Author: Mark Pearce
I’m a big believer in the main attraction of outdoor fitness bootcamps being the act of getting down
and dirty in the natural environment with bodyweight exercises. Although, adding a strength and
equipment-based element is great for adding variety and putting members bodies through different
stresses to progress them further.
It can often be a bit tricky to judge how much equipment to bring to a session, what types of
equipment are best to invest in etc but small amounts of multi-purpose bits of kit can go a long way.
When I say multi-purpose, I don’t mean do chest presses with a vacuum cleaner or bicep curl a slow
cooker! For example, this session is using sandbags but that’s just because I have a few sandbags
but a similar set up could involve kettlebells, dumbbells, barbells etc.
So, let’s get into it…
STRENGTH CORE CARDIO AMRAP (42 mins approx.)
Split the group into 3, it doesn’t matter who starts where as they will all rotate. This is where the
equipment choice needs to be considered though. So, when I first did this session, I had 9 people
attend so I chose sandbags as I have 3 of them. This meant I could have 3 people of the strength
section, 3 people on the bodyweight core section and 3 people on the bodyweight cardio section.
Basically, you need enough weighted kit for a third of your group.
The sections will complete these exercises;
Each mini group will go through each exercise for the stated amount of reps for 6 minutes,
completing as many rounds as possible. They will then move to the next section, and do exactly the
same. I run through this twice so each member has completed each 6 min AMRAP for strength, core
and cardio twice.
For a bonus for my guys I like to throw in finishers after each AMRAP to really push them. So, after 6
mins of strength, that mini group would do 60 seconds of curls to overhead presses, the core group
would do 60 secs of plank jacks and the cardio group would do 60 secs of a shuttle run. After the
second time they complete the AMRAP they complete the second finisher.
Training Points;
- When deciding what equipment to use, if you haven’t got a lot of the same bits of kit then there is no harm in having say 2 sandbags, 2 barbells and 2 kettlebells for example. Thismeans you could have 6 people per section, 18 attending overall. Just try to keep the actual exercises the same as much as possible e.g. instead of a bent over row with sandbag, do single arm row with a kettlebell.
- The shuttle run for the cardio finisher can be completed using cones if you have them or just use the natural furniture from where you are based
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Blog distributed by: Mark Pearce