So you don’t want to workout because you don’t have time to go to the gym. Does this mean that you won’t get to plop down on one of those fancy biomechanically-uncountable machines and perform 8-12 mindless repetitions while you text between sets? Or does that mean you can’t get decked in your oly-lifting shoes, compression socks, knee braces, wrist wraps, handguards and headband and crank up some Nickelback while you intensely angst your way through your WOD until your kidneys start to fail? The gym is all around you, you just have to be creative enough to see it!
Some of the most fun workouts I’ve ever done were built from the crap surrounding me. Imagine, if you will, a hot summer day and two nerdy CrossFitters at a city park putting their trail shoes and knee braces on…
“Okay, start with 10 pullups on that playground, then 20 pushups, 30 situps and 40 squats. Then we run the yellow trail and handstand walk over every bridge, and do 10 box jumps on every bench! Then we get back here and we partner carry that huge downed tree up that hill and back to the starting area. Ready? 3,2,1 GO!”
I fell on the yellow trail as I rounded a tight gravelly corner at high speed and scraped the ground up with my left palm with fantastic agility as I returned back to a full run. From behind, my CrossFitting compadre Ben saw this and yelled, “Constantly varied dude!”
Priceless.
It doesn’t matter where you are; movement is movement. Movement can be done in any fashion in any place through any means necessary to achieve a workout. Not being able to get to the gym to work out only means that you’re stuck in a paradigm that’s not promoting your movement creativity. That’s not something you want to lose! Like recess in grade school, you don’t need actual equipment to move, you just need one person to yell “TAG! you’re it!”
Now don’t get me wrong, formal training is often necessary for learning to move well! Therefore a gym can be a sacred temple of movement knowledge, a laboratory of internal movement experiments, a connection conduit to movement teachers and a classroom for movement instruction. But an outdoor workout with nothing but a heavy rock, a tree, and an open field can make for some fantastic fitness soup!
You need to train inside the gym for movements you can take outside the gym. Machines are no good because you can’t take them with you. Barbells and dumbbells and the like are better because they teach you the basics of moving external objects. I don’t think Ben and I would have imagined that we could partner carry a huge log if we didn’t first train deadlift and cleans to a high degree prior. So that’s mandatory. But you need to be able to understand how these movements translate to life and objects outside the gym.
A lot of my clients ask me to create workouts for them when they go on vacation. I’m reminded of one workout in particular from long ago given to a brilliantly talented volleyball girl:
Find a large rock, something that requires two hands to lift but that you can still throw.
Throw the rock in one direction as far as you can, immediately sprint to it as fast as you can, pick it up, turn around and throw it back the way you can from.
30 repetitions of that as fast as possible.
I was told later that was one of the more challenging workouts she had attempted.
The idea is to understand that fitness doesn’t solely belong inside the gym with specific equipment. Fitness is an expression of movement that develops the 15 fitness domains, but if you understand and cultivate movement first, fitness can then occur anywhere.
- Sprint up a flight up stairs, 10 burpees at every landing.
- Play fetch with my dog in the park, hold a plank after every throw until she returns with the ball
- Handstand till I drop, then climb that tree as fast as possible; 10 rounds.
- Carry that log about “that” far, run around this field once, 25 pushups; 6 rounds.
- Run this trail