Public Exercise Equipment Installed at Sarnia's Canatara Park.

Photo by Zach Neal.

From Cathy Dobson, Sarnia Journal.

Across the road from the Animal Farm and public washrooms in Canatara Park is an interesting array of exercise equipment you might find in a gym.

But it’s outside and available for adults to use, rain or shine. No gym fees are required, and it’s unlike the children’s playground equipment normally found in parks.

So what’s up with that?

The answer lies in a new agreement between the City of Sarnia and an adult fitness equipment company in Point Edward that has a design and fabrication facility just blocks away.

Active Playground Equipment has installed five items: a cross-country ski simulator; a sit-up bench; hand bike; air walker and leg press. They allow park visitors to take time for relatively low-impact exercise while enjoying the outdoors.

Air walking. It was scary up there, but he'd never done it before.

Link to the rest here.

In taking the photos, Go Wit’s photographer Zach Neal had the opportunity try the equipment. The following are his impressions. The references are to the upper photo.

Over on the right. That's the belly-cruncher, if you have lower back problems, avoid that thing like the plague.

In terms of criticism, the leg/ankle brace could use some padding.

One small step for man, one giant leap for Sarnia...

Front, left, some kind of arm-crank, 'air-bicycling' sort of thingy. There's a fair amount of friction on that and it seems after a one-minute test that it might do a lot of good for the upper body.

The X-country ski thing is okay, but it doesn't really reproduce the forward gliding motion of skiing. Ah, it's an interesting exercise, and again you're up off the ground. The leg presses were good, nice and easy to do to anyone familiar with the more common indoor gym equipment.

Thank you for reading.