Being confined to working indoors isn’t for everyone, but most people accept their lot, grudgingly or not. However, if you feel you can’t spend your working life inside four walls, then there are lots of different job opportunities that take you outdoors and into the fresh air.
Park ranger
Source: Chester East Countryside Ranger Service via Facebook
Working as a park ranger, you’ll have a varied workload. The job is about managing publicly or privately-owned nature spaces that are open to the public. For instance, many of the country parks in the UK are administered by county councils, which employ park rangers.
Outdoor tasks include managing the maintenance of fencing, monitoring the habitats of wildlife and dealing with problems such as dangerous trees. A park ranger will often supervise work carried out by contractors such as tree surgeons.
There’s also a strong link with the local community – coordinating local volunteers who help with park maintenance, or running outdoor events and activities for the public, schools and youth groups to enjoy the countryside within the park’s boundaries.
Personal trainer
A personal trainer can have the best of both worlds as their training sessions can be both indoors and out. It really depends on where they want to be, and where their clients want to be.
There are different levels of training you can do to become a personal trainer; for instance, the Level 2 Certificate in Fitness Instructing or the Level 3 Diploma in Fitness Instructing and Personal Training. You can train at an adult education college, university or through private training providers.
Being a member of a professional organisation such as the National Register of Personal Trainers (NRPT) or the Register of Exercise Professionals (REPs) can be valuable for your personal trainer CV and increase your chances of securing a post as a personal trainer for a fitness company or gym. You may choose to work freelance, but there are also plenty of roles for fitness professionals on specialist recruitment sites such as thefitnessassociates.com.
Source: Darren Bootcamp Lavery via Facebook
As well as demonstrating exercises to clients, a personal trainer will customise training routines for each of their clients, provide them with motivation, advice on diet and nutrition and monitor their clients’ progress. You need to be sociable and good at encouraging others, as well as punctual and responsible.
Horticultist or gardener
The range of jobs available that are connected to gardening and horticulture is immense, from lawn and garden maintenance, through to landscaping and market gardening. You might choose to be self-employed or to work for a bigger organisation, such as one of the national garden centre chains.
One prerequisite for this kind of work is an affinity for working with plants. Qualifications aren’t a necessity, but there are plenty of different training opportunities available if you want to specialise. For instance, you may choose to become a tree surgeon, where you’ll need to be able to use chainsaws, ropes, harnesses and ladders with confidence and safety. Many tree surgeons learn their trade as a ground worker, supporting a more experienced tree surgeon from the ground.
Source: Pixabay
You’ll be outside for the majority of your working day, and working with plants rather makes for a working environment that is generally low stress.
Of course, there are many other jobs that will take you to an outside environment every day; you just have to decide where your interest lies and start looking from there. It may be that you need to do some retraining to make the move from desk to open air, but if it leads to a more fulfilling working day, it’s well worth putting the effort in.