You’ll find this almost nowhere else in Switzerland: entry is free and the facility is usually open round the clock. It isn’t located in an exclusive sports centre, but rather where many Swiss people spend part of their free time – in the woods.
The vitaparcours External linkis one of Switzerland’s most unassuming yet successful exports. There are now around 500 such facilities around the country, and thousands more like them can be found worldwide.
It all began with a men’s gymnastics club
The story begins with a Zurich gymnastics club. In the 1960s, the men of the Zurich-Wollishofen Gymnastics Club moved their weekly gymnastics session to a nearby woodland. The head coach at the time used tree trunks, branches and other natural obstacles lying around for additional exercises.
It was a practical idea. In the woods, the group could go for a run and intersperse the route with strength and agility exercises. However, the makeshift equipment regularly disappeared because forestry workers cleared away the branches and logs.
This improvised training therefore gave rise to the desire for a permanent facility. The men found support from Vita Life Insurance, a subsidiary of what is now Zurich Insurance. On May 18, 1968, the first vitaparcours was opened in Zurich-Fluntern, near the zoo.
The original audience consisted mainly of trained gymnasts and athletes. However, the target group soon changed. From 1972 onwards, the vitaparcours was explicitly aimed at families and less athletic people as well.
Five years after it opened, there were already a hundred such facilities in Switzerland. In 1990, the 500th vitaparcours was inaugurated.
More than just a woodland trail with exercise equipment
A vitaparcours is no ordinary fitness trail. It typically follows a route of around two to three kilometres through the woods or across open countryside. Along the way, there are 15 stations set up with a wide variety of exercises, each marked with a different colour.
Blue stands for endurance, red for strength and yellow for flexibility and agility. Many stations offer several different exercise options. This means that the same course can be used in different ways by walkers, families or well-trained athletes.
Such a fitness trail is surprisingly unspectacular: it requires neither grand architecture nor complicated technology. Much of it consists of wood, metal, paved paths and weatherproof signs. It is precisely this simplicity that makes the concept so robust.
This is also precisely what makes it uniquely Swiss: the vitaparcours is at once a sports facility, a local leisure amenity and a public health infrastructure.
Like the ski slopes in Switzerland,the individual courses are now categorised by difficultyExternal link: blue (flat terrain), red (hilly) and black (steep).
Why Switzerland?
People were already exercising outdoors on fitness equipment elsewhere, even before the first Swiss fitness trail was created. For example, a so-called Schweisstropfenbahn(beads of sweat track) was opened in the German city of Münster as early as 1962. However, this consisted of just seven stations along an existing running track.
Other countries also already had running tracks featuring simple fitness equipment. The decisive Swiss contribution, therefore, was that Vita Life Insurance developed a portable system.
This explains why Zurich is regarded as the birthplace of the modern outdoor fitness trail, even though similar precursors existed beforehand. And, much like with mini-golf, it was not necessarily the very first invention, but rather its successful standardisation that made the Swiss model the origin of a global trend.
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Switzerland therefore standardised not so much each individual bar or piece of equipment as the very concept of the trail: running, stopping, training, more running – while engaging the whole body.
From the Swiss forest to the world
In Germany, the Swiss concept was copied particularly frequently in the early 1970s. At that time, the country was swept up in a major mass participation sports campaign.
On March 16, 1970, the German Sports Federation launched the Trimm Dich durch Sport (get in shape through sport) campaign. With the mascot Trimmy, posters, and radio and television adverts, the aim was to encourage the public to be more active.
This campaign and the German Trimm-dich-Pfade (get in shape paths) were historically closely linked, although they were not the same thing in organisational terms.
The Swiss Vita insurance company exported its model to Germany, where the term Trimm-dich-Pfad became established. Some of the trails were set up by private companies and local authorities.
At their peak, there were around 1,500 such facilities in Germany. The Swiss concept was well suited to the times: people were less active in their everyday lives and were not necessarily keen on competitive sport.
In France, too, parcours de santé or parcours Vita emerged; in Austria, they are known as Waldmeilenor Forstmeilen.
In the English-speaking world, terms such as fitness trail, exercise trail and parcourse became widespread. The formats differed, but the basic principle remained similar.
SRF Archive: This is how people trained on the vitaparcours in 1969External link(German)
Adapted for all age groups
A major overhaul of the vitaparcours took place in the late 1990s in collaboration with experts from the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport in Magglingen. The exercises were organised more clearly according to endurance, strength, flexibility and agility.
This made the circuit much more varied. A fit person can complete the course at a fast pace and choose challenging variations. An older person can walk, take breaks and do easier exercises.
Since 1993, it has no longer been the life insurance company but the Vitaparcours Foundation that has been responsible for the long-term support and further development of the programme. The Foundation sees the course as a contribution to free recreational sport and family experiences in the countryside.
The publicly accessible site does not usually belong to the foundation, but to a local authority, a club or another local organisation. The foundation supports these organisations by providing guidance and equipment.
The costs of construction and maintenance are borne by the local organisation. For annual maintenance, local authorities typically budget for several thousand Swiss francs per facility. In larger municipalities, the budget can be significantly higher.
Today, the vitaparcours have also embraced digitalisation: a dedicated appExternal link offers personalised training plans, additional exercises and guidance on how to perform them correctly.
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