I have never thought of Hong Kong as a source of workout inspiration with its urban hustle and bustle. Since my childhood, I have always known my grandparents to get up early to go for long hillside walks, tai chi and dim sum. I finally experienced a hillside walk myself on this trip.
My brother Matt, who is also a physical educator and I brought our family out for a great long walk on Saturday morning in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. A good portion of the walk was uphill complete with lush green scenery all around looking out onto the urban development below.
The latter part of our walk brought us to an area with chinup bars. Friendly competition was in order:
As you can see, Matt was ahead of me in form and number of chinups done. I need to work on this!
The whole experience of a family outdoor activity was an amazing eye opener into healthy, active daily living in a bustling city. The walk was also a great workout. Walking briskly uphill can be pretty strenuous and so are chinup bars! For a dense, super urban place, Hong Kong has many easily accessible and highly scenic trails and parks to walk or run and enjoy great views. In addition, their government seems to have invested in having exercise apparatus such as chinup bars and balance beams complete with instructions easily accessible within parks. What a great way to encourage activity.
We even found some serious workout inspiration on our ride up on the cable cars to see the large Buddha.
Those are some serious stairs, I would like to climb one day.