St Luke's Fitness Training Park
The St Luke's Fitness Training Park - a new addition to the community developed by the Jack Purcell Recreation Association.
How to Use The Park
Bodyweight fitness and circuit training requires little to no equipment and can be completed in short amounts of time using full body exercises, resistance training, and plyometrics. This type of exercise will help you build strength, power, agility, flexibility, speed, balance and coordination while mastering your own body.
You can perform exercises like lunges, squats, jumps, push ups, dips, pull ups, rows and planks that will improve both your upper body and lower body strength that will then lead you to learning other skills like handstands, cartwheels, and swings on the bars.
A well balanced training program should focus on all the different muscle groups of the body and their ranges of motion. This is essential for your performance, building a healthy posture, improving injuries, as well as your overall health and well- being.
The Main Benefits of Bodyweight Training:
Types of equipment available at the park:
Parallel Bars - A set of horizontal bars that are raised from the ground. They are used for bodyweight strength training exercises such as dips, L sits, rows, push ups, shoulder stands, swings, push ups etc.
Pull Up Bars - Horizontal bars that are used for exercises such as pull ups, leg raises, levers, skin the cats, swings, bar muscle ups etc.
Monkey Bars - A fun apparatus where you can revisit your youth on the playground with swinging, pull up variations, and training training your grip strength.
Step Up Bench - An elevated platform used for exercises like squats, step ups, lunges, jumps and landings to train your leg strength and explosiveness. It can be also used for upper body drills like incline push ups and bench dips.
Vertical Bars - Also known as stall bars. They have been used in previous years of gym class. A great tool for core exercises, leg raises, and stretching.
Dip Bars - A simple tool for working your support strength with dips, support holds, L sits and other bodyweight exercises.
Gymnastics Rings - Primarily used for gymnastics skills that require upper body strength, stability, and coordination. You can train dips, pull ups, rows and skills like shoulder stands, skin the cats, and l sits to train your strength, body control, and core.
Start Your Training
Workouts are often broken into upper body strength and lower body strength circuits, or a combination of straight arm and bent arm workouts. Start with either a skill or an area of the body you would like to focus on and choose 2-3 exercises from the above list below to make up a circuit. A good goal is to work all of the different different categories of the body at least once a week over 2-3 workouts on a weekly basis.
Types of Exercises You Can Perform:
Pushing Movements - Push ups, dips, handstand push ups, ring dips
Pulling Movements - bar rows, ring rows, chin ups, pull ups, lever pull ups
Muscle Ups - Bar muscle ups, ring muscle ups
Handstands - headstands, piked handstands, kick to handstand, p-bar handstand, handstand walks, press to handstand
Levers - Tuck front lever, chin up lever, tuck back lever, human flag,
Leg Raises - Seated pike pulses, tuck ups
L Sits - Tuck sit, l sit, tuck sit leg raises, tuck ups
Squats - single leg squats, step ups, cossack squats
Deadlifts - Good mornings, single leg deadlifts, airplanes
Jumps - Box jumps, long jumps, single leg box jumps
Bodyweight Training Safety
Workout Descriptions
Building bodyweight strength is a long term game, just like anything else. Before you begin it's important to set the intention that it's going to take time to see change in your body. Being consistent and completing the workouts each week is the most important thing to starting a habit that will eventually become routine.
This program is broken down into upper body and lower body training days. Aim to complete 1-2x a week for about 6 - 10 weeks to see some good progress with your strength and skill. As you feel stronger with less fatigue at the end of each set, you can slowly increase the reps from week to week to progressively load the body and encourage strength. Repetitive training will help you build stronger connective tissue in the body and that ultimate strong bodyweight foundation.
Remember, as a beginner to bodyweight strength training it is super important to ease into the workouts and build up these basics first to reinforce healthy and strong movement patterns. The better the foundation is, the better your body will feel and the further you will go with your goals. This is how the best athletes in the world make progress.
Enjoy the process of mastering your body and let’s get KAZAMED!
Upper Body Workout 1
Warm Up:
This is the most important piece to your workout. You want to take this time to prepare the joints and muscles that you will be working on for your workout. Specific areas that you should warm up for this upper body workout are your shoulders, neck, spine, hips, and wrists.
