I can remember when I was a kid, running up the down escalator in a department store at the local mall. It seemed like a good idea at the time but, judging by all the yelling, my mother and the store manager were not on board. Years later, some entrepreneur gets a patent, calls it exercise, and it’s a million-dollar idea. If only my mom and store manager had known.
There are exercise opportunities all around us every day. The pandemic, and stay-at-home orders that followed, have seemingly made exercise less accessible, but that’s not exactly true.
There was a time when strength training and fitness, as leisure time activities, were very counterculture. They were often misunderstood and frowned upon by the general public. Back then, exercise facilities were few and largely underground; department stores didn’t have much of a fitness section, and Amazon was just a rainforest.
The early exercise folk, who were referred to as physical culturists and pejoratively branded as freaks, had to be very resourceful about finding and procuring exercise equipment. Between the lack of availability and typical financial constraints, they often fabricated their own homespun designs with MacGyver-like ingenuity.
Nowadays you can grab a workout at a hotel, on a cruise ship, and at the office. There are exercise facilities in every direction. Even pharmacies have fitness aisles, and e-commerce has made dumbbells just a click away.
For the time being, commercial gyms are off-limits, and most of us don’t have access to pneumatic exercise equipment or the other fancy stuff. To me, this is simply a matter of the exercise zeitgeist coming full circle.
There was a time when exercise furnishings were less widespread and less accessible, and that time has temporarily come again. Exercise may seem less convenient in certain ways, but it’s, in essence, as available as ever. Like the physical culturists who came before us, we need to take advantage of those resources that are available, improvise, be creative, and think both inside and outside the box.
Although our love affair with technology is undeniable, there is in fact a trend in fitness toward some of the old-timey tools and methods. Despite all of today’s whistles and bells, stone-lifting and sandbags are enjoying a nice resurgence in weight rooms and elsewhere.
Exercise has a very primal element to it, whether looking at people running barefoot or competitors throwing bundles of straw at the Highland games. We like our amenities, but even a modern-day softy appreciates getting in touch with their primitive side and channeling their ancient predecessors.
Pheidippides ran a marathon back in 490 B.C., and they’re all the rage these days.
Running and walking are still on the table for confined exercise enthusiasts; they’re old but not passé. Calisthenic exercise is literally ancient, but it’s no mistake that we still see it being used today. Our own body weight can be used in so many different ways as its own piece of exercise equipment: pushups, sit-ups, squats, and pull-ups just to name a few.
It’s never a bad time to work on our cores, but it’s a particularly good time because so many of the core-specific exercises don’t require any extra equipment. You may not have a leg-press machine, but you don’t need one to do leg squats, lunges or glute bridges.
Strength training comes in so many forms it’s almost limitless. The resistance can be a dumbbell, bodyweight, stretch bands, medicine balls or any other external load or force that your muscles have to work against. Chopping wood is strength training; carrying a laundry basket is strength training; playing tug of war with your dog is strength training.
Old-time strongmen were known to use sledgehammers for exercises and feats of strength. There are a million ways to overload your muscles, and your muscles probably don’t care all that much about the instrument of torture. There are plenty of unwitting pieces of workout equipment hiding in plain sight or at least in our basements and sheds. Do some unpleasant chores and repurpose some less-obvious things that are heavy enough to serve as exercise-resistance equipment.
To bookend a young boy’s joie de vivre and excitement over an escalator, we have a jaded 40-year old’s despair over an escalator. More than a few years back, I was at a crowded mall the day before Christmas and noticed a huge logjam of shoppers atop an escalator entry.
Upon closer inspection, I could see that the escalator was not moving, and the huddled masses were paralyzed with bewilderment. I usually don’t break rank but decided to take the lead and descend to the lower level. As if it never dawned on the congested mob that a broken escalator could be used as a staircase, my rare act of initiative restored order once the stranded shoppers followed suit.
Sometimes we don’t see things for what they are or could be. A tree branch can double as a pull-up bar. Gravity and inertia are the critical elements for most strength exercises, not bumper plates, and those are still available.
Movement is the most important ingredient for fitness, not where we move. We should not focus on our limitations but rather on our bounty of provisions and potential exercise means. It may feel a bit confining these days, but we have plenty of options.
Today’s exercise fanatics have nothing on yesterday’s lumberjacks and pioneer women. Use your imagination and the sky’s the limit.
— Certified strength and conditioning coach Norman Meltzer, the owner/operator of MW Strength and Conditioning in New Bedford, was known during his competitive weight-lifting career as “the Muscless Wonder” for his lean, mean physique lacking in the traditional bulk associated with strength training. Meltzer’s experience and knowledge has helped pro, college and high school athletes and teams and even regular people improve their strength and performance.
Schvitz’n with Norm
By Norm Meltzer