Create your own workout
Want to craft a personal outdoor workout plan? Here’s how to be your own PT!
1. DO AN ASSESSMENT
Whether your chosen outdoor venue is a park, the roads or your garden, start creating your workout by assessing the area. What outdoor tools do you have at your disposal? Perhaps there are hills, paths or circular loops for running intervals. Maybe there are benches or low walls for step-ups, dips and incline/ decline push-ups. A high wall is great for squat holds and wall walks. If you’re really lucky, you might have access to monkey bars, swings or pull-up bars. Hey, who said that playgrounds are just for kids?
2. CREATE A GOAL
What do you want to get out of your outdoor workouts? Decide on a primary goal – it might be to lose weight, boost endurance or gain strength. If your aim is weight loss, do high-intensity moves for short periods of time with little rest between sets – circuits of squat jumps, sprints and pull-ups are great. If your goal is to build endurance, select moderate-intensity moves that you can perform for a lot of reps – try circuits of longer running intervals, skipping, rows or lunges. If you want to gain muscle definition, consider isolating body parts and choosing multiple moves that focus on the same muscle group – so, you might do an upper-body workout one day, a lowerbody workout another day and a core workout on the final day.
3. CHOOSE YOUR MOVES
Once you’ve decided on a workout goal, it’s time to choose the exercises that you want to do. For full-body workouts, aim to include a push exercise (push-up, decline push-up, incline push-up), pull exercise (body rows, pull-ups, chin-ups), lower-body move (squat, lunge, step-up) and core exercises (v-sits, crunches, scissor legs). Upper-body workouts should always include push and pull moves. Keep it simple by choosing five-to-six moves, and performing three-to-four sets or circuits of all the exercises. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
4. PICK A METHOD
Got your moves? Now, how are you going to perform them? Think again about your goal, as this will help you choose a method. Circuit-style sessions are great for all because you can tailor the rest, reps or total time to suit your goal. Super-sets
(performing two moves that target the same muscle group back-to-back, such as bench dips and diamond push-ups or wall sits and step-ups) are great for lean muscle gains. You could do three dierent super-sets, such as three-to-four sets of triceps dips and diamond push-ups, three-to-four sets of incline and decline push-ups, and three-to-four sets of pull-ups and body rows. Want to rev up your heart rate? Try high-intensity methods such as Tabata, AMRAP or EMOM (see box, above).
5. STICK TO PROTOCOL
Warming up and cooling down are always important, and this goes for outdoor sessions, too! Try warming up the muscles you’re about to use by doing gentle versions of the set exercises. Follow this with pulse-raising high knees, skipping or jogging. And always stretch after the session, too…