This is also an opportunity to explore and move your body from head to toe and check in with how the body is moving and feeling, if there are any aches and pains, and to set the tone for your workout.
Skill Work:
With the skill work you will begin to familiarize yourself with some different components and positions that will transfer to more advanced skills down the road. You will help you build confidence and body awareness with being inverted, and strength in the shoulders and wrists with the bent arm crow.
Importance:
The bent arm crow in this section will begin to strengthen the connective tissues in the wrists and strengthen the shoulders helping you prepare for more skills like handstands, shoulder stands, planche, L sits, and levers.
Learning to hang is foundational to many skills in gymnastics or calisthenics. You need to have a strong grip in order to be fully comfortable hanging both upright and inverted. This will transition to other hanging skills like levers, skin the cats, swings, etc.
Strength Sequence #1 Goal:
Bodyweight strength training is about mastering your body. In this section you complete some basic pushing movements with some scapula control on the scapula pull up.
Importance:
These exercises are important to build some basic strength in the horizontal and vertical pushing movements, In addition, they will prepare your shoulders for pulling movements. You want to build these up so your body can handle higher repetitions and be prepared for harder bodyweight movements.
Strength Sequence #2 Goal:
In this section you complete some basic pulling movements and tucked support holds to balance out the shoulders while developing some core strengthening on the p-bars.
Importance:
The horizontal and vertical pulling movements will aid in preventing injuries while helping you balance out your shoulders and maintain a healthy posture. You want to build these up so your body can handle higher repetitions and prepare your body for harder bodyweight movements.
Stretch:
This is a great opportunity to check in with your body and compare how you feel now to how you felt at the warm up stage. Take the time to stretch out some of the muscles and areas of the body that you worked. This will help reduce muscle soreness, prevent injuries, and help you relax as you bring your heart rate back to normal.
After completing the lower body work you will want to stretch out your chest, triceps, latissimus dorsi, core muscles, and any other muscles that you feel are tight.
Lower Body Workout 1
Warm Up:
This is the most important piece to your workout. You want to take this time to prepare the joints and muscles that you will be working on for your workout. The specific elements that you should warm up for this lower body workout are your hips, knees, and ankles.
Skill Work:
The lower body skills in this section will help you explore your single leg squat stability and strength in the end range of motion.
Importance:
The candle squat roll teaches you to shift your body weight around your center of mass teaching you some basic movement mechanics through the squat position. The shrimp squat is a squat variation that teaches you to develop strength, stability, and balance in the ankles and hips to prepare you for more advanced strength skills.
Strength Sequence #1 Goal:
In this strength sequence you will build up some volume using some basic squat mechanics and hip hinge work to condition both the anterior and posterior chain muscles in the lower body.
Importance:
The Cossacks are great for training your adductor muscles of the inner thigh as well as building the necessary hip mobility required for many bodyweight movements and skill, but most importantly the longevity of the hips. Single leg deadlifts in combination with the step ups will help build strength in the hamstrings and quadriceps muscles, and stability for the ankles, hips and knees.
Core Sequence
In this sequence you are going to rotate through 4 important core exercises to get a full body core workout in.
Importance:
Your core is a combination of different muscle groups that allow you to move throughout the day, all day, and everyday. If you want to move better you need to train your core in areas. This may key areas this sequence will target are the lower & upper abdominals, glutes, & obliques.
Stretch:
This is a great opportunity to check in with your body and compare to how you felt at the first of your workout during your warm up. This will help reduce muscle soreness, prevent injuries, and help you relax as you bring your heart rate back to normal.
After completing the lower body work you will want to stretch out your hamstrings, glutes, quadriceps, core muscles, and any other muscles that you feel are tight and could use a stretch at this time.
The St Luke's Fitness Training Park - a new addition to the community developed by the Jack Purcell Recreation Association.
How to Use The Park
Bodyweight fitness and circuit training requires little to no equipment and can be completed in short amounts of time using full body exercises, resistance training, and plyometrics. This type of exercise will help you build strength, power, agility, flexibility, speed, balance and coordination while mastering your own body.
You can perform exercises like lunges, squats, jumps, push ups, dips, pull ups, rows and planks that will improve both your upper body and lower body strength that will then lead you to learning other skills like handstands, cartwheels, and swings on the bars.
