So, Where is fitness headed?
We predict the hottest trends for 2015, straight out of this year’s Health and Fitness Expo.
At the far end of Sydney’s Bondi Beach, near the rock pools, a friendly pair of tanned, chiseled and laid back Australians with bleached blonde hair and tattoos are having a very serious conversation about gluten. The girl, in her early twenties, who sports the latest Lorna Jane active wear (and coincidently looks like a fitness model) is performing a perfect single leg squat balancing on a 1 meter high pole, whilst her friend, a surfer type, is hanging upside down from a chin up bar. Both are wrapped up in the discussion, which takes them around 30 minutes and hasn’t deviated much from when I first took my earplugs out to listen in.
As I practice my L-sits and take a lesson in Muscle-Ups from a guy who looks like an Australian, beefed up Ed Sheerin, I can’t help but notice the variety of people at the Bondi Beach Outdoor gym and the emerging sub-culture here that has a very different feel to the gyms which I have attended for 10 years.
Instantly, I notice 3 major differences between this outdoor training dream location and my local gym.
Back to Basics Benefit #1- Everyone’s welcome!
Firstly, this is a welcoming place. It’s a free outdoor gym, which means that everyone and anyone can walk by, get a workout in and move on. This also means that some children nearly get knocked over as my Ed-Sheerin look alike friend (Who’s real name is Daniel) performs some sort of flying backflip off a 2.5 meter high bar and lands around 4 meters away in a squat position.
Unlike in the gym, there is no tension here despite the limited space. The child’s father simply moves his daughter to the side and Daniel gets back to his Cirque Du Soleil-esque routine.
To my right, a 70 something Chinese tourist approaches the parallel bars. Despite the heat, he’s wearing a full tracksuit and a backpack, but what really shocks me is what he does next. Approaching the bar, without warm up or hesitation, he promptly performs what must have been around 50 L-sit raises in quick succession. Surely, he must have been on the Chinese Olympic team? My grandparents could barely stand up off the couch without a complaint when they were alive!
