While my workouts are going quite well, I still struggle with the desire to move iron again. I waffle between wanting to do a strength oriented training plan and maintaining a hypertrophy oriented training plan, but even a hypertrophy plan would be dramatically improved by the ability to incrementally increase the resistance I’m using, which is just harder with resistance bands. I do it by changing bands, or doubling up the bands, but it’s a much more subjective increase than the ability to put more plates on the bar.
When this desire to lift weights peaks, I begin contemplating choices that have a risk profile I can tolerate. The COVID-19 pandemic remains persistently expanding in my area, and my recent scare with a bout of fever, fatigue, chills and body aches just reinforces what caused me to leave the gym in the first place: I don’t want to get sick. Returning to the Crunch gym is not an option as spending a couple of hours a day indoors with heavy breathers in recirculated air is off the charts on my risk profile. I’ve ruled out being able to rent a storage unit and build my own gym as all the storage companies I’ve called won’t allow it. Sure, I could do it anyway and hope I don’t get caught and kicked out, but it’ll be $1700 to get the equipment I want and that’s a sizable investment to make knowing I could hit a dead-end whenever someone catches me squatting in my storage unit. Living alone has its advantages, like considering putting a squat rack in my living room. I haven’t ruled it out entirely, but it seems a tad silly at this point.
Yesterday, I began thinking about my old downtown gym; Big Work Fitness. I’ve been in touch with one of the trainers there on Facebook and he’s given me the lay of the land. The gym remains busy, busier perhaps than when I last attended, and masks are not prevalent among the members. However, there is an outside area that I didn’t use when I trained there, and from what I recall, not many people did. Oh there were some people who would do tire flipping, stone carries and that weird thing people do with ropes, but the couple of cages and squat racks were generally unused. I decided I could see myself training outside with a surgical mask, maybe cutting down to 3 days a week to hit the big lifts and doing the smaller stuff at home on the other 3 days. So I hopped in the car this morning and headed down to conduct reconnaissance.
I chose 10:00 AM as a possible target for my mission, although I ideally train at 3:00 PM. My thinking is that most people work at this hour, if they still have jobs of course, so I could avoid the early morning, pre-work crowd, and beat the get-a-quick-lunchtime-workout crowd as well. I also planned a second recon mission for 3:00 PM, however that is now murky after my initial results.
The majority of the outdoor section is some kind of artificial turf and is devoid of any lifting apparatus. It seems to be left for conditioning work like Farmer’s Carries, Yoke Walks and the aforementioned Rope Silliness. Around the side of the gym is one Power Cage and one Squat Rack from what I could see from my vantage point on the sidewalk. There’s a rack of rusty dumbbells but that’s it. Clearly I would have to venture inside to get barbells, benches and plates to bring back outside with me, but that isn’t necessarily a deal breaker. There was no one outside when I arrived, but that illusion was quickly burst as two youths emerged and began moving about in what I assume was some kind of lifting preparation. They were unmasked as I expected, and while outdoors lowers the risk, there is nowhere near enough physical distance out there to accommodate more than one or two people.
- This photo shows two cages and a squat stand, but on my recon mission this morning, there was only one cage.
The other, rather significant concern, is that it was freaking hot out. Not surprising of course, being August in Charleston, but I dare say that doing reasonably challenging Squats, Deadlifts or anything really in this kind of heat has an element of danger associated with it. At a minimum, a likely performance reduction with a side of heat frustration. At worst, heat exhaustion or stroke.
As I drove home, my quiet pathogen-free workouts at home suddenly seemed much more appealing and I’m reminded that there is time. Time to allow the post-COVID reality to come into full view. Time to see what the future holds. The iron isn’t going anywhere and while I miss it, that seems a small price to pay for peace and an anxiety-free exercise protocol. Not to mention the $65 monthly fee to lift at the swampy sauna that is Big Work.
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