A well balanced training program should focus on all the different muscle groups of the body and their ranges of motion. This is essential for your performance, building a healthy posture, improving injuries, as well as your overall health and well- being.
The Main Benefits of Bodyweight Training:
- Master your body through strength, mobility and endurance training
- Build confidence and body control
- Making fitness fun through movement
- Relieve stress and improve mood
- No equipment or gym needed, just you and your body
Types of equipment available at the park:
Parallel Bars - A set of horizontal bars that are raised from the ground. They are used for bodyweight strength training exercises such as dips, L sits, rows, push ups, shoulder stands, swings, push ups etc.
Pull Up Bars - Horizontal bars that are used for exercises such as pull ups, leg raises, levers, skin the cats, swings, bar muscle ups etc.
Monkey Bars - A fun apparatus where you can revisit your youth on the playground with swinging, pull up variations, and training training your grip strength.
Step Up Bench - An elevated platform used for exercises like squats, step ups, lunges, jumps and landings to train your leg strength and explosiveness. It can be also used for upper body drills like incline push ups and bench dips.
Vertical Bars - Also known as stall bars. They have been used in previous years of gym class. A great tool for core exercises, leg raises, and stretching.
Dip Bars - A simple tool for working your support strength with dips, support holds, L sits and other bodyweight exercises.
Gymnastics Rings - Primarily used for gymnastics skills that require upper body strength, stability, and coordination. You can train dips, pull ups, rows and skills like shoulder stands, skin the cats, and l sits to train your strength, body control, and core.
Start Your Training
Workouts are often broken into upper body strength and lower body strength circuits, or a combination of straight arm and bent arm workouts. Start with either a skill or an area of the body you would like to focus on and choose 2-3 exercises from the above list below to make up a circuit. A good goal is to work all of the different different categories of the body at least once a week over 2-3 workouts on a weekly basis.
Types of Exercises You Can Perform:
Pushing Movements - Push ups, dips, handstand push ups, ring dips
Pulling Movements - bar rows, ring rows, chin ups, pull ups, lever pull ups
Muscle Ups - Bar muscle ups, ring muscle ups
Handstands - headstands, piked handstands, kick to handstand, p-bar handstand, handstand walks, press to handstand
Levers - Tuck front lever, chin up lever, tuck back lever, human flag,
Leg Raises - Seated pike pulses, tuck ups
L Sits - Tuck sit, l sit, tuck sit leg raises, tuck ups
Squats - single leg squats, step ups, cossack squats
Deadlifts - Good mornings, single leg deadlifts, airplanes
Jumps - Box jumps, long jumps, single leg box jumps
Bodyweight Training Safety
- Make sure you are well hydrated before you start your workout. Bring a water bottle with you to your training session.
- Dress properly for warm and cold weather. A heat stroke in the summer or hypothermia in the winter are serious health conditions. Proper attire with hydration are very critical for a comfortable workout.
- A proper warm up is a must to prevent injuries. Aim to get the heart rate going and move all the joints of the body from head to toe.
- Begin with the basics and make an effort to understand the proper progressions that work best for your abilities before moving to more advanced progressions.
- Always leave 2 -3 reps in the tank at the end of your sets and reps to receive the most benefits of progression loading and avoid training at your max.
- Don't try anything you are not comfortable doing unless you have a spot or some guidance.
- Before doing anything that involves you being inverted, make sure to have a spot until you are fully comfortable and capable of getting both in and out of upside down positions with ease.
- If doing swinging and or plyometrics on any of the apparatuses, be sure to build up the skills gradually until you are fully comfortable with the movements.
- As a good protocol, workout with a training buddy.
Workout Descriptions
Building bodyweight strength is a long term game, just like anything else. Before you begin it's important to set the intention that it's going to take time to see change in your body. Being consistent and completing the workouts each week is the most important thing to starting a habit that will eventually become routine.
This program is broken down into upper body and lower body training days. Aim to complete 1-2x a week for about 6 - 10 weeks to see some good progress with your strength and skill. As you feel stronger with less fatigue at the end of each set, you can slowly increase the reps from week to week to progressively load the body and encourage strength. Repetitive training will help you build stronger connective tissue in the body and that ultimate strong bodyweight foundation.
