Experiential health and human performance studies

Put your passion into community service

Our Health & Human Performance Lab, as a partnership between Fort Lewis College and the Durango Performance Center, offers students the opportunity to gain firsthand experience understanding the human body, healthy living, athleticism, and human performance with real clients.

Real community clients

Durango, Colorado, is a training destination for world-renowned athletes, particularly endurance runners and cyclists. These athletes are some of your clients, and you will evaluate their body metrics through their health, fitness, and performance goals. You'll have opportunities to:

  • Analyze running gait using a high-tech pressure runway
  • Conduct body composition analysis using multiple methods such as hydrostatic weighing, bioelectrical impedance analysis, and skin calipers
  • Conduct resting and exercise metabolic testing to evaluate essential metrics such as oxygen consumption (VO2max), fat and carbohydrate utilization, energy expenditure, and more
  • Analyze electrocardiogram (ECG) to evaluate heart rhythms at rest and exercise
  • Utilize different motion capture systems (such as Retul, Dartfish, and PerfectPhorm) to analyze biomechanics with any human movement
  • Take advantage of our large and capable 5' x 8' treadmill to accommodate two runners at once, cycling, skiing, skating, wheelchair, and more

Health & Human Performance Lab

While Durango Performance Center's focus is on serving athletes of all levels, from fitness to high-performance goals, our lab also serves as an educational resource for students learning about therapeutic interventions, wellness, and physiology.

Reserve the lab  Check out equipment

Printout of foot pressure dynamic analysis