Why hit the treadmill when you can romp around outside on the grass, in a park, with trees? Breathe in the fresh air before you sprint up a steep hill to wave at the rugby players in the field.

Instead of a TV or iPod to keep you company, you could have an inspiring instructor calling out exercise drills and doing those push-ups and squats right alongside you — she’ll work better than the picture of the pie slice with the X-mark on your refrigerator door. Pie can be so tasty.

We all know diet and exercise is the ticket to get healthy, but following that mantra can be pretty ho-hum. That’s where boot camp comes in; it’s a challenging group workout that has fitness wannabees and veterans breaking free from the gym to burn some fat and switch up their routine in the Great Outdoors. I’ve joined Fit Chicks, a Toronto women-only fitness company that offers four- and eight-week programs for women of all ages and levels. That’s right, all levels, including people who sit all day at work and go home and sit some more. Sitting does burn more calories than lying down, but still. I’m doing four weeks with the Danforth group, enough to launch myself into a beginner’s fitness routine and a summer’s worth of epsom salts.

You don’t need much equipment, except for running shoes, a yoga mat and three- or five-pound free weights. The instructor, though, has the stopwatch, and claims she’s addicted to pedometers.

“Work through this. If your arms are shaking, it’s a good thing. It means your muscles are working. Your arms are supposed to feel like Jell-O,” Laura Jackson, Fit Chick sergeant and co-founder, yells out.

Jackson started the company with her best friend two years ago, out of a longing for a fun, gym-free health program that delivers long-term results. She’d been through the yo-yo cycle of diet pills and fad diets, and finally went back to the basics of good eating and exercise. “We don’t need to fit into the same cookie-cutter mould. We can be who we are in the bodies we have,” she says.

About 10 women on a warm and still-sunny Thursday evening are stretched out over yoga mats on the grass, supporting our weight on our forearms and the balls of our feet in “plank” position, a “kill me now” posture borrowed from yoga. Isn’t the first session supposed to be a gentle introduction?

We’ve done a light jog up the stairs and back, passing what could be a sword-fighting club of people talking and jousting with long sticks. This was followed by some knee-bends, facing each other in a large circle, and squats, where you try to sit down on an imaginary chair repeatedly.

We run up the nearby hill and do standing push-ups against an iron railing and 10 (or so) burpees to get your heart racing. Burpees, for the uninitiated, are where you crouch low, planting your palms shoulder-width apart and jump your feet back; bring your feet with a jump back to your hands and then rocket yourself skyward, landing softly back on your feet to start over.

In boot camp, there’s a lot of starting over, counting the repetitions of each exercise, and cursing under your breath when you can catch your breath. It’s not easy, but you can pant at your own pace and modified versions of the exercises are always an option.

And then? Return to mat work for more arm and abdominal exercises.

The beauty of boot camp is the setting and the group dynamic — a park, albeit with people doing double-takes as you stick out your rear during squats, has that “school recess” feel to it, where you’re liberated from the indoors and having fun with your boot camp mates.

Another bonus is the variety. An obstacle course, frog jumps for a 100 metres, classic jumping jacks — variety diverts your attention from the fact that you’re actually exercising, slogging away to burn calories. There are no mirrors to reflect your jiggles and imperfections, and there’s no team sport pressure of, say, never striking out during a baseball game. I’ll take 10 burpees in lieu any day.

Here, we’re all just sore and sweaty at the end of the hour.