Your Environment, Your Playground

The cool thing about training is that you can really train everywhere you want. You can train on the road, in the park, at a studio, at a gym, you can name it, you can train anywhere, even at an “on route” station when you are driving on the 401.

With the help of a stop watch, you can do high-intensity interval training. You can do what I like to call “Tabatas”, 8X20 sec all out efforts for 10 seconds of total recovery which ends up being a whole 4 minutes of work to get your heart pumping. You can do push-ups, squats, jump squats (my favourite) and pretty much any exercise that may come in your mind. Jump squats may have the effect of taking a coffee when it is too late for you to take one.

If you are looking into mostly working on mobility, stability and strength training, you can really be effective with a yoga mat and your own body. If you want to get fancy, you can start including a stability ball, a chair and or some towels to work on your core, upper and lower body strength. The possibilities are endless when the imagination starts kicking in.

The other day, at the pool, I noticed that there was a pull-up bar hanging up there, at least eight feet off the ground. What a great way to help out learning how to do dynos in rock climbing (please note that I am only 5’5” so that bar is pretty high for me). What I invite you to do is to start looking at your environment and try to find out a way to really use it to your advantage and try to have fun with it. Make your environment your playground. The end goal in training is important but so is the journey to getting there. Having fun and keeping your mind stimulated to help yourself stay healthy and active is for me, what life is about.

Live your life, have fun doing it, train your body, train your mind, rest and repeat.