Must-Read: Making the Gym Fun

Parkour

Pretty interesting read over at Details this week. The article is titled “The Future of Fitness Is Taking The Work Out Of Working Out” — which is as annoyingly SEO-heavy as you can get — and goes into the new trend hitting gym rats: leaving the normal workouts and getting into more “fun” workouts like parkour:

“One of the sayings of parkour is that you don’t stop playing because you grow up?, you grow up because you stop playing,” says Chad Zwadlo, my teacher at Gleason’s. The trend extends beyond parkour, however: Look in any corner of the fitness world and you’ll discover a return to play. Not play as in beer-league softball. We’re talking about training with ropes, rings, ladders, and crossbeams; classes on crab-crawling, hopping, vaulting, hurdling, balancing, tumbling; guys throwing rocks, pulling logs, and muscling over just about any tall obstacle.

Now I’ve never been a gym person. I think the last time I actually went into the gym was back in high school when I was trying to build muscle mass for varsity football. (Didn’t work.) It’s just tough for me to justify actually paying someone to allow me to not have fun. If I’m looking to train or workout, I get all I really need from your standard jogging, situp and pushup routine. Maybe a small weight here and there. But this whole parkour thing has me intrigued.

For instance, I love playing basketball (when I get in enough shape to play it, that is). It doesn’t feel like a workout because it’s a game, but it’s one of the best workouts you can possibly give yourself. Going to the gym and spending an hour on the treadmill, meanwhile, is just terribly boring.

So, then. What do you folks think? The gym: Is it worth it? Are there any games you play or things other than parkour you participate in to make your gym workout a little easier to digest?