Five Reasons that Outdoor and Indoor Fitness Equipment Are Not the Same and Four Tips to Design the Best Outdoor Fitness Area
Back when I was in the commercial fitness equipment industry, we did a lot of R&D, prototype design, testing, and product development. And that’s just for one machine; say an arm-curl/biceps machine.
These are called single-station strength machines, which means that one entire machine is specifically designed for one muscle or muscle group, like the upper arm/biceps. Then there are like twenty other machines to hit the rest of the body.
But one entire machine, just for one specific exercise. Then we would take the “finished” product to the next trade show to see how an actual human related to it. These people ranged from gym owners, to fitness enthusiasts, to professional bodybuilders. And they were quite critical.
“The resistance falls off at the end”, “I don’t like the weight ratio”, “the range of motion isn’t fluid all the way through”, and so on. At a fitness equipment trade show, before the actual hall opens officially, there’s a time period in the early morning hours, referred to as “early morning workouts”, where you could come in and get a workout on the new machines. As representatives of the manufacturer, our job was to get feedback from the users.
One year, we introduced a new leg press machine. A gentleman who owned a Gold’s Gym came into the booth to try it out. He got on it, adjusted the weight and the distance to accommodate his height. He pressed it once and stopped, projecting a thoughtful, discerning face. I walked over. He pressed it again and back. I asked, “What do you think?” He said, “It puts a lot of pressure on my calves.” And I said, “Good, because it’s a leg press machine.” Not the best salesy response, but we ended up having a good conversation.
The thing is, these manufacturers are in very serious competition. Everyone makes their own version of an Arm Curl Machine, and so on down the line. I visited one R&D department and there was a professional runner dressed in a full body motion-capture suit (mocap), while a kinesiologist studied and mapped his motion on a computer. That’s how high-tech it is.
So, if you’ve ever been to a gym and worked out on any of the equipment there, the quality of the joint angles, range of motion, anthropometrics (how it fits the human form), smoothness, ease of use, comfortability, adjustability, and biomechanics are what you experience.
Then, one day you notice that your local park has put in some outdoor exercise equipment. You get on the elliptical and quickly realize it’s nothing like the one at the gym. You get on the chest press machine and realize it’s nothing like the one at the gym. The quality of the exercise is terrible.
That’s because it’s nothing like the equipment at the gym, nor for the most part can it be. If outdoor fitness equipment was on par with what goes into a health club, you might find it in a health club, but you won’t. You won’t because it’s not even close to the same quality, design, feel, adjustability, and so on. Not even the same resistance mechanism.
Here are a few reasons why:
- In an indoor environment, the equipment can have many adjustments to accommodate most heights and builds. An outdoor environment is subjected to harsh elements, misuse, and vandalism. Adjustment mechanisms, just won’t hold up.
- Indoor strength machines use cables, pulleys, cams, and weight stacks. Again, it just wouldn’t hold up in an outdoor setting.
- Plush padding in seats and backs are traded out for hard plastic. Not very comfortable.
- Highly technical and electronic cardio machines wouldn’t last a day outdoors. To duplicate a treadmill for outdoor use is nearly impossible and to make an elliptical trainer feel like an indoor elliptical trainer, it must first have an ellipse (an elliptical motion mechanism usually at the pedals or in the front). Then there are flywheels, motors, computers, and so on that all come together to make the machine feel and operate the way it does. Can’t do that with an outdoor product.
- Most outdoor fitness equipment is designed and developed by a playground manufacturer or with that approach. The science in R&D isn’t there. Does it look like an arm curl? Yes. Can you do arm curls on it? Yes. Same quality exercise? Not even close.
So, what to do?
- You’re outdoors, so change your mindset. This is not a plush air-conditioned gym. However, being outdoors has way more psychological, emotional, and physical benefits than being indoors.
- If you’re designing an outdoor fitness space, stick to equipment where our bodies move, not the machines. Pull-up bars (a variety of grips and heights), parallel bars, push-up stations with various levels, an overhead traverse ladder (a requisite skill in most obstacle course races), plyometric steps, and elements to connect exercise bands, straps, and use medicine balls. As you can see, these are solid fixed elements with no adjustments or built in resistance mechanisms. This is real whole-body functional exercise.
- As far as cardio goes, most people either walked, jogged, or biked to where this station is. We don’t need machines outdoors to get cardio. The more the machine has moving components, the more things go wrong and it’s just not a good quality design anyway.
- As a park planner, the last thing you want is your visitors to be disappointed and talk badly about your exercise equipment. You can avoid that by sticking with number 2 above. If you have an “elliptical” cardio machine in your park, it will be very disappointing for the user. They’re used to the highly sophisticated machine at the health club.
There are a couple of outdoor fitness manufacturers now making resistance-based machines that are biomechanically functional and user-satisfying and we represent those lines.
For more information, questions, or advice on outdoor fitness, please email rob@toplinerec.com
Thanks and have a great workout!