Do you ever just want to ditch the gym and get outside? I live in Calgary, AB, where the weather is pretty chilly most of the year. When it finally gets to be sunny, it’s nice to take advantage of the weather and train outside.
I wanted to give you an example of a body weight workout that you can do at a playground. My kids are a little old for the playground now, but I remember taking them and and hanging out at the playground for hours on a nice day. We live in an area with green spaces and lots of little parks. We’d go from one park to the next. At the time, I had two boxers (now I just have one slobbery one) and they’d come along too. The dogs would sit in the shade, the kids would hang around on the monkey bars or play ‘grounder’s’ or whatever suited them and I’d also hang around on the monkey bars….in fact I was probably the only ‘mom’ on the monkey bars. I know the other ‘mom’s’ thought I was a little (a lot) odd, but I knew they secretly wanted to give the monkey bars a try too. I tried to get them going but was unsuccessful.
It’s cool that my kids have always seen me doing things like this. They thought having a mom like this was pretty normal until they got a little older and met some of their friends mom’s. In fact, I remember going to my cousins house in BC when my daughter was only 4 and my son was just a year old. It was a family gathering and you know how they can get. I was ready to pull my hair out, as family gatherings tend to cause me to do. I wanted to burn off some energy so that I could play ‘nice nice’ with the relatives a little longer. I explained to Hannah that ‘Mommy was going to go to the gym just for 30 minutes’. The kids could stay and play with their cousins for a short time while I got a workout in. Hannah’s response was, ‘But Mommy, I want to go to the garage too…’ She figured that everyone had a full blown gym in their garage like we did (you can see what my garage gym looked like here).
In any case, my kids have been somewhat indoctrinated into a pretty active lifestyle…Sam and I like to do some sporty things together:
My son is headed for high school this coming fall. He’s 15 and pretty excited for high school football and other sports (as well as a new batch of girls to impress there). We spend a lot of time talking about training. Rather than “Eat, Pray, Love”, I tell him to “Eat, Sleep, Lift” this summer.
While most mom’s talk about brushing teeth, studying and cleaning your bedroom, I tend to nag Sam to ‘stretch his hamstrings, don’t forget about your calves, and oh, have you stretched those hip flexors?’ Just today a snippet of our conversation included: How much did you deadlift today? I’ll show you the clean and press. Why don’t you change from barbells to dumb bells for your biceps in your workout today.
It’s pretty cool that Sam and I can connect this way. I know some of my friend’s have trouble finding common ground with their teenaged boys. When it comes to sports, Sam’s dad was a pro football player so anything I say in that area pretty much falls on dead ears. I can’t form much in the way of intelligent conversation there. While I taught school sports for 20 years, Sam always teases me that ‘this isn’t dodge ball Mom’. So I’ll leave sport talk to Sam and his dad and Sam and I can talk training.
Okay, I’ve digressed…back to the outdoor workout….
Check it out below and if you want an entire program of body weight workouts, you can check this out (it’s one of the bonuses):
Here’s your workout, start with a 3-5 minute warm up of dynamic stretches and then:
1- Jump pull ups with controlled descent
- 10 reps
- Rest 30 seconds
- Repeat (2 sets total)
2- Hanging leg raise
- 10 reps
- Rest 30 seconds
- Repeat (2 sets total)
3- Inverted row
- 10 reps
- Rest 15 seconds
- Repeat 2 more times (3 sets total)
4 – Push ups to 30 sec plank hold
- 10 reps
- Rest 30 seconds
- Repeat 2 more times (3 sets total)
5- Incline push up
- 10 reps
- Rest 30 seconds
- Repeat (2 sets total)
6- Dips
- 10 reps
- Rest 30 seconds
- Repeat (2 sets total)
7a- Squats
- 20 reps
- No rest
7b – Pulsing squats
- 30 seconds
7c – Box jumps
- 10 reps
- 30 seconds rest
- Repeat both exercises for a total of 3 sets
8 -Spider crawls
- 10 reps per leg
- Rest 30 seconds
- Repeat 2 more times (3 sets total)
Static Stretching for 3-5 minutes
Again, you can check out an entire program of body weight workouts here and see if it’s right for you.