A UK university is hoping its new 1.7 mile ‘Active Trail’ can help students to swap stereotypes of living on beer, black coffee and baked beans, for success stories of fitness and fun.

University is seen as a key battleground in the fight to turn the tide on the UK’s inactivity epidemic. Research has shown that only half of the student population meet the recommended levels of participation in sport and physical activity, with many students becoming inactive during their university years.

Hoping to counter this, the University of Nottingham has teamed up with Life Fitness to create outdoor functional training spaces that its 34,000 students and staff can use for free at any time.

Installed across the university's park campus, the 1.7-mile fitness route includes five different sites of outdoor equipment, featuring nine Life Fitness Synrgy BlueSky functional training stations. The route follows the main paths that students use to get to key campus buildings, such as the library and Student Union.

Each station is numbered and in the absence of personal trainers, users of the fitness trail can reference either placards on the stations that clearly outline proper form, or use QR codes to access exercise tutorial videos through the Life Fitness LFconnect mobile app.

“Our partnership with the University of Nottingham has been hugely successful and following installations at their indoor training facilities earlier this year, helping them take functional training outdoors has been very exciting,” said Craig Cocking, UK vertical sector manager for Life Fitness.

“The introduction of this innovative and versatile outdoor training system delivers limitless options and creating this inviting and inspirational exercise space with Synrgy BlueSky will help students as well as local people to enjoy fitter and healthier lifestyles.”