Three sweaty runners looking for the shade of some trees that shelter two groups of people on the grass: some practicing yoga, others warming up to do their daily training. Nearby, young people and not so young people take turns using the bars that make up the calisthenics park.. A little further away, about ten people dressed in boxing gloves learn how to move around an imaginary ring while two children race their small bikes.. This image, increasingly repeated in the large parks of Madrid, is here to stay.

The green spaces of the capital are consolidated as large areas in which to practice sports without incurring too many expenses. The municipalities are aware, and they promote it. Society wants to “be in shape”, but does not have time. For this reason, the individualization to which the dynamics of the big city pushes us is also strong here..

The Run Club (TRC) was able to see this incipient upward movement of outdoor sports well and opened two physical locations in the capital, one in Retiro and the other in Madrid Río. The decision to locate there was not trivial: “We go out running and what we use the most is the Casa de Campo and the El Retiro park,” says Antonio Brunete, director of the Club.. And it is done by people between the ages of 25 and 50, mostly.. Now they have about 300 members. He places the beginning of this impulse, the fever to practice sports outdoors, once the worst moments of the pandemic were over..

That made people want to take to the streets, finding in it, paradoxically, a refuge in which they could free themselves.. “We have brought the gym concept to running clubs, with daily schedules, training in the mornings and afternoons,” he says..

“The boom has been noticed even in Guadarrama. People who used to go running are now beginning to opt for trail running, running in the mountains.. Such was the influx that they had to regulate the competitions they held in the national park so that nature was not affected,” illustrates Brunete..

Sports promotion

Someone making the decision to go for a run is something that has been increasing, but not as new as practicing calisthenics in parks.. Roberto Marín is a member and manager of ARES Calisthenia and, when he felt attracted to this practice ten years ago, he was forced to travel from Tres Olivos to El Retiro park. Now, he has a calisthenics park 25 meters from his house.

The followers of this discipline, which combines strength and body awareness, have increased significantly. What started as a good option to do sports for people with fewer economic resources has become the favorite practice of many others who have found in it a healthy way to stay in shape..

Marín knows well how more and more coaches appear and spread their knowledge through social networks, especially on YouTube and TikTok. “Calisthenics consists of training with your own body weight, so you have to know very well what you are doing to avoid major injuries,” he comments on the matter..

One thing with the other has made ARES Calisthenia close contracts with various municipalities to teach classes in their parks. Parks that, on the other hand, are full of people using them as a sports venue, whether for running, practicing calisthenics, yoga, group exercises or boxing. And Madrid, in this case, takes the cake. Spaces like those already mentioned, or the Juan Carlos I park, are filled with people who gather every afternoon to play sports.. But why do they do sports?

No time to be in shape

According to the latest survey of sporting habits, carried out by the Higher Sports Council at the national level (2022), the main motivation for playing sports is to be in shape with 26.3% of the responses, a somewhat higher percentage in the case of women. They are followed by other reasons such as entertainment, with 22.1% and health, with 20%..

The survey also talks about the main barriers that people encounter when practicing physical activity.. The biggest is lack of time, followed by interest. “This tells us about interests and living conditions that are linked to practices,” observes Raúl Sánchez, sports sociologist and professor at the INEF of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM).. The relationship, he says, is established directly, since outdoor practice is carried out in a more unregulated way than others..

If we look at the 2022 data, 45% of those surveyed opt for the outdoors, more than doubling those who prefer to practice sports in closed spaces.. But why? “On the one hand, there is the urban lifestyle in which the lack of time predominates, but also the desire to be in shape. There is also a growing individualization of people, which makes it more complicated to create a community,” says the expert..

A cult of the body that never left returns

In Sánchez's analysis, the growing cult of the body that has been established in society does not go unnoticed.. “Bodybuilding and the aesthetic ideal are coming back with great force. What is growing the most is gymnastics in all its forms, which is why calisthenics parks are springing up,” he points out.. Added to this is the marketing that sports brands have carried out in order to popularize running.. If before whoever practiced it was almost a semi-professional, now anyone can go running. You just need the right shoes for it..

The economic crisis is another of the sociological reasons that the UPM professor establishes to explain this boom in outdoor sports in the capital.. “They are either very cheap or free options, directly, as well as public in many other cases. Without going any further, without calisthenics parks, many people would not be able to practice it in any other way,” he emphasizes.. From his point of view, the trend will continue and this reality will become more. Only extreme circumstances, such as unhealthy temperatures or high levels of air pollution, could change the dynamic..

Be in shape

A new question that refers to the why that Sánchez tries to answer refers to the main reason given by Spaniards for doing sports: to be in shape.. “It can be very unhealthy. It is usually answered thinking about aesthetics, rather than health,” he says.. That, added to the widespread desire for greater bodybuilding, can be dangerous.. “If this gets worse, as it seems, the public administration should carry out a campaign aimed at young people to prevent some evils associated with ignorance and pure ignorance of the consequences that practicing sports can have,” says this sociologist..

Likewise, the street is not synonymous with equality either.. “When we see six people on the grass with a monitor, they are probably from a more affluent class than those people who go out to exercise on their own,” determines Sánchez..

This results in a greater probability of injury in the case of the latter, as they do not have a professional nearby to guide them in sports practice.. As the expert concludes, a solution for exercising outdoors to become a safe option for everyone could be in the subject of Physical Education, in which young people could learn how the body works when subjected to it. to efforts and the healthiest way to progress once adulthood has arrived.