Work? Play? Both!

Thanks for stopping by the Workout of the Week blog!

What you'll see this week is really fun. We visit a park and playground with personal trainer Heather Brunk - who sees the perfect outdoor gym. "I look around and see a million different exercise options," Heather says with a sly grin. And that's when Sonya and I realized we were in for a beating.

On the basketball court we ran sprints, did sports shuffles and walking lunges and squats. "You'll never look at a playground or a park the same way again," Heather tells us - and she's right. Next we move to the playground equipment. While Sonya does a minute of jumping jacks, I do a minute of reverse grip pullups and then we switch. It doesn't take long to get our hearts pounding. "It doesn't even have to be a long period of time," Heather explains, "thirty seconds to one minute intervals are amazing."

And if you don't have a playground nearby, don't worry. You can turn a park bench or a picnic table into workout equipment, too! For instance, we put one foot on the seat of a picnic table and do repeating knee lifts. Pretty soon our quads are burning and we're out of breath. Next, we put our backs to the seat and use it to do tricep dips. If we turn around, we have the perfect setup for incline pushups!

We're starting to realize the possibilities are endless, and excuses like not having a gym membership or being too busy are sounding really lame. "These are things you do for as long or as short a period of time as you want," says Heather, "and you can do all of this while your kids are enjoying an outing at the park! It's a great way for you to spend time with them and get fit at the same time."

We had a blast with Heather and she's got a bunch of other workout ideas up her personal training sleeve. If you'd like to contact her visit her website www.motivationllc.com.

Have a happy, healthy week!
EEK
Erin.Kiernan@whotv.com