Over the recent long weekend the family and I spent the weekend with our friends Luke, V and family down on the coast and luckily enough Luke aka christopherblank is always up for working out. Now before I move onto blogging out about our workouts, for those of you out there who are into their furniture, then check out their custom furniture making business as they seriously do amazing stuff https://christopherblank.com.au/.

Preparing for the session

Before we even started planning the workout we needed to determine what equipment we had available (both conventional and non conventional). We found we had the following which would allows us to plan a couple of great workouts:

  • Medicine ball 3 & 6kg
  • 2* Large Dowel Sticks
  • Various resistance bands and handles
  • Foam roller
  • Skateboard
  • Outdoor lounge and dining room set

Benefits of partner / outdoor training

Its refreshing to change things up from a training perspective as the body and mind can sometimes become a bit stale with training and it loves a challenge i.e. new stimulus. The exercises posted below incorporate all parts of the body, incorporate the fundamentla movement patterns of life i.e. squat, lunge, push, pull etc, incorporate a range of both isolated and integrated (kinetic chain) movements, use various equipment (minimal) with gravity and ground reaction force challenging the system. We have also adjusted various acute training variables such as sets, reps, rest breaks, time under tension, speed to challenge the body. Training with a partner kept us accountable, but also made the session fun with a bit of gentle competition, but also banter and laughs. Throw in a few little humans aka kids and we also meant we were involving them for some fun but also modelling active lifestyles. Anyways, onto session 1.

Session 1

With a bit of planning and creativity we were able to come up with the following for session 1.

Session 1 Outdoor Partner Training

The session quickly evolved as we started as the creative ideas were flowing and we wanted to keep moving consistently for the 45 minutes. So we ended up adding in a few additional exercises. We would often pair exercises i.e. upper body with lower body and each person would complete one whilst the other completed the other. For the partner based exercises where we worked together, we would then superset these exercises with one that trained another region of the body i.e. lower body exercise partnered with push up med ball pass to allow us to keep moving and training without gassing out the upper body.

I have included some of the videos below from session 1 to give you an idea of what we did. For those of you who get offended by bare chests, please don’t go any further :_).

Exercises in this video above include:

  • Split kneeling band resisted trunk rotation
  • Band resisted lateral steps with pallof press
  • Alternating band over head press / dowel stick overhead squat
  • Push up with med ball pass
  • Dowel stick horizontal body weight pull up / dowel stick isometric hold

Video 2 exercises from above

  • Skateboard tucks / skateboard mountain climbers
  • Split squat med ball low to high alternating chops
  • Incline dowel stick push ups
  • Incline dowel stick dips

Session 2 (the next morning)

Feeling like the body had done a good workout from the day before, we decided to change things up with regards to the exercise routine. Essentially we were incorporating all the same body regions, but we changed the focus of the exercise and movements performed. Below I have outlined some (not all) of the exercises performed with videos. For some of the exercises we would focus on performing exercise for time i.e. 45-60 seconds, whereas others were repetitions for time under tension.

Exercises in the video above:

  • Partner exercise – 3 Point plank with vertical band pull down
  • Partner exercise – split squat static single arm alternating horizontal press
  • Partner exercise – split squat 135 degree alternating press with partner isometrically holding the band
  • Partner exercise – isometric band hold in athletic stance and kneeling split squat horizontal row
  • Med ball press and hold with alternating lunges (various lunge directions and directional ball press) / med ball mountain climber

Exercises in the video above include:

  • Split squat double arm band open arc low to mid / med ball spiderman push up
  • Med ball squat with open arc low to high / med ball lateral squat with open arc

Anyways, there is some insight into how we approached exercise over the weekend when we didnt have access to our traditional gym. We are down that way over Easter again so I will be sure to post up our workouts then.

This blog post was written by osteopath Heath Williams of Principle Four Osteopathy. Principle Four Osteopathy is located in Pleasance House on Level 4 at 178 Collins St. Book into see one of our great team by calling 0396709290 or online at www.principlefourosteopathy.com.