course, we can’t statistically control for the accumulated effects of having epilepsy on the brain.”
The exercise-brain ripple patterns observed in the current study also closely match those observed in healthy adults using noninvasive brain imaging, such as MRI, she added.
“That convergence across very different methods is one of the strongest indicators that the effects are not specific to epilepsy, but reflect a more general human brain response to exercise,” Voss said.
Researchers also didn’t directly test memory performance, Voss notes. “While hippocampal ripples are strongly linked to memory processing in decades of neuroscience research, the next step will be to measure how exercise-related changes in ripples relate to memory performance in the same individuals.”
Future studies should also compare exercise with other everyday activities, such as sitting quietly or light movement, to determine how specific these effects are to aerobic exercise at the intensity that was studied, she says.
Satisfy Your Brain’s Exercise Craving
It’s never too early or too late to start exercising for brain health, Franssen says.
People of any age, from grade-school children to people in their nineties, can benefit from increased physical activity, Perlmutter says. “My recommendation is to consider taking advantage of the connection between physical activity and brain health across the entire range of human aging.”
Any type of exercise is great, Franssen says, but especially “repetitive behaviors,” like swimming, jogging, and walking.
“Sometimes we let the hugeness of putting in a huge fitness routine get in our way,” she says. “Having a little exercise snack every so often is also very important to improving cognition.”
Increasing our level of physical fitness leads to a bigger release of brain-boosting proteins following one session of exercise, a new study led by a UCL researcher has found.
The study, published in Brain Research, took a group of inactive unfit participants through a 12-week training programme of cycling three times per week and made them fitter. Researchers found as their fitness increased, so did the amount of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) released following exercise, resulting in improved brain function.
Just 15 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise releases BDNF, a brain protein which is known to support the formation of new neurons and new synapses (connections between brain cells), and maintains the health of existing neurons. This is the first study to show that for unfit people, just 12 weeks of consistent training can boost the brain’s response to a single 15-minute workout.
The study, led by Dr Flaminia Ronca (UCL Surgery & Interventional Science, and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health), involved 30 participants – 23 male and seven female – taking part in the 12-week programme. To assess fitness levels throughout the programme, participants completed VO2max tests every six weeks, which measures the maximum rate of oxygen your body can consume and use during intense exercise.
BDNF levels were measured pre- and post-VO2max testing, alongside a series of cognitive and memory tests, while also measuring changes in brain activity in the prefrontal cortex – where executive functions such as decision-making, emotion regulation, attention and impulsivity are controlled.
By the final week of the trial, results showed that baseline levels of BDNF did not change, but participants did show a larger spike of BDNF following intense exercise, compared to how their brains responded to intense exercise before the 12-week programme. This was linked to improvements in VO2max (aerobic fitness).
Higher overall BDNF levels and stronger exercise-induced increases were also associated with changes in activity across key areas of the prefrontal cortex during attention and inhibition tasks, though not during memory tasks.
Overall, the results showed that increasing physical fitness can enhance the brain’s ability to produce BDNF in response to acute bouts of exercise, which can have a strong positive influence on neural activity.
Lead author Dr Flaminia Ronca said: “We’ve known for a while that exercise is good for our brain, but the mechanisms through which this occurs are still being disentangled. The most exciting finding from our study is that if we become fitter, our brains benefit even more from a single session of exercise, and this can change in only six weeks.”
Notes to editors:
For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact: Tom Cramp, UCL Media Relations , T: +447586 711698, E: [email protected]
The research paper: ‘BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise’, Flaminia Ronca, Cian Xu, Ellen Kong, Dennis Chan, Antonia Hamilton, Giampietro Schiavo, Ilias Tachtsidis, Paola Pinti, Benjamin Tari, Tom Gurney, Paul W. Burgess, is published in Brain Research, March 2026,
About UCL (University College London)
UCL is a diverse global community of world-class academics, students, industry links, external partners, and alumni. Our powerful collective of individuals and institutions work together to explore new possibilities.
Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world’s best minds. Our community of more than 50,000 students from 150 countries and over 16,000 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.
We are consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in the world and are one of only a handful of institutions rated as having the strongest academic reputation and the broadest research impact.
We have a progressive and integrated approach to our teaching and research – championing innovation, creativity and cross-disciplinary working. We teach our students how to think, not what to think, and see them as partners, collaborators and contributors.
For 200 years, we are proud to have opened higher education to students from a wide range of backgrounds and to change the way we create and share knowledge.
We were the first in England to welcome women to university education and that courageous attitude and disruptive spirit is still alive today. We are UCL.
www.ucl.ac.uk | Read news at www.ucl.ac.uk/news/ | Follow UCL News on Bluesky and LinkedIn
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Media Contact
Tom Cramp
University College London
[email protected]
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Journal
Brain Research
DOI
10.1016/j.brainres.2026.150253
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
BDNF relates to prefrontal cortex activity in the context of physical exercise
Article Publication Date
4-Mar-2026
Tags
/Health and medicine/Human health/Physical exercise
bu içeriği en az 2000 kelime olacak şekilde ve alt başlıklar ve madde içermiyecek şekilde ünlü bir science magazine için İngilizce olarak yeniden yaz. Teknik açıklamalar içersin ve viral olacak şekilde İngilizce yaz. Haber dışında başka bir şey içermesin. Haber içerisinde en az 12 paragraf ve her bir paragrafta da en az 50 kelime olsun. Cevapta sadece haber olsun. Ayrıca haberi yazdıktan sonra içerikten yararlanarak aşağıdaki başlıkların bilgisi var ise haberin altında doldur. Eğer yoksa bilgisi ilgili kısmı yazma.:
Subject of Research:
Article Title:
News Publication Date:
Web References:
References:
Image Credits:
Keywords
Tags: 12-week cycling training program benefitsbrain plasticity and physical fitnessbrain-derived neurotrophic factor after exerciseeffects of aerobic exercise on BDNFexercise and neuron healthexercise-induced neurogenesisfitness level impact on brain proteinsfitness training for cognitive improvementimproving brain function through fitnessmoderate to vigorous aerobic exercise effectsphysical fitness and brain healthVO2max and brain function correlation
New Castle County Council finally votes on data center regulations
Collier County’s most expensive home sold in February sold for $25M
Daily Briefing: All eyes on Rome, Georgia
Towering lava fountains of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano trigger park and highway closures
Ask the Meteorologist: How one storm produced a violent tornado, 6-inch hail in Illinois
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
EXCLUSIVE: ICE says El Paso detention facility will stay open under new contractor after $1.2B deal scrapped
Von der Leyen ‘acting outside of competence,’ Araud tells Euronews
Wheelchair curler Steve Emt’s path from drunk driver to three-time Paralympian
Map: 2.3-Magnitude Earthquake Reported North of New York City
Trump stirs GOP primary drama with visit to Massie’s Kentucky home turf
-
Wisconsin1 week agoSetting sail on iceboats across a frozen lake in Wisconsin
-
Massachusetts1 week agoMassachusetts man awaits word from family in Iran after attacks
-
Pennsylvania6 days agoPa. man found guilty of raping teen girl who he took to Mexico
-
Detroit, MI5 days agoU.S. Postal Service could run out of money within a year
-
Miami, FL7 days agoCity of Miami celebrates reopening of Flagler Street as part of beautification project
-
Sports6 days agoKeith Olbermann under fire for calling Lou Holtz a ‘scumbag’ after legendary coach’s death
-
Virginia7 days agoGiants will hold 2026 training camp in West Virginia
-
Culture1 week agoTry This Quiz on the Real Locations in These Magical and Mysterious Novels