by Dawn Hawkins

Created on: March 24, 2010   Last Updated: April 05, 2010

Why spend money at the gym or on expensive exercise equipment. Find the nearest playground and start your workout today. There are playgrounds all around you. Why not use them to the best of your advantage. You can take the kids for a fun day at the park and get your exercise in at the same time. If you don't have kids, you can still go to the park and get a workout in. Just make sure you go to the park at the least likely time for a lot of children to be playing.

Here are some of the exercises you can do on jungle gym monkey bars.

Pull Ups

This is the easiest and most obvious exercise that you can do on monkey bars. You may have to bend your knees a bit if your feet touch the ground, but it is a great workout. It will work your upper arms, lower arms and your upper back. It also benefits the chest muscles. Hang from the monkey bars by your arms. Slowly pull yourself upwards until your head is above the bar. Slowly let yourself down and repeat.

Leg Extensions

With your hands on the bars, you can lift your legs straight out in front of you to about hip length. Slowly lower your legs back down again. Do this several times for a good workout of your abdominals, legs and buttocks. Because you are hanging from your arms, you will also benefit your arm muscles from this exercise.

Crossing the Monkey Bars

Use the monkey bars for what they were intended for. Cross the monkey bars for a great workout to the arms. This will also give you a more aerobic mix to the workout as you have to work your hear a little bit more with this exercise.

Stretches

You can use the jungle gym monkey bars to do your stretching exercises. Use the bars for support while you are stretching. You can put your foot on the bars to stretch leg muscles or hang from the bars to get a good stretch of the back muscles and arm muscles.

Upside Down Crunches

You can hang from your knees on the monkey bars and do crunches (sit ups). This is a great way to get the blood rushing to the brain and get a great abdominal workout as well. If you want to work your abs and are bored with the same old routine, this could be just the thing to bust the boredom.

These are just a few of the exercises that you can do on a jungle gym monkey bar. Don't limit yourself though. Get creative. Just remember to be careful and try to go to the playground when there aren't many children around. The equipment is really there for their use so don't hog the equipment. Play nice and have fun.

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