Going to the gym is of course great for your health, but there are at least two things that we dislike about traditional fitness clubs: you have to exercise inside (which feels particularly silly in the spring and summer), and the machines waste energy when they ought to be producing it. The Great Outdoor Gym Company, a British fitness company, offers a solution to both of those problems with gyms that are located outside and use human-generated energy to power light installations.
According to CoExist, a new outdoor gym installed by the Great Outdoor Gym Company in northeast England generates enough power to keep its lights illuminated at night, and the company hopes that the gym will soon be able to recharge users’ mobile devices — and possibly even send some power back to the grid. Energy-generating gyms aren’t exactly a new concept; we’ve seen companies from Florida to Hong Kong that harness the kinetic energy from your workout and transform it into electricity. Working out in the great outdoors is nothing revolutionary either — most urban parks have chin-up bars and other apparatuses aimed at calisthenics and strength training. But the marriage of the outdoor gym and the human-powered gym is new to us.
The Great Outdoor Gym Company offers a variety of cardio, tone and strength-training machines that are color-coded. The machines are very similar to the plug-in machines you might find at a typical indoor fitness club, but they don’t require energy inputs, and they’re designed to need very little maintenance. According to the Great Outdoor Gym Company, people surveyed in areas where the outdoor gyms have been installed have reported increased physical activity because of the convenience and flexibility that the outdoor gyms provide (and also, we assume, because they’re free).
+ The Great Outdoor Gym Company
Via CoExist
All images © The Great Outdoor Gym Company
