How to Use Equipment on Outdoor Fitness Tracks
If you’ve ventured out to find fitness routes for the Lifehacker Fitness Challenge , you may have spotted some mysterious unmarked equipment. What are you going to do with this barbell at the ground? Is this an incline bench? Here are your answers.
Fitness routes are different everywhere, so I’ll show you some of the stations on my local Fit-Trail, set up around 1985 (in North Park near Pittsburgh, PA). This is not an exhaustive list, but it may give you some ideas if some of the signs are missing on your itinerary.
Nothing and vertical pillars
Some stations may have a sign (or, at one time they had a sign), but no equipment. They may ask you to do one of the following:
- Touch your feet
- Lean forward slightly at the waist and rotate the torso to the sides, back and to the other side (continuously or with a delay in each position)
- Jumping jack
- Jump up and push your leg out to the side, touching the foot, then repeat on the other leg (once you learn the rhythm, it’s like a very energetic version of running in place).
If there is a pillar or post, you can do one of the following:
- Lean on it, bending one knee to stretch your calves.
- Hold it for balance by stepping on the nearest shorter stance.
- Grasp the handles at the bottom of the rack when performing a lunge.
- Lean your back against it and sit against the wall
Rods and handles
I promise this isn’t all for pull-ups. (But most likely there is at least one of them.)
- Bars high above the ground: pull-ups or pull-ups. Pro tip if you don’t know how to pull up: sit down and jump as high as possible, grabbing the bar on the way up. This is a cheat, but a useful cheat that will help you practice well and not just walk by.
- Another use for tall bars is to hang from them with your legs close to your chest.
- Monkey rods: climb over them from hand to hand if you can.
- Rings high off the ground: They can be for pull-ups, or they can be for full body stretches when you just hang and swing from them. Aaaaa.
- Bars at chest level: “walk” over them on your hands or do push-ups.
- Bars low to the ground: push-ups.
Items similar to benches
- Low bench: sit on it and touch your toes
- Incline Bench with Top Handles: Grasp the handles and bend your legs over your head in the opposite direction. (This looks like it’s probably not good for your back.)
- Bench with a low bar next to it: Sit on the bench with your feet under the bar and lean back. Then do squats.
- Bench with short stance next to it: Sit on the bench with your feet on either side of the stance. Raise your legs and slap your feet together over the counter.
Lumber in odd configurations
- Beam on Earth: Balancer
- Zigzag rays on the ground: either a balance bar (do it back and forth for more fun), or a thing to jump over, jumping in a zigzag manner.
- Tilted Beam High in the Air: Jump and try to touch as high as possible.
- Knee / Hip Slope: Place your hand on the bar and jump over with both feet at the same time.
If you find equipment that isn’t on this list, try Philip Harrison’s Instagram , which is full of signposts from parkour in the New York / New Jersey / Connecticut area. Or post it below and we’ll scratch our heads together!