How to Use an Outdoor Gym

Video Transcription

Hi everyone I’m Sean Sarantos, bodybuilding.com athlete and I’m here at Camel’s Back Park to showcase this brand-new outdoor gym that was donated by bodybuilding.com and the HC company.

I’m going to go through every single one of these exercises to let you know how to do them correctly. Keep in mind that this outdoor gym is recommended for ages 14 and up.

For this one I will be showing you the hand walks, that’s a great core exercise.

What you want to do is you want to go ahead, get yourself right off the floor there, keeping your arms nice and straight and tightening your abdominals.

You want to go ahead and slowly shift all the way to the end of the bars, trying to keep that body and that core tight throughout the whole movement.

All right the next station that we’re at is the S shaped jump bar, it is great for agility exercises.

What you want to do is you want to keep your feet together and jump from side to side, just keep on going. If you want to increase the difficulty, either try to jump faster from side to side or increase the height that you jump,

So feet together, be careful, all right make sure you come off the ground, you don’t want your feet to hit the bar and trip, so up, just like that, side to side.

So the next station we are at is the squat press. Don’t let the name fool you because I just read the sticker like I said, that’s on every single one of these, and it has way more than just the squat.

So if you want to do the squat press, get into the squat position, the machine will go ahead and give you a little bit of leeway, to get settled.

Feet flat, come up and press into a shoulder press.

All right now if you want to stay there, and just do shoulder press, you can go ahead and do that. If you want to go into squats, you can go into squats. If you want to go into bicep curls, you can go into bicep curls.

So we’re at the next station which is the horizontal ladder, better known as the monkey bars.

Okay so on top of that you can do pull-ups, but what you usually see is you see people going across one at a time.

This works the core, all right if you want to stop yourself from swinging so much and taking body momentum, go ahead and slow it down and control each one.

We’re going to keep our feet together and kind of frog jump from one to the next, increasing in height. So we come up, go the next one, go the next one, and that’s one circuit.

Now you can do rounds where you can go ahead and keep on going for 10 rounds keeping your body moving, your heart rate up.

You can go ahead and choose a difficulty for your box and do quick feet where you switch non-stop. You can go ahead and challenge yourself and work on your height jumps. So you can work on the box jumps, come up and go ahead and work on your explosive strength. So it’s just great stuff, you work on your ploughs, you work on your agility, and you work on your overall body strength.

The great thing about this is if you are by yourself, you don’t need somebody to hold your feet. Okay you can go ahead and put your feet right into this invention right here, come down and go ahead and work into that sit up.

Keeping your body straight and working your core, hands on your chest, there you go. Take your feet out, flatten out, you can work on leg lifts which will work on your lower core. Flip over using the handles, you can go into push-ups, work on your chest.

The way we’re going to do is, we’ll put our feet up, back nice and straight, arms straight out, you’re going to go ahead and pull back, keeping your elbows nice and tight to your body, and pinch your back, just like that. Make sure you don’t lose form and try to do it like this. Everything is slow and controlled, for your feet right in there.

Get yourself situated keeping your back nice and straight, you’re going to bend at your hips and then come right back up. Straighten out, okay? Bend at the hips, straighten out.

I’m going to show you the chest press right now, it’s almost like a push-up except you’re in the seated position.

Go ahead and choose your hand placement, I’ll choose the inside handles, and all you’re doing is pushing away from your chest, contracting and bringing it down nice and slowly. Contract and bring it down nice and slowly.

So the lat pull-downs are a great option for you if you can’t do a pull-up of your own body weight. If that’s very difficult for you, these are great to do.

Go ahead and take a seated position, grab the handles, keeping your elbows tight, pull your body off. Notice how the seat comes up, so you’re actually pulling your body off the ground, but it’s taking some of the resistance away, so you should be able to go ahead and work on this machine until you’re comfortable enough and strong enough to do a pull-up of your own body weight.

The next station is going to be leg press, so now we get to hit pretty much the entire body after this one. Legs, just go ahead and plant your feet into the position it shows, sit back all the way back on the back of your seat, get your form and you’re just going to go ahead and push off, all right.

Using your body as resistance, your body weight, come down, push off, contract.

So pull-ups, just pulling your body straight up, into a chin-up. Bring your hands in, reverse the grip, up all right, and you go right around into a dip. This is one of those stations that’s great to go ahead and help stretch out your core, get your hip movement correct.

So what we’re going to do is we’re going to go ahead and go into a little stepper right here. Keeping your body straight, you’re going to go ahead and switch your hip movement, all right, keeping your core nice and tight.

After you’re done with that one, you can go ahead and head over to this disk, and this will really help stretch out your abs. So you’ll twist your body, and stretch out the core, and loosen and flex your hips around.

So now we’re at the sit-up board, just like we did over there with the flat bench, worked on sit-ups and leg lifts, this is a bit more advanced, now there’s a decline all right, gravity is going to take more of the resistance of your body weight.

So the way we’re going to do it, is we’re going to go ahead, position ourselves, put your feet behind the bar, and go ahead and go all the way down. Notice how we’re going past the flat mark, and going into that decline.

So now you have a longer way to travel in order to get that movement in your sit-up, so there you go and now that works your upper and mid abs.

Now we can go ahead and reverse our position and do that leg lift motion that we did before and work on our lower abs. Grab onto the pole, bring your legs up, and now you’re working on your lower abs.

So this station is the multi bars and just like the name it has multiple uses. We can use it to stretch, we can use it to work on our form, we can use it to work on our push-ups, all right, so if you can’t do a regular push-up, this is a great way to take some of the resistance away.

You’re going to go ahead and lean onto it and push off of it.

You’ve automatically decreased the resistance and it’s going to help you go into a regular push-up with your full body weight. So we can do that, if you would work on your stretches, you can do some hamstring stretches, okay.

If you wouldn’t work on your form for squats or lunges without falling over and have imbalances, you can go ahead and grab it, working on your squat form, working on your lunges and having that safety there to make sure that you’re not falling over.