A Workout in the Woods

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Every Sunday my husband and I work out with Julie and her husband. We started off by doing the crossfit open workouts together every week and then just kind of kept going with our own workouts. Julie and our two husbands are incredibly fit and I’m….well, I’m trying. 

This weekend was my husband’s turn to make up the workout we would be doing. He had some tortuous workout planned, but then we decided to hit the Vita Parcours near Julie’s house instead. The sun was actually shining for a change and so the outdoors were calling. I was a little nervous for this workout because I wasn’t sure what I was in for. I did, however, know that running was involved. I hate running.

Have you ever done a Vita Parcours workout? Well, let me tell you….there is no more beautiful place to do it than here in Switzerland. In fact, they were invented in Switzerland in 1968 and the very first one was located near Zürich. Today, Switzerland has over 500 of these organized fitness trails and there are over 2500 world wide.There are three of these courses within 10 minutes of my house. This one is directly next to Julie’s house. You can have a look here for a listing of all of the parcours trails in the Zürich area.

A typical parcours trail is 2-3 km long and it leads uphill for at least part of the way. Most have about 15 stations where you can do a variety of exercises. The exercises are categorized blue for endurance, yellow for flexibility and red for strength. You run from station to station and do the exercises at each. When Julie is your workout partner, there’s bound to be a twist though. We didn’t just do pull-ups, we did burpee pull-ups at the pull-up station.

We made up a few stations like these box jumps onto a stump, a couple hundred meters of walking lunges and then, at the end, atomic push-ups on the swings at the playground.

If you don’t have a parcours where you live, you can still get creative in the woods or your local playground. Find things to jump over or onto. Add in a few sprints and walking lunges. Pick up heavy stuff. Drop for a few rounds of push-ups. Make it fun and your workout will be over before you know it.

By the way, I survived and the running didn’t kill me after all 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

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