Health Loop Outdoor Gym
Going to the gym can be daunting for some people. Some may find it
hard to afford the costs or sort out the logistics to get to the gym.
Outdoor gyms help thwart some of these obstacles, but they can be
intimidating as well. Health Loop Outdoor Gym, with its attractive
design and interactive stations, is a more inviting and user-friendly
outdoor gym.
Health Loop is a concept designed by Alastair Warren.
The idea was born out of our global need for physical activity.
Children born today, in developing and developed countries, are expected
to die five years earlier than their parents due to health consequences
associated with inactivity and a poor diet. To combat this problem,
cities and tows are giving their citizens more opportunities to get
active, and so outdoor gyms are starting to pop up more and more.
Health Loop
However,
even though exercise has become more accessible, it can still be
intimidating for some. Warren identifies three primary challenges
inactive people face when trying to become more active: intimadation,
lack of understanding and lack of enjoyment. Health Loop addresses these
challenges by making the gym experience easy to navigate and
understand, interactive and inviting.
The Health Loop caters to
the fitness novice. There are no heavy weights in the Health Loop, no
pull-up bars, no complicated machines and no jumping boxes. Instead,
there are six stations, each with a clear purpose. At each station, you
will get simple instructions on a digital screen and some coaching
feedback from the station itself. For example, at the Balance Station
(the first station in the Health
Loop), you will hear, "Lean right," "Lean left," "Accuracy," and at the
end, "Top work."
Balance Station
Health
Loop further cuts down on the intimidation factor by hiding the
difficulty level at each station, and by utilizing the interactive
display to keep the user’s attention. In doing this, the user is focused
on the exercise at hand and their own station, rather than what others
are doing and whether or not people are watching them.
Warren
also designed Health Loop to look unique and unlike preexisting exercise
equipment, which he hopes will help rid users of preconceived notions
of exercise as this daunting task done on complicated machines.
Health Loop Stations
Each
of the Health Loop’s six stations provide two exercise options, by
giving resistance in both directions of a movement. For example there is
a lifting and lowering station as well as a push and pull station.
In
addition to the six exercise stations, there is a drinking fountain,
seats for rest time and a stretching station. Of course, these serve
their named purpose, but they also give new users a chance to casually
observe and get comfortable with the Health Loop happenings before
committing to the loop.
If he can get the Health Loop project up
and running, Warren could provide inactive people with a comfortable
starting point to get active. The Health Loop, with its user friendly
stations and unintimidating layout, could be a new fitness trend.
Sources: Tuvie, Core 77 Design Awards
