Outdoor Workouts

I was working out at Lake Merced, because it was actually sunny today in the Bay Area. The past few days have been wet and cold, so I thought I'd take advantage of the sun when I can. The great thing about Lake Merced is that it has several exercise stations spread out along the trail surrounding the lake. You can do pull-ups at the hanging rings station, then walk, bike or run to the next station and perform push-ups, head to the next station and perform dips on the parallel bars, and so on and so forth. Golden Gate Park has a similar trail, but it's somewhat hidden.

If you're lucky enough to live near a park or scenic trail that has such exercise stations, then I suggest you give the workout trail a try. Going from station to station is sort of a combination of circuit training and staggered sets training. Your cardio is interspersed between sets of body weight exercises.

Here's a workout that I did today:

Pull-ups (3 sets of as many reps as possible), then walk to balance beams

Pistols, aka one-legged squats (3 sets of as many reps as possible), then walk to parallel bars

Dips (3 sets of many reps as possible), then walk back to previous station and reverse the order of exercises


Ideally your walk or bike ride between stations should not be any longer than a few minutes. If you run between stations, then the run should be no longer than a minute to a minute and a half. If your trail has the exercises station set so far apart that the cardio portion of the workout would be longer than the strength training portion, then I suggest you break up the distances with push-ups or pistols.

So here's how it would look using pistols:

Pull-ups (3 sets of as many reps as possible), then walk for a minute

Pistols, aka one-legged squats
- do one set for each leg, then walk for a minute towards the next station
- do one set for each leg, then walk for a minute towards the next station
- do one set for each leg, then walk and arrive at the next station

Dips on parallel bars (3 sets of many reps as possible), then walk back to previous station and reverse the order of exercises