You can spot the equipment junkies a mile off. Colourful sweat bands, shiny new sportswear, and accessories fit for professionals.
Will the most advanced contour-hugging, thermo-regulating sweatshirts really take our health to the next level, or must we dig a little deeper?- Matthew Muscat Inglott
Will the most advanced contour-hugging, thermo-regulating sweatshirts really take our health and well-being to the next level, or must we dig a little deeper?
Sure, top-of-the-range gear is great, but instead of investing money in trying to find things that work, let’s invest some good old-fashioned hard graft into making the things we already have work.
As a valued competitive power-lifting buddy of mine once told me: “Better a million-dollar lifter in $10 equipment than a $10 lifter in million-dollar equipment.”
Let’s ditch the space-age technology for a moment and instead explore some Zen and the art of functional fitness. Today we return to basics, to nature, and perhaps even to innocence itself.
What do we really need? More resources or more resourcefulness? If we can learn to make a little go a long way, then only our dreams can limit how far we can go with the luxury of a lot.
As the fading sun retreats across autumn’s cool evening skies, what joy to be outdoors in the fresh air and inspire the first invigorating breaths of a new season. To exercise outdoors is to get in closer touch with nature while discovering a sense of calm and a clearer mind.
The most obvious machine substitution we can make outdoors is running on promenades or in public gardens instead of on treadmills. We may not have lush green parks but we do have public gardens in most major localities that are far safer than our roads.
If your chosen garden lacks any significant distance, then mix in your bouts of jogging with other exercises to keep things interesting. Any step or elevated surface can double up as a stepper machine. Step on and off alternating feet and add in a knee strike with the trailing leg as you rise.
As you kick up with your right knee, bring the opposing left elbow across your body to meet it; this engages the core muscles too.
Jogging and stepping can be interrupted with traditional bodyweight exercises for a circuit training approach that will enhance aerobic fitness, shed body fat, and tone up your major muscle groups all at one go. Jog, step, full-body circuit, and repeat three to four rounds for a total body blitz. Here is a simple circuit you can try anywhere.
Starting with legs, for an outdoor substitute to the leg press machine, there has never been a better solution than bodyweight squats and backward lunges. Bodyweight squats can quickly become easy for the more conditioned among us.
However, according to Sir Isaac Newton, force can be increased using either mass or acceleration. Instead of cranking up the mass as one would on a machine, try cranking up the acceleration; squat down and jump up out of the bottom position fast for maximum height. Just make sure you have a soft surface to land on: grass, foliage, soil or sand are best.
A backward lunge is a regular lunge performed stepping backwards instead of forwards. Stepping back makes it easier to keep the heel of the working leg engaged, loading the right muscles of the hips and thighs over greater ranges of the movement. Try this, keeping the front heel pressed into the floor throughout, and your butt will scream for mercy.
Chest press machines and bench presses are staples in any indoor facility. However, the push-up will never be forgotten. When these get too easy, we can enlist Newton’s help once again and go for a plyometric version.
Accelerate your push and essentially jump up off your hands. This is how the famous showboating hand-clap push-up originated. Another method of ratcheting this classic move up a notch is to perform it one-handed.
If you can strictly press your bodyweight singlehandedly in such a fashion for any more than 10 repetitions, then you are already surpassing the intensity the majority of bench press addicts everywhere commonly achieve indoors.
To engage the shoulders, maintain the press-up position but walk your feet up closer to your hands, so that your butt is pointed right up into the air. Tuck your head down and press until it is about an inch off the floor.
This is a basic version of a machine shoulder press, and when it gets easy, you’re ready to try the hand-stand press with your body inverted and totally upright, feet rested against a wall or tree. This is truly a marvellous feat of strength and athleticism.
The lat pull-down machine can be substituted by the classic pull-up. However, apparatus for pulling the body up is not always readily available outdoors, not to mention this exercise is too demanding for most enthusiasts.
The next best substitute is a strong towel. By holding the ends of a towel looped around a lamppost, position your feet up close to the post and lean back with your body straight and weight supported by the towel.
Pull yourself up towards the post and resist on the way back down; this is easier than a traditional pull-up and hard enough to target and tone the muscles of your back and biceps.
To round off your circuit, perform any abdominal move you would normally perform indoors on the ground or on the cleaner, smoother surface of a park bench.
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