TURF OUT EXCESS FAT
Trade the treadmill for laps of your local park to chase down weight loss that you can sustain in the long term. Lace up
As the days grow longer, make your fat-loss plan stick by training outside
If your New Year’s resolutions unravelled shortly after the decorations came down, well, join the club. According to the University of Minnesota, 80% of resolutions are doomed to failure, with the majority already abandoned by the second week of February. It’s easy to lose hope when faced with such steep odds, but don’t put your new Pegasus trainers on eBay just yet. The remedy for your waning commitment to your weight-loss training is right on your doorstep.
Researchers at the Université de Sherbrooke asked a group of participants to complete an hour-long cardio and weight training workout, three times per week. Half of the group sweated out their sessions in a gym, while the rest tackled the programme in the great outdoors. At the end of the 12-week-long experiment, the open-air group had missed fewer workouts than those confined within four walls, attending an impressive 97% of their training sessions.
Unlike members of the indoor group, who experienced a dip in motivation as the weeks rolled by, the green team remained raring to go throughout. The researchers found that they were also more active for the rest of the day than their gym-shackled counterparts and reported greater levels of tranquility, presumably because they didn’t have to wipe someone else’s sweat off the equipment before starting their run.
So, if your resolutions need a reboot, take advantage of the (slowly) improving weather and take your workout outdoors, where grass-roots gains are ripe for the picking. You’ll supercharge your focus, cultivate muchneeded inner peace and finish the year conspicuously fitter and stronger than you started.