By, Andrea Hughes, Discovery Learning Sales Team

I can’t believe it.  I look outside my window and I just cannot believe my eyes.  The sun…it’s burning bright in the sky…in London!! It’s finally happened.  The sun has proven it hasn’t forgotten about us!

Well, this has been a great summer so far and I can’t say I’m not enjoying it! Well, there are some things that I’m not enjoying.  The main one—the lack of good air conditioning in this city! The worst of which is my gym! I go in at 6:30 in the morning and basically walk in with the Gym Instructor and that’s when he switches on the air conditioning.  Well, it takes the gym about an hour to get cool and by the time it is I’m dripping in sweat (I mean, gracefully glowing), and it’s almost time to go home!

So, I’ve thought up some alternatives to training in my increasingly hot gym, and they also help us appreciate this amazing weather we’re experiencing.  My solution is to train outside! Obviously you have to be careful not to train when the weather’s at its hottest, but there are plenty of ways to train while still being comfortable and enjoying the weather!

Here are some ideas:

• Do your cardio outside, but make sure to run/walk/skip/hop in the morning or early evening before the weather gets too hot.
• Swim! Why not find a nice lido near you so you can get a great cardio workout and work on your tan at the same time?
• Grab a TRX and go! Training with a TRX offers a great full body workout and, the best part is, you can do it anywhere! You can hook it to a tree or post and go! It’s a great way to enjoy the weather and an even better way to keep fit!
• Kettlebells! You might want to keep this one closer to home as they might be a bit heavy to lug all over town, but they’re great because they provide the weight you need when training and they’re portable.  Always a favourite with outside training.
• Outdoor boot camps. These are so great because it’s practically like a PT session with someone pushing you, but for less money! And, if you’re a PT yourself, these are so popular at the moment because people are tired of the gym!
• Any other exercise that you can do on the go! Some ideas are: lunges, squats, press-ups, step ups, chin ups and duck walks.  All of these are effective exercises that can be done while appreciating this beautiful weather!

So, what are you waiting for? You and I know that this weather won’t be around forever—before we know it we’ll be in dreary November and we’ll all be complaining about the rain! Enjoy it while you can and get out of the gym to train! Now, if we can only figure out a way to move this office outside then we’ll be in business…

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By, Louise Court, Discovery Learning Tutor and Assessor

I have worked in the fitness industry for over 10 years, and my passion has always been teaching fitness classes.

Once I passed my Exercise to Music (ETM) qualification the easiest way to get work was to apply to all the fitness centres, sports clubs and leisure centres in my area and get my name on the aerobics cover list.  The purpose of a cover list is to provide contact details to the aerobics co-ordinator of a centre (they are in charge on the aerobics timetable) of all the local ETM instructors in the area.  When the regular aerobics instructor is ill, the aerobics co-ordinator will call all the names on the list to get the class covered.  This is a great opportunity to get your name known in a centre and also to earn extra money.  For an aerobics class, you will be paid approx £20 – £25 per hour (depending on where you live).  If you deliver a fun, effective class and you are reliable, they are more likely to use you more frequently.  Permanent classes will come up and the aerobics co-ordinator could offer you the class.

If you are not yet qualified, but are interested in teaching classes please look at Discovery website www.discovery.uk.com/aerobics-instructor-training-course and look at the ETM course.