West Park – Outdoor Gym

Today the ‘Places We Will Go’ was hindered by a lack of sun which, has been behind grey rain clouds. :O( However, the rain from earlier in the day had subsided so Boo and I went to one of our local parks (West Park). This year I have been working really hard on trying to lose weight. At the beginning of the year I was about 16st 4lb and although summer has slowed my progress I am now about 13st 7lb. I never thought this possible in my 40’s. My success has been driven by sensible eating (not calorie counting food intake) and monitoring how many calories I have been burning everyday on my Apple Watch. I always ensure I do 500+ active calories everyday…ca 11,000 steps or 9km walking. My average distance a day is around 11km.

Now that my weight is on the way to my target I have started to focus on improving my body strength and I have recently been visiting parks with exercise equipment in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. In particular, with exercise kit which concentrates on moving your own body weight around.

So today I thought it would be nice to highlight West Park’s offering with the help of Boo as my model in a yellow Macintosh (Thank you Ms Boo). West Park has 10 green and grey exercise machines (torture devices) which sit around the perimeter of the main park, the distance around which I estimate at about 2.5 – 3km. The exercise machines are spaced relatively evenly although there are a couple of short gaps and some longer ones. The machines are quite basic but I have found after a couple of times they really ‘do-the-job’, especially coupled with a jog / sprint from machine to machine. Don’t worry though, I have saved you (and me) the embarrassment of sharing pictures of me actually grinding my way around. Ewwww not pretty.

These are probably not the proper names for these machines…but this is my best guess as well as the muscles

1. Arm Press – Tricep & Shoulders – extra extension uses lateral back muscles – moderate / hard
2. Leg Press – Thigh & Calf – moderate / hard
3. Rower – Shoulders & Upper Back – easy 
4. Skier (X-Trainer) – Arms, Legs & Core – very easy
5. Shoulder Press – Shoulders – hard
6. Core Twister – Stretches Abdominal Muscles – very easy / easy
7. Upper Body Stretcher – Shoulders and Arms – extremely easy 
8. Sit-up Bench – All Abdominal Muscles – hard
9. Walker – Upper Thigh and Buttocks – moderate
10. Snowboard Slalom – Lower Abdominal and Thigh  – moderate / hard

So after Boo and I had our fun, we did something even more exciting – we bought some sawdust for our rabbit…I will save you that story…as I fear the excitement will be too much.

Although this blog post does not focus on all of West Parks offering it is worth pointing out it is a fantastic destination for many activities: small splash-pad, cafe, lots of football, rugby, bowling greens and cricket pitches as well as 2 reasonable (although not the best) kids play areas, one for toddlers / young children (ages 2-5) and another which is okay for  older children (age 5 – 11). The other main attraction is a substantial purpose built concrete skateboard and BMX park. Also attached to the main car park is a leisure centre and swimming pool. No doubt… Sonia and I will blog about this in the near future…so stay tuned.