Public Chin Up Bar Update

Back in February I wrote a blog post about floods destroying the local pull up bars.  These were the only public chin up bars in the region.  I now have an update, so thought I would share.

The old broken fitness equipment has since been removed, leaving behind a sunken square with weeds and holes.  This made me think that the local council was not going to replace the broken fitness equipment.  

The local chin up bars have been removed

This is what was left of the chin up bars after the floods

Then I remembered council also had to replace the broken playground that was destroyed by the floods, and I vaguely remember someone saying something about them putting in new 'fitness equipment' there.  So I went to have a look at the new playground.

The new playground looks good.  Sadly, the new fitness equipment does not.  

Nothing there is overly useful, and there were no chin up bars.  Such a wasted opportunity.

The new fitness equipment

The new equipment, from the other direction

What a sad state our country is in when there are no longer any public chin up bars in the region.  

Earlier this year I did an exercise challenge where I completed 100+ pull ups per day for ten consecutive days.  I also did a pull up challenge over the month of May.  My son and I then did another challenge that we called 'the big hour' where we each completed over 100 strict pull ups in one hour.  Very few people in this country have ever achieved these things.  

There is no way people can train to be able to do these exercises unless they already own monkey bars or something similar.  This is not really possible for renters.  I am very lucky as I have monkey bars at home, and use them for many strength exercises, but there are a few things I would like to do that cannot be done using my monkey bars.  

I live in a country where over 2 out of every 3 people is overweight or obese.  Most of the 'fit' and 'strong' people that I see lack functional strength and just rely on their bulk.  Most have very low strength to weight ratio.  Many have low muscle tone.  If they had some way to train I can only imagine what they would be able to achieve.

Our councils dedicate money to improving health, but the money is all directed to the wrong areas.  Put in some chin up bars, allow people to train strength using body weight.