Exercising outdoors

Presenter - Alright, we've done our basic stretching now, Lucy. We're off down to the park, we want to start strenuous activity – now what should we do?

Lucy - OK, so outdoors, fantastic. In a park you've got different terrains there, hopefully a tiny little bit of a hill – you could do a fast walk then you could stop and, if there's a bench, you could do some press-ups from a bench. That's really good so you're working that upper body. You could then do a few squats beside a bench, so that's literally as if you're standing up and then sitting, but not quite, and then coming back.

Presenter - That's quite hard, I've done that myself.

Lucy - That is really hard and that's fantastic, that's a great fat burner, that's great for toning through the legs, you're increasing the metabolism. So you might want to do 20 press-ups and 10 squats and then go and power walk round the park once more. Then come back and you could do some seated abdominal twists: sit nice and taut and just reach round to the side. Then do the other side. That's great for working into the obliques.

Presenter - Who would benefit from that particular exercise?

Lucy - Actually, everyone would. Females would love it because it helps shape the waist. But it's very good for strengthening and supporting the lower back as well, so keeping the abdominals pulled in tight, you know, for men. I'm not saying they're not worried about their waist, but it's good for lower back support and for working into the abdominals. Go out to the park, train with a friend and you can set up your own mini little circuits, and while one of you is doing press-ups, the other one's doing squats. Then you can do a walk from one end of the park to the other and see how fast you can do it.

Presenter - You mentioned the ladies there, with the hour-glass shape. For guys, you get to sort of middle age and the belly starts to go, the muscles in the belly start to relax and maybe you get a bit of a beer belly as it's known. What can you do – apart from cut out the beer! – to counteract that?

Lucy - Well that's it, exactly. I mean actually, it's not so much your muscles; that's just where men tend to store their fat. As women – I mean, this is very vague really – but we tend to store it more round the hips, whereas men, it's more the abdominals, and that's where running is good. The only thing with running is there's a bit more impact, men tend to prefer more than power walking.

Lucy - And it's just a matter of cutting back on the high-fat foods etc and doing a lot of strength work as well. Because by doing things like the press-ups and the squats, not only does that tone the muscles, but it also increases the metabolism, and that basically means how many calories your body burns a day. And really, what you want to focus on doing is to be able to burn the same amount of calories off that you're taking in.