Street Circuits Sessions
The highlighted quick links below help to explain the structure and fundamentals of Rat Race Urban Gym Street Circuits sessions, allowing you to fully understand exactly what’s involved before you attend our sessions.
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Urban Gym Basic’s
The Urban Gym Street Circuits sessions take place on different nights and time depending on the City. Lasting approximately 60mins from the initial introductions to the participants leaving the instructor, all Urban Gym Street Circuits sessions start and finish at the same predetermined meeting places. We call these predetermined meeting places our ‘Branch Locations'.
Each 'Branch Location' offers a variety of different challenges through its unique route offerings that are utilised by the Urban Gym Instructors. Our routes are professionally designed to ensure you remain engaged throughout your sessions, offering uniquely different physical demands during each session. As such the individual appeal of each section, road and turn is carefully considered, to provide continued variety, spectacle and/or intrigue whilst primarily providing a safe and effective workout. Our intention is take our participants places they've never been before using routes they never knew existed.
All Urban Gym Street Circuits routes are performed as a single circular or crossing (Figure of Eight) journey which is completed solely on foot, averaging between 1.5 and 3.0 kilometres in total length and is broken down by regular exercise locations known as 'Rat Stops' linked by a number of short runs known as 'Rat Runs' and will be no longer then 500m. All 'Locations' have a minimum of three routes, which can be completed in both a 'clockwise' and 'anti-clockwise' direction and are assigned to each instructor prior to the session start time.
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The ‘Science’ Behind Our Sessions
Rat Race Urban Gym Street Circuit sessions employ an interval styled, circuit based approach to training with an effective blend of intense body weight exercises and cardiovascular elements.
Interval training is a style of training which uses blended phases of higher intensity work alternated with lower intensity work or even complete rest dependant on the fitness levels and ability of a class. Interval training has not only been shown to significantly build aerobic capacity, allowing participants to exercise for longer periods of time, but has also been heavily validated as a more effective exercise intervention for weight/fat loss when compared with performing a moderate intensity exercise for a similar duration of time.
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How ‘Fit’ Do I Need To Be?
The entry level fitness ability for an Urban Gym Street Circuits session is to be able to complete a maximum jog distance of 3kms/3000m within a 60minute period, with various 'Rat Stops'. At which participants can exercise or are more then welcome to just rest. During the 'Rat Runs' our less able runners set the running pace held by the instructor with the fitter slightly faster participants given those impromptu exercises or adapted distances to run through the use of sprints or shuttles to seamlessly keep all individuals in the group working near their maximum work load.
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Catering for Multi-Ability Groups
We appreciate that not everyone has the same fitness abilities nor does everyone aspire towards the same health and fitness goals. With this in mind most fitness offerings emphasize a segregation of these differences using separate groups on timetables. We believe everyone should be able to exercise together irrelevant of fitness level or ability allowing you to workout with your friends, even if they are doing different levels of exercise. Therefore, we have developed a system which offers just that. How do we do this?
Upon arrival to the 'Hub Location' all our participants are given the option by the instructor to self select whether they would like to be a 'Yellow Rat' or a 'Red Rat'.
- Red Rats - This option is aimed at participants within the bracket of 'Entry Level ' to 'Lower Intermediate' fitness abilities.
- Yellow Rats - This option is aimed at participants within the bracket of 'Upper Intermediate' to 'Advanced' fitness abilities.
The instructor then gives each participant a reflective 'Rat Race Bib' that is either yellow or red, the participants then wear this reflective 'Rat Race Bib', giving our instructors an immediate visual identification of which participants are at what level as the group moves around the route and also affording the instructor an instant system to split the group verbally when giving progressions without having to individually address what can be a group of up to 20 participants.
Participants can opt to change their bib from one colour to the other at any time to either decrease or increase the intensity at which they wish to be worked to. Furthermore, within this system of group control there are several ways in which participants can work at a differing intensity to suit themselves, without having to change colours, which will be highlighted in the 'Rat Stops' and 'Rat Runs' sections to follow.
Finally, and importantly this format allows all our participants to stay as an inclusive group irrespective of fitness levels or ability.
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What are Rat Stops?
The 'Rat Stops' are our exercise stations, at these stations the instructor will select, and clearly direct the whole group through a series of physical conditioning exercises, utilising the cities ambient urban features such as architectural, sculptural and municipal points of interest instead of using traditional equipment used in health clubs.
Rat Race Adventure Sports as a Company sets out its recommendations of appropriate Rat Stop locations, features and activities, but the specific inclusion of these within the session will be on the sole judgement of the sessions instructor, in ensure we constantly provide a safe, accessible, fun and effective exercise experience, within the capabilities of the entire group and any relevant factors on the evening of the session (E.g. Road Works, Town Fairs or Football Matches).
As our entry level participants and lower level Red Rats, are typically the last ones to arrive at the Rat Stops, they will start exercising last and as such are required to work for a smaller overall period of time. Conversely, the Yellow Rats and sometimes the fitter Red Rats are habitually the first participants to arrive at each Rat Stop and as such work that little bit longer as they begin exercising from the moment they arrive at each Rat Stop, and therefore are made to exercise for a greater overall period of time per Rat Stop.
All Urban Gym sessions will contain no fewer then five Multi Exercise ‘Circuit Styled’ rat stops. Sessions may also include various dual exercise rat stops or single exercise rat stops which are utilised to break up any distances between rat stops which are greater then 500m (All sessions also include a mandatory ‘Warm Up’ and ‘Cool Down’ location.
'Basically, this means you can do as little or as much as you want in the time we are at every Rat Stop.' - Chris Johnstone.
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What are Rat Runs?
The 'Rat Runs' in their simplest form are used as a way of moving between and linking our 'Rat Stops'. When choosing each specific 'Rat Runs' we attempt to combine interesting places to run through, under and over, whilst logistically offering a safe route for our instructors to move a potentially large group of people along. Upper level Red Rats and Yellow Rats that need pushing that little bit harder are given additional distances to run as short of the cuff sprints in to holding exercises. As well as this the participants that are forever at the front of the group, which is usually our fittest 'Yellow Rats' are given impromptu exercises to work them even harder and give them a great workout.
'This means that our instructors constantly give participants optional progressions to adjust their exercise intensity, allowing each member of the group to get the most out of their session' - Chris Johnstone.
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An Example Urban Gym Route
ratraceAdmin |
09/11/2011 11:56:58