CAN I TRAIN OUTDOORS WITHOUT LOSING MY GAINS THIS SUMMER?
Bobby, Dundee
Nature’s lack of barbells means that maintaining your muscle is no walk in the park: you have to tinker your workouts at the grass roots to retain results.
First, rather than dragging your dumbbells across the lawn, opt for some explosive bodyweight moves. “Think jump squats and burpees,” explains Andrew Mitchison, elite personal trainer and co-founder of Gym in the
Park. “These full-body exercises will maximise your muscles by targeting their fast-twitch fibres.” Danish researchers at the University of Aarhus agree: they found that these drills harvest 6% more muscle power than standard weight training.
Next, rev up your reps.
And we mean all the way up. McMaster University scientists found that reaching exhaustion with low-weight moves delivers the growth you would glean from low-rep weights-room work.
“It doesn’t matter what the stimulus is: push your muscles to the same point and you’ll reap the same rewards,” explains Mitchison. To achieve this, try press-ups, or trap a towel in the top of the garage door and start rowing.
If you’re gunning for single-digit body fat this summer, park laps already trump treadmills. Due to the lack of wind resistance, machine runners need to push 15% harder to burn the same number of calories as they would do outdoors, according to a University of Milan study.
You needn’t feel guilty about taking a breather mid-route, either – as long as you stay out of the shade. Research published in Plos One suggests that simply soaking up the sun’s vitamin D spikes your testosterone, levelling-up your lean mass. Just make sure you don’t absorb too much: your Herculean gains won’t look nearly as impressive in a shade of lobster.