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:

1. 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.
2. Indoor strength machines use cables, pulleys, cams, and weight stacks.  Again, it just wouldn’t hold up in an outdoor setting.
3. Plush padding in seats and backs are traded out for hard plastic.  Not very comfortable. 
4. 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. 
5. 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? 

1. 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. 
2. 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.
3. 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. 
4. 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!

About the Whole Flower, Bee, Playground, Child, Community Analogy

“A flower is simply a weed with a good marketing budget.” – Rory Sutherland

A weed gets no love, but a colorful flower gets bees.  More bees, more pollination, more flowers.  The landscape is enriched with beautiful weeds; eh … flowers. 

But it’s not just flowers.  These bees will pollinate and fertilize other plants that produce seeds, and the entire habitat continues to grow and thrive, supporting other animals.  Life proliferates harmoniously.    

Without these flowers, there would be no bee activity, and no pollination or fertilization of more than 70 crop species out of 100 that feed around 90% of the world’s population.  No honey either. Our world and lives would become much harsher, bland, and devoid of many things.

Because of these well-marketed weeds, the bees get excited and that communicates joy and excitement to other bees that also visit the flowers and that’s how all of this works.  Everything is positively affected exponentially.

To paraphrase Mr. Sutherland, a playground is a park with a good marketing budget.  It makes the landscape more attractive, just like a flower to the weed.  It’s not that much of a stretch, but the point is that a playground brings more kids, which excites other kids to visit and play. 

This spreads joy, health, social skills, happiness, positivity, fitness, friendships, learned cooperation, risk taking, resiliency, and stress relief.  Yes, children experience and hold more stress than we’d like to admit.

They get better sleep, it strengthens their immune system, and their brains are more prepared for learning.  Beyond the children, there’s the community.  A park with a playground increases property values, which means more property tax and therefore more funding for better maintenance, beautification, and growth and the ecosystem proliferates positively. 

And it’s not just playgrounds in this respect: Shade structures, shelters, site furnishings, outdoor fitness equipment and so on, are like planting flowers, whereas they add something beautiful and useful to the landscape that attracts more “bees”.  More “bees”, more “honey”, more growth and so on.

Let’s plant some flowers. 

Rust. It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way

Fe₂O_{3 •} H₂O. Hydrated Ferric Oxide. Rust! 

Why do things rust so easily? 

Steel is made of iron and carbon and iron can’t help but rust, because all it wants to do is go back to its thermodynamically-favored state of being, which is iron ore.  When we mine iron, it looks like rust, because it is rust.  When we make steel, we’re forcing it to be something it doesn’t want to be and rust is iron’s way of defying our efforts.  Here in Florida, that fight is even tougher. 

So to counteract that, we clean, treat, coat, paint and so on.  But, that only slows down the process.  On most outdoor fitness equipment or playground products, we first see rust occurring at the welds.

Why there?

The process.  One of the best ways to fight rust is galvanization, but it’s rust-resistance qualities are compromised during the welding process.    

When galvanized steel is welded, it is exposed to extremely high temperatures, typically exceeding the melting point of zinc (419°C or 787°F). During welding, several key factors can impact the integrity of the zinc coating and the overall corrosion protection:  Zinc vaporization, oxidation and depletion, spatter and contamination, heat affected zones are compromised. 

BeStrong Outdoor Fitness Equipment uses a different approach.

Post-Weld Galvanization:  Galvanizing after welding, ensures that all component parts, including the welded areas, receive the necessary surface treatment for corrosion protection.

Thickness:  BeStrong’s galvanization is 2.5 times thicker than competing products.    

Grinding: After welding and before galvanizing, our craftsmen employ precision grinding techniques to refine the appearance and aesthetics.  While it provides and exceptional visually appealing product, it removes even the smallest burrs and pits, further protecting any chance of rust sneaking in. 

Sandblasting: BeStrong adheres to the stringent standard SA3, where cinder, rust, and other surface impurities are completely removed, setting the stage for a flawless finish. 

Primer:  Before final surface coating, Epoxy Resin Powder is applied at 2.36-3.14 mil. thickness.  E-coating is commonly used in industries such as automotive, appliances, and furniture for corrosion protection and as a primer coat for additional coatings.

Top Coat: Lacquer with Weatherproof PES Powder, provides the ultimate protection against environmental factors. 

Beyond the process:  High quality standards in material selection, advanced material cutting techniques to ensure seamless assembly, and highly skilled welders using state-of-the-art equipment to join each piece to create a solid and dependable framework.  

BeStrong – Outdoor fitness equipment of the highest quality. 

Photo by Rémi Jacquaint on Unsplash

Albert Einstein's Formula for Success

“We don’t stop playing, because we grow old.  We grow old, because we stop playing.” – George Bernard Shaw.

In a 1929 interview with the New York Times, Albert Einstein presented his simple formula for success.  It goes like this: A = X + Y + Z

“While A represents Success, X is Work, Y is Play, and Z is Keeping Your Mouth Shut.”

