With this beautiful sunny weather we’ve been having for the past few days, I’ve been training clients and doing my own training outdoors. With most people paying out for gym memberships now, it’s easy to spend all your time cooped up inside the gym rather than getting out there in the fresh air. I’ve noticed that my clients actually seem to be more alive and alert when training outside and plus you have so much more room to move about than in the restricted space of a gym. 
The good thing about training outdoors is that you don’t need any equipment to give yourself a brilliant workout. You just need to be a bit creative and take advantage of things like benches, trees, steps and hills. A wooded area is a great place to train as it usually has all of these things. You can begin by doing a gentle jog to warm your muscles up. If you want more of a cardio workout, hill sprints are so effective at burning fat and increasing fitness and speed. Sprint as fast as you can up a hill and then do a gentle jog back down to the bottom again. You can repeat this as many times as you can without stopping and if you want to give yourself an added challenge, try doing some jump squats or lunges at the top of the hill before coming down – I guarantee that your legs will feel like jelly after a few rounds! You can also use hills to do incline press ups and sit ups on to make them that little bit harder. Try using benches to do tricep dips, box jumps, one leg squats and press ups on.
Playgrounds usually have quite a few bits that can be used to add an extra dimension to your training. You can use monkey bars to try some hanging leg raises and pull ups. For a quick ab blast, you can put your feet onto a swing, get into plank position and do some knee tucks. Alternatively get into plank position, keep your upper body still and use your abs to swing the swing from left to right, keeping your legs straight and your core tight. Take advantage of slides too by using them to do incline sit up by lying down on the slide with your head pointing towards the bottom.
Hopefully this gives you some ideas on how to do an effective training session outdoors in either the park, woods or your back garden. It’s good to have a break from the gym sometimes and to add a different element to your training so as it’s always kept fun and varied. You’ll feel so much more refreshed after being outdoors and you definitely can’t turn down a workout in weather like this so make the most of it whilst we have a bit of sunshine!
