When working in the park, there are a number of types of equipment I like to use. There is equipment that’s already in the natural environment. When I say the natural environment, I mean things like trees, fallen branches, cut logs, slopes, that kind of thing. And we’ll make use of those during our workout. There’s just a little bit of imagination required to make for a fun session. Other things that I would use as equipment will be, for instance, Park furniture such as parks have benches, lampposts, metal railings, maybe steps, even walls!
In some areas, there will be formal concrete or tarmac basketball pitches, and the like. There may be sports pitches marked out, and we will use them.
So there’s the natural environment as well as the manmade that are there for use to use.
On top of that, I often load my car up with portable gym equipment. Such things as kettlebells, battle ropes, slam balls, power bags, I even have scaffolding poles, broomsticks, socks (!). I have like tyres for rolling, throwing, and carrying and crawling through.
I also have a very heavy chain which is fun to drag around. All in all, it comes to comes down to having a trainer and instructor with a good imagination.
Finally, what is probably the most important piece of equipment that we use in the park is yourself – your own bodyweight and, indeed, your partner’s bodyweight if too, are working in pairs or groups of three or more. We don’t necessarily need to bring any outside equipment to the park with what’s already there and with yourselves. There is genuinely more than enough we can do on our own, without any kit, to make for a great workout.
In many ways, I prefer to bring external equipment into the park as an exception rather than as a rule. This means that the session where kit is brought along becomes more surprising, more fun, a little out of the ordinary and to a certain extent a bit of a treat. And everybody likes a bit of a treat a surprise!
In summary, the equipment that we would use in bootcamps in the park come be from the natural environment – trees, slopes, logs, and the like. From the manmade environment we’ll use benches railings, lampposts, steps, and portable gym equipment such as kettlebells, slam balls, battle ropes and the like, all of which, when put together or used separately mean that it’s possible for every single workout to be unique.
And that’s the beauty of outdoor bootcamp.