Why head to the sweaty, stinky gym when it’s a gorgeous day outside? There are tons of sports to take advantage of — from swimming to cycling — that can only be done in the warm months. Put your membership on hold for the summer, take advantage of the good weather and get your daily workout done by making the local park your new gym.
Work on your heart with some running
The entire city becomes your workout space when you lace up and start pounding the pavement. To help build speed, alternate your slow, steady runs with tempo runs, and if there’s a school in your area with a track, work on speed intervals as well to build your endurance. If there’s a hill in your neighbourhood, even better as you can also easily add some hill training. If you only stick to steady running, you won’t become fitter, so why waste your precious workout time?
Use those monkey bars and benches
For the pull-ups and tricep dips, use the “equipment” you see around you in the park. Make it more challenging for yourself by incorporating tabata intervals, making sure to maintain proper form for each interval. Tabatas are four minutes, and each four minutes is broken into eight sets of 20 seconds of intense exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest.
Make use of the grassy field
Don’t let the wide expanse of field in the park go to waste. Mountain climbers, crab walks, high knees and more all can be part of your workout when you have all of this open space to work out in. You may enjoy the scenery and fresh air when doing these exercises so much that you may never be able to return to the treadmill’s same old view.
Bring portable exercise equipment
If you’re finding you can’t find enough to do in the park, bring easily totable equipment to help enhance your workout. You can attach TRX straps to a strong tree branch, for example, or bring along a rope ladder you can use for dills involving hopping and jumping. You can also easily throw some resistance bands into your gym bag to make certain exercises such as leg raises tougher.
