Working out at the Playground

When people ask me if I like Sweden, part of my answer is always that I like the outdoors lifestyle that is part of their culture. Everybody I know does something outdoors. If they don’t go running (and many many do go running), then they cycle to work, or have a boat, or go to the beach (lots of very tanned people in Sweden these days), or ski, or have a cottage in the countryside, or go fishing, or ride a horse, or, or, or.

The local authorities organise activities such as Sommar på Ribban – mentioned in my post of 21st August 2015 that you can read here. They have also built an environment that makes it easy and safe and fun for adults and children to go out and play. In the last few months, Malmö City Council has built an outdoor gym (“utegym”) at Sundsbroparken, near where I live. There are eleven of these in Malmö – one “adult” playground to every 30 000 residents.

One of the Utegyms at Pildammspark

The utegym at Sundsbroparken

We pay a lot of tax to get great facilities like this, and I for one am happy to pay. Having a great natural environment of course contributes to happiness and health, as this recent study has shown.

These facilities are built without the expectation of them making a financial profit. I can imagine financial considerations as a barrier to similar facilities in the UK. These playgrounds cost nothing to use, and they even host free organised training sessions. The Facebook page for these sessions has been liked by more than 5000 people, and as I write this I can see eight sessions organised in the next 7 days. The utegym near me had an opening ceremony (an opening ceremony for a playground !!), and a personal trainer was there for a couple of hours each week for a few weeks to show people how to use it.

The cover of the “Train in the Park” Facebook page.

I don’t use the gym much personally, but I do use the running routes that have been marked out that start and finish at the utegym. You can see the routes marked on this map, and I have begun to create Strava segments for them.
700m: https://www.strava.com/segments/10163630/embed
5km: https://www.strava.com/segments/10382196/embed

The sign shows the marked running routes.

The running routes are marked on lamp-posts.

Does your local area have anything like this?