Featured exercises:
- The Tree Sit
Works: Quadriceps, core, mental focus, environmental integration.
Props: Tree with a strong base, light post, wall, or mailbox.
Starting position: Find a strong tree with a circumference of at least 20 inches and a flat area around its base. You may also use a wall or a thick post-anything solid that you can lean against. To prevent your feet from slipping, clear away any twigs, gravel. or debris first.
Action: Have a seat with your back up against the tree and your knees bent at a forty-five-degree angle.
- Tree Sit with an Overhead Press
Works: Quadriceps, core-abdominals, shoulders, arms, mental focus, environmental integration.
Props: Tree with a strong base, light post, wall, or mailbox.
Starting position: Have a seat with your back up against the tree and your knees bent at a forty-five-to 90- degree angle, arms in the "goal post" position.
Action: Keep your weight in your heels and activate your TVA Core (to flatten your lower abdominal wall). Utilize your core for stability as your press your palms overhead and across your chest elbow to elbow.
- One-Armed Press (or Two Armed…modification)
This exercise is a powerful arm, chest, and shoulder strengthener. It isolates one side of your body at a time for independent arm strength, which also helps to correct muscular imbalances.
Works: Pectorals, deltoids, triceps.
Props: Tree, fence, wall, back of bench, or table.
Starting position: From a standing position, place one hand on the tree or fence at heart height and lean into it with all your body weight, allowing your heels to come off the ground. Step back to a distance that elongates your backside in a straight line from your heels to your head.
Action: Inhale and slowly lower until your chest is 3 to 5 inches away from your hand. Exhale as you press through your palm to the starting position. Repeat with the other arm.
- Tree Stand-Lower Body
This exercise concentrates on a number of things at once-posture, core stability, leg and gluteal toning, and mental focus. Make sure that as you set up for the exercise, that you are focused on good posture-chin up, chest open, ribs lifted, hips squared with your shoulders.
Works:Core, glutes, hamstrings, balance, proprioception.
Props: Tree, post, wall, boulder.
Starting position: This exercise has you facing a tree, fence, or post that's about 3 to 4 feet away. Keeping your hips squared with your shoulders, bend over until your back is parallel to the ground. Extend your arms to lightly hold on to the tree and lift your right leg off the ground.
Action: Lengthen your body out so that you create the letter T; keep your legs, arms, and torso straight. Lift your right leg up and down a few inches to work the glutes.
- Tree Stand-Upper Body
You'll have fun with both the uniqueness and the effectiveness of this exercise; that's because it won't take long to get the hang of it, and you can immediately feel how it trains your balance and tones your entire backside!
Works: Core, back, shoulders, glutes, hamstrings, balance, proprioception.
Props: Tree, post, wall, boulder.
Starting position: Stand with your back to a tree that's a few feet away. Keeping your hips squared with your shoulders, extend your arms overhead and lift your left leg off the ground, reaching it back for the tree's surface.
Action: Lengthen your body out, so that you create the letter T. Keep your left leg, arms, torso, and right leg straight. Lower your arms so your hands are facing in, creating a fist. Exhale as your raise your arms out to the sides performing a reverse fly-isometrically squeezing your shoulder blades together.
- ING Greater Body Expo a premier 2-day health/fitness event
Friday, May 15 & Saturday, May 16
Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, San Francisco
- Bay to Breakers
Sunday May 17, B2B footstock @ Polo Field
- OutdoorFitness Day-Kick off the Summer!
Saturday, May 23, Hosted by the Presidio YMCA and Sports Basement
Tina Vindum is the founder of Outdoor Fitness, America's leading outdoor exercise program, and the only American Council on Exercise (ACE) accredited outdoor fitness instructor. She travels the country teaching her techniques to health and fitness professionals and lectures around the world about her program's benefits. She also hosts a weekly radio show on the subject, broadcast nationwide on the SportsByline USA Network. Her work has been featured in Self, Fitness, Prevention, Health, Natural Health, Backpacker, Vogue, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among many media outlets. A former world champion mountain biker and professional skier, Tina lives in San Francisco, California.
About Outdoor Fitness:
Tina Vindum's Outdoor Fitness: Step Out of the Gym and Into the BEST Shape of Your Life by Tina Vindum, is the ground-breaking approach to achieving complete health, fitness, and well-being in as little as eight weeks in the outdoors. America's first outdoor fitness trainer. Vindum is also the founder and president of Outdoor Fitness who has been covered by publications such as SELF, Fitness, Prevention, Health, San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. This program knocks down the barriers confronted in a gym and is rooted in simple, results-oriented conditioning available to everyone, everywhere, at any time.
Website: http://www.OutdoorFitness.com
