Ottawa’s parks, paths, and community centres are often overlooked as places to get a complete workout, despite being more affordable and engaging than a gym membership.
Ottawa’s parks, paths, and community centres are often overlooked as places to get a complete workout, despite being more affordable and engaging than a gym membership.
The sedentary nature of office life around Ottawa and the rest of Canada is posing a serious health risk to Canadians for both body and mind. Canadians should be getting out more and exploring new ways to keep active.
With the time Canadians can spare, they sign up for gym memberships and will themselves to make the extra trip to the gym and routinely lift the same weights and other hard-to-access equipment.
Instead of scheduling time for exercise, Ottawa residents are willingly making out-of-gym exercise a part of their lifestyle. Ottawa is rich with recreational sports leagues for people of all ages.
The Ottawa Sport and Social Club offers adult leagues for basketball, floor hockey, dodgeball, and more sports through summer and fall.
People living in Centretown with access to OC Transpo routes are alternatively taking their bikes or walking to work instead of grabbing the bus. Substituting more healthy choices, like running or biking to work, instead of sitting still on the bus or in a car, is easy and cheap to incorporate into one’s day. Located in Centretown, the Running Room has jog meets where running enthusiasts sign up and meet at the store and run the pre-planned path with a group allowing like-minded runners to catch up and even start their own jog meets.
Not only do you get a great work out, but also shaking things up make for a more balanced body, instead of focusing on one major muscle group at the gym. Outdoor exercise challenges us to use our body and mind, disguising the actual workout as a fun game.
During the dark, cold months of winter, however, biking and running become more difficult with the mounds of snow and slick ice on the sidewalks.
The shelter of a gym or warm yoga studio can instead draw in the outdoorsy athletic-types. But, if the snow is just another challenge in your work out, snowshoeing and long-distance skiing are gaining popularity.
Mountain Equipment Co-Operative, a sports store in Ottawa, holds an annual Snowfest for people wanting to try outdoor winter sports.
The store also hosts a meet-up for the sports community to connect, swap winter gear, and organize groups for hiking outdoors through the snow.
The Coyote Rock Gym in St. Laurent has an indoor facility open all winter long. Rock climbing is a great work out for the upper body and core and even for the mind.
The City of Ottawa website offers a downloadable and online map of Ottawa’s cycling routes. The benefits of the cycling routes are that they are free and it is a chance to see the beautiful hidden nature paths in Ottawa.
The institution of a gym is great because it offers equipment that cannot fit inside a home and offers trainers that can assist with someone’s workout. However, gyms can be hard to get to, require a fee, and are sometimes intimidating to people just getting into an athletic lifestyle.
By using the inexpensive and more accessible resources located in Centretown and around Ottawa, working out becomes less of a chore and more of an engaging experience.
Seeing new parks on the Ottawa bike paths, or meeting a group of new joggers from the Glebe at a meet is key to making exercise fun.