Ridgewood Girl Scouts propose old-school fitness idea
APRIL 14, 2014 LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2014, 4:39 PM
BY BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER
A global fitness initiative that boomed in the 1970s has been making its way back into the worldwide psyche, including locally, where four Ridgewood Girl Scouts are shaping their Silver Award project around the idea. Their project, in fact, would produce a greater benefit to the community and coincide with several ongoing healthy living and awareness campaigns.
Three seemingly random apparatuses are currently located alongside trails at Veterans Field and near Maple Park. The equipment is actually part of Ridgewood’s old parcourse, an internationally-embraced concept that rose to popularity in the ’70s. A typical parcourse consists of walkways or trails marked with outdoor fitness equipment that is installed at varying intervals along the path.
Ridgewood’s parcourse was installed in the 1970s, said Troop 1326 leader Bernadette Walsh, who also serves as village councilwoman. In the past, it was a “series of 18 exercise stations … [that] provides warm-up, stretching, muscle strengthening, cardiovascular conditioning and cool down exercises combined with walking, jogging and running.