Hundreds of students do pushups at Boston University’s Fitness and Recreation Center Friday to break the world record for the most people doing pushups simultaneously. PHOTO BY JUSTIN HAWK/DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Boston University’s Fitness and Recreation Center, students gathered Friday afternoon to break the Guinness World Record for most people doing pushups in the same place at the same time.

About 500 members of the BU community participated in the activity, falling just short of the 615 people needed to break the world record. The record for the most group pushups is held by students at the Rashtreeya Vidyalaya College of Engineering in India, the Guinness World Records website states.

Kris Covarrubias, the marketing and membership manager at FitRec, said she is excited to celebrate FitRec’s 10th anniversary with such a novel event.

“We wanted to celebrate 10 years of FitRec being on campus with some unique and fun activities for different types of people,” she said before the celebration. “We really feel like we’ve brought fitness and recreation to the Boston University campus, and we wanted to do something that exemplified the excitement of moving and just getting active.”

Blue, gray and silver decorations adorned the FitRec lobby, and Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore played music as DJ for the celebration.

Elmore said attempting to break a world record is a great way to commemorate 10 years of FitRec.

“First up, FitRec looks awesome for being 10 years old. It’s looking good for its age,” he said before the celebration began. “It’s great to do something fun like this like they’re about to do, so hopefully we make history.”

Groups of students organized into lines of 50 entered the 4-Court Gym on the second floor of FitRec. They began with warm-up exercises including jumping jacks, planks and burpees. Finally, participants assumed position and participated in 10 pushups as a group, yelling each completed number aloud.

Covarrubias said attempting to break the pushup record took a lot of planning because of Guinness rules and requirements.

“There’s a whole thing you have to do with Guinness to do this. We’ve got marshals, one marshal per 50 people, and those actually are our friends and colleagues from campus recreation centers like MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], BC [Boston College] and Harvard [University] because they have to be unaffiliated with BU,” she said.

Students were given bracelets as part of the counting process, and the anniversary was photographed and videotaped as proof to submit to the Guinness World Records, Covarrubias said.

Several students said regardless of the result, they were happy to be part of such a large community celebration.

Madison Craft, a junior in the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, said she was excited to be part of the festivity.

“I saw the event on Facebook and thought it would be really cool,” she said. “FitRec breaking the world record would [have been] so awesome.”

Alexander Delgado, a student worker at FitRec and a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said he was happy about the turnout and how well the activity went.

“We had all the student workers who came in to help out,” he said. “We had to get all the student groups at BU, we emailed them and we wanted to get the community together and make sure it was a really fun event, and it was.”

Leah Smith, a freshman in the School of Education, said she is glad FitRec celebrated its 10th anniversary with such an innovative approach.

“I came because it’s really cool to break a world record. I like the community aspect too, and I like that FitRec is celebrating 10 years in a big way,” she said. “I can’t wait to see what they do in future years.”

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