All personal trainers are fully cognizant of the benefits of taking the workout of their clients outdoors. The advantages go much beyond just the fitness objectives. When exercising outdoors, people are benefited by both physiological as well as psychological gains. This fact can be extolled by all fitness instructors in the world.

The makeup of outdoor training programs has evolved to such a state that obstacle schedules have become regular affairs now. Clients look forward to fun obstacle races that help them combine their strength and endurance levels. Many have testified that the experience is a rich and an amazing one. Personal trainers are busy setting up schedules and incorporating terrains like beaches, deserts and mountains for their obstacle courses as they know that it is a great method to challenge the body and refresh the mind to new levels.

Setting up Beach Obstacle Courses

This can be done in an elementary way. All that is needed are a stick and a shovel to create an exercise and fun routine on the beach as an activity schedule for clients. A winding line in the sand could be drawn with a stick to create a path for people to follow. The shovels are used to make ditches and gullies along this path for people to jump over. The next hurdle comes in the shape of mounds for people to climb over.
These activities are also popularly known as Outdoor Cardio. The outdoors is transformed into interesting playgrounds. By the time the people are through with the obstacle course, their hearts are fully charged up, making these courses as motivated and inspired fitness achievement objectives.
The course targets all the core muscle groups as the muscles offer a good base for movement, linking the lower body movements to those of the upper body and stabilizing the balance. It is difficult to move and react sharply if the core development is not adequate. There are many advantages that are linked with core conditioning and strengthening. It cannot be denied that a mid section that does not get proper balance often results in lower back pain. Appropriate posture can be maintained by strengthening of the core and reducing strain on the spine. The more stable the core becomes, the more powerful the movements will be for an athletic display. It will also help in correcting the imbalance in posture. Imbalance can lead sometimes to injury to lower back. The beach obstacle course can burn up the fat as people trundle outdoors.
Personal trainers can concentrate on more than one type of session to incorporate several levels of terrains and routes. Most trainers would like their clients to cut their morning caffeine and concentrate on pumping adrenaline outdoors instead.

Mud Runs in Desert Areas

Obstacle courses, particularly the mud runs are gaining popularity. They are pulling in a vast range of participants. Both personal trainers and their clients are capitalizing on such a growing trend by promoting profitable group training programs that are exclusively designed to help the clients get trained for different kinds of outdoor obstacle events in a year.
These desert obstacle courses look nothing less than the kinds of challenges that were faced only by soldiers erstwhile. Mud runs are slowly but surely changing the whole concept of recreational fitness. Mud runs as obstacle courses demand aerobic endurance and plenty of muscular strength to work with high intensity. Clients, themselves, are valuing these types of exercises and physical activity to become a typical regimen of a healthy lifestyle for them. Most clients are beginning to pose such challenges to establish their demanding levels of fitness. Competing in mud runs and trying to finish challenging obstacle courses ends up providing a sense of accomplishment to them of such a kind that is not achieved by participating in mere power walks or marathon runs.

Mountainous Obstacle Courses

In the nineteen eighties, the fitness fad was the marathon race; the nineties saw a rise in triathlons; about a decade ago, it was team adventure races and today, it is obstacle course races that take you through mountainous terrains. It is not all drills and skills; most obstacle courses also encourage socializing and beer parties after the events. Bootcamp programs are also becoming popular day by day.

Developing a training program for a mountainous obstacle course requires participants to build up aerobic endurance. These activities require strength of the upper body to navigate successfully. High intensity interval training is an effective plan to do the preparations for the mountain obstacle course as it needs bursts of running with high intensity on steep slopes. There are games that involve suspension between trees where the clients stay securely clipped into a safety cable throughout the game event. The games also feature suspended bridges and swinging logs.

The bottom line is that the outdoor routines in the midst of trees and far from the urban office stress levels elevates the moods of people and reduces the tension and anxiety levels. This can be proved by the point that when a person exercises outside, there is lesser stress on the body and the heart rate also remains low than when he or she runs indoors, artificially on a treadmill at the same speed. Personal trainers get an opportunity to work the body of their clients in different ways than if they were working out in a gym. For example, when a person runs on a treadmill, the regimen is found to be stable and controllable. But outdoors, the same person will have to experience different surfaces, hills, grass, concrete and mud. All these things work the body up in different ways and make the person tougher and stronger.

Topics for discussion:

Does your fitness business use outdoor obstacle courses?

What type of obstacle courses have you set up?

Have they been a success?