The sports you should do rather than go to the gym

Let’s face it, the gym is a bore. A cattle market of sweaty men tensing their overly bulging biceps, lifting their t-shirts while pouting at themselves in the mirror, grunting as if being constantly stabbed in the kidneys and wearing offensively small shorts to show that they NEVER skip leg day.

And truth be told, you’re more likely to leave the gym with a black eye than a collection of new friends, because you stood too close to the 25-stone, steroid-fuelled goliath or dared to look at his athletic girlfriend doing her cool down stretches in the corner.

Then there’s the pressure. The pressure of having to wake early to fit the session in before work, or the nag of knowing you need to go after work – meanwhile your friends are in the park playing touch rugby, or in the pub finding girlfriends and discussing who they want to live with next year. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll find a nice studio apartment.

It’s very hard to share the gym experience with other people. Firstly because it isn’t a team sport, but mainly because your friends don’t care about how many squats you can do or how much you’re bench-pressing these days. They just don’t. Given the option of hearing about someone else’s gym routine or jumping head first into a log chopper, most would join the queue to the diving board.

Luckily there are many alternatives. They’re called sports. Social, fun and a good way to burn calories without having to think too hard about it – or watch giants in tank tops flirt with themselves in the mirror. Here are the everyday sports that burn the most calories; the way to spend your evenings rather than lifting weights…