Remember, as a beginner to bodyweight strength training it is super important to ease into the workouts and build up these basics first to reinforce healthy and strong movement patterns. The better the foundation is, the better your body will feel and the further you will go with your goals. This is how the best athletes in the world make progress.
Enjoy the process of mastering your body and let’s get KAZAMED!
Upper Body Workout 1
Warm Up:
This is the most important piece to your workout. You want to take this time to prepare the joints and muscles that you will be working on for your workout. Specific areas that you should warm up for this upper body workout are your shoulders, neck, spine, hips, and wrists.
This is also an opportunity to explore and move your body from head to toe and check in with how the body is moving and feeling, if there are any aches and pains, and to set the tone for your workout.
Skill Work:
With the skill work you will begin to familiarize yourself with some different components and positions that will transfer to more advanced skills down the road. You will help you build confidence and body awareness with being inverted, and strength in the shoulders and wrists with the bent arm crow.
Importance:
The bent arm crow in this section will begin to strengthen the connective tissues in the wrists and strengthen the shoulders helping you prepare for more skills like handstands, shoulder stands, planche, L sits, and levers.
Learning to hang is foundational to many skills in gymnastics or calisthenics. You need to have a strong grip in order to be fully comfortable hanging both upright and inverted. This will transition to other hanging skills like levers, skin the cats, swings, etc.
Strength Sequence #1 Goal:
Bodyweight strength training is about mastering your body. In this section you complete some basic pushing movements with some scapula control on the scapula pull up.
Importance:
These exercises are important to build some basic strength in the horizontal and vertical pushing movements, In addition, they will prepare your shoulders for pulling movements. You want to build these up so your body can handle higher repetitions and be prepared for harder bodyweight movements.
Strength Sequence #2 Goal:
In this section you complete some basic pulling movements and tucked support holds to balance out the shoulders while developing some core strengthening on the p-bars.
Importance:
The horizontal and vertical pulling movements will aid in preventing injuries while helping you balance out your shoulders and maintain a healthy posture. You want to build these up so your body can handle higher repetitions and prepare your body for harder bodyweight movements.
Stretch:
This is a great opportunity to check in with your body and compare how you feel now to how you felt at the warm up stage. Take the time to stretch out some of the muscles and areas of the body that you worked. This will help reduce muscle soreness, prevent injuries, and help you relax as you bring your heart rate back to normal.
After completing the lower body work you will want to stretch out your chest, triceps, latissimus dorsi, core muscles, and any other muscles that you feel are tight.
Lower Body Workout 1
Warm Up:
This is the most important piece to your workout. You want to take this time to prepare the joints and muscles that you will be working on for your workout. The specific elements that you should warm up for this lower body workout are your hips, knees, and ankles.
Skill Work:
The lower body skills in this section will help you explore your single leg squat stability and strength in the end range of motion.
Importance:
The candle squat roll teaches you to shift your body weight around your center of mass teaching you some basic movement mechanics through the squat position. The shrimp squat is a squat variation that teaches you to develop strength, stability, and balance in the ankles and hips to prepare you for more advanced strength skills.
Strength Sequence #1 Goal:
In this strength sequence you will build up some volume using some basic squat mechanics and hip hinge work to condition both the anterior and posterior chain muscles in the lower body.
Importance:
The Cossacks are great for training your adductor muscles of the inner thigh as well as building the necessary hip mobility required for many bodyweight movements and skill, but most importantly the longevity of the hips. Single leg deadlifts in combination with the step ups will help build strength in the hamstrings and quadriceps muscles, and stability for the ankles, hips and knees.
Core Sequence
In this sequence you are going to rotate through 4 important core exercises to get a full body core workout in.
Importance:
Your core is a combination of different muscle groups that allow you to move throughout the day, all day, and everyday. If you want to move better you need to train your core in areas. This may key areas this sequence will target are the lower & upper abdominals, glutes, & obliques.
Stretch:
This is a great opportunity to check in with your body and compare to how you felt at the first of your workout during your warm up. This will help reduce muscle soreness, prevent injuries, and help you relax as you bring your heart rate back to normal.
After completing the lower body work you will want to stretch out your hamstrings, glutes, quadriceps, core muscles, and any other muscles that you feel are tight and could use a stretch at this time.