Hmm … “Keeping your mouth shut” provides some insight as to where his head was at. We can read into that some other time, but in this important formula, there’s Y.  Play. 

Play relieves stress and makes us more resilient.  Resiliency is a huge deal.  Play improves brain function, stimulates our mind and boosts creativity and overall competency.  It improves our relationships and interactions with other humans.  It greatly improves and fosters emotional and psychological stability and overall health.  Maybe more importantly, it keeps us young and energetic. 

Play is so vitally important to human nature, overall health, and longevity, but in terms of success, it’s a must.  Play makes our work better.  Without our “down-time”, leisure, and active play, any time we spend “working” will suffer in quality.  It’s not so much about time spent working; it’s about how much we’re actually accomplishing. 

This is why recess is so important.  Well, adults need recess too.  Maybe more so. 

Play!  It might just be the fountain of youth as well as the key to success.

We’ll see you on the “playground”. 

The Real Reason that Prince and Burke Live Purple

Microsoft’s default or core color is blue.  The official Apple colors are black and grey.  And Google covers basically everything, everywhere, all at once with the primary colors of paint and light. 

But really, what’s in a color? 

Microsoft’s blue represents security, trust, and loyalty.  Apple’s black is about sophistication, power, and mystery.  Hmm … mystery.  And Google?  It’s plausible that the real reason is Google’s first server was built with Lego, in blue, red, yellow, and green. 

So, what’s with Burke’s purple? 

The tagline of Burke’s playground and recreation products is “Play that moves you.”  But, not just in a physical way.  So much goes into research, design, and development in each play element and product and how it fits into an overall system to ignite cognitive, social, emotional, and imaginative skill development.  It’s more than just a “playground”, but we’re not supposed to know that.  We should see it as an awesome thing to climb on, slide on, swing, jump, and laugh on, while leaving the technical stuff to the experts.

Purple is a color that encourages the mind, body, and soul to live in harmony.  It brings together balance of mental clarity with emotional stability.  It’s the color of enlightenment, welcoming all schools of thought.  It’s unbiased and civilized, as it promotes understanding and acceptance.

Yep, colors have meaning.  I didn’t know how much, until I went down this rabbit hole.

Did you know that purple is the most powerful visible wavelength of all the colors of the rainbow?  It stimulates our mood while it calms the mind and nerves.  It’s uplifting, as it encourages imagination, creativity, playfulness, and uniqueness.  This is why many musicians, writers, poets, and artists respond well to purple. 

But, that’s not why Prince embraced the color.  Purple represents royalty and according his sister Sharon Nelson, it made him feel more “Princely”. 

Royalty, strength, prestige, ability, and innovation are all represented by purple, while on a more human scale, empathy, peace, happiness, compassion, spirituality, and inspiration.

What’s in a color?  Well … more than meets the eye, apparently.

Wait, I hear Prince playing in the background; “I only want to see you laughing in the purple rain …”

Stress Keeps Us from Falling Over

Inside Arizona’s Biosphere 2, the trees grew very rapidly, more so than they would outside of the dome.  But, before they reached full maturity, they would simply fall over.  They would reach a certain height; and, it’s not that they reached the literal glass ceiling, but at a certain height, they would fall over. 

At first, the scientists couldn’t figure out why.  But after some research, they found the answer.  It was a complete lack of stress that made the root system, the bark, and the entire tree weak. 

In the real world outside of the dome, trees have to withstand wind and other elements, position themselves in a way to get more sunlight, and grow a deep and wide root system to get enough water. 

In Biosphere 2, the trees didn’t have to do any of those things: no wind, plenty of water, no elements like heavy rain, never too hot or cold, and there was always enough UV light.  All that comfort and ease produced weak trees that fell over.

Humans are kind of the same in this respect.  When we play, climb, swing, slide, run, jump, lift, pull, crawl, and move our body and use our mind to maneuver in ways that “stress” us to a certain degree, we get stronger, more flexible, less fragile, and more resilient.  We learn to make smart choices, mitigate danger, and safely navigate risk.

A well-designed playground, with challenging play elements, inspires children to grow stronger.  While there are biosphere reserves in Florida, there’s nothing like the Biosphere 2 dome.  Although a playground in mid-summer in Central Florida can feel like a greenhouse without air conditioning.  But, that’s part of risk navigation as well.  Awareness of the elements and making smart choices, is all part of the strengthening and resiliency process.

A Biosphere-2 tree would not survive in the real world; it doesn’t even “stand” a chance. 

Becoming stronger and more resilient in our formative years, helps us to handle stress and even distress in the real world, outside of the protective dome.  This is just as important in adults as well.  Instead of finding ways to completely avoid stress or stressors, it’s better to learn to engage with stress, manage it, and even use it to our advantage.  We’re less reactionary, we’re not devastated when the cheese is moved, we’re calmer, and more in control of our emotions.  Our temperament becomes more temperate. 

Outdoor exercise, even in Florida, is better than any pharmaceutical or supplement.  So, let’s go play.