There is a reason why we manufacture outdoor fitness equipment. It’s because we love it – the equipment, the exercises, and being outdoors. We often hear about the benefits of being outside a little each day, getting our Vitamin-D and thwarting off viruses, so it just makes sense to go outside for our daily workout.
We started designing outdoor fitness equipment because of all the benefits that outdoor play has had for young children. Pacific Outdoor Product first began designing children’s play systems back when we were all merely “kids” ourselves. Now that fitness is one of the most important activities in our day, we are creating more and more outdoor fitness equipment to help us with our exercise programs.
We know how good it makes us feel to “play” on all these very cool fitness stations. But, for the fun of it, let’s start listing some of the benefits.
Accessibility
If you are a runner, consider this! Outdoor fitness equipment is always there at the beginning and end of your run. A run should always start with a light warm up, and should always finish with a stretch and a cool down. Outdoor fitness equipment is perfect for this. First do a number of sit ups to warm up your core, some triceps dips to warm up the upper body, and maybe some step-ups to ensure your legs are ready for a good run. After returning, the outdoor fitness equipment is ready for you to do a cool down, or a leg stretch, or a back stretch. Following aerobic exercise with strength training or flexibility training puts a solid cap on your fitness efforts.
Adaptability
Can outdoor fitness equipment rival a good indoor gym? Let’s consider the bench press. A bench press exercise is the same as a push-up, but upside down. Many people cannot bench press their own weight, and until you start to exceed that weight, a bench press machine is superfluous (virtually unneeded.) In contrast, when using the StayFIT outdoor fitness equipment to do a push-up, simply putting more weight on one arm and alternating will accomplish the same thing as a bench press.
What’s more, when you have worked up to being able to do one armed push-ups…hold-on, you aren’t done with your outdoor equipment yet. By raising your legs higher, you have changed the angle and weight on your arms and it becomes a whole new exercise. In order to do that with an indoor bench press you would need to change the angle of the bench making it an incline bench press. Ugh…and that would mean purchasing more equipment!
If you are not convinced about the “push-up vs. bench press” benefit, how about the squat? The indoor squat machine is a nice piece of equipment, but… let’s talk about the adaptable squat fitness station. Can you get a good squat workout with outdoor fitness equipment? Oh yes…there are 3 ways: angles, variation, and balance. Do one set of squats with your feet close to the handles and stay vertical. Repeat, moving your feet out six inches. You will start to use your arms to pivot on the handles. Keep angling and repeating, and angle the other way. You can move your feet with each repetition and get an amazing squat workout. Now, add in balance and start removing weight off one leg. You could go right to one-legged squats, or work your way up to them. The handles on the outdoor fitness equipment make one-legged squats so much easier to do.
It is said that if a person can get up off the floor without the use of their hands, they have a long life left (Interesting read: Stand/Sit Test Predicts Longevity). So as you are working on your one, or two legged squats, test to see how little assistance you need from your hands. If your hands are floating above the handles, just barely touching and only ready for a slight balance correction, you are doing well. The benefit of doing squats this way is now you are exercising your balance as well as your strength, and that means you will be improving your fitness and health in ways superior to a squat machine.
…And cost!
Cost of outdoor fitness equipment versus indoor is dramatically lower. Can you put in a gym that allows you to do two dozen different exercises in your designate indoor work-out space? Maybe, but the odds that you can do it for less than outdoor fitness equipment is doubtful. The room alone, will be more expensive. In the same space as a typical small patio, you can place enough outdoor fitness equipment to really get your fitness sessions going. Installing just one multi-use pole fitness station, which is often used for suspension training, will get you going with more than a dozen exercises: squat, bench press, triceps, flies, rowing, bicep curls, leg curls, pull downs, presses, lateral raise, forward raise, leg lifts, and more depending on your fitness level and imagination.
Of course, the StayFIT outdoor fitness equipment isn’t limited to just these few benefits. It has more benefits than the never-ending number of exercises a person can perform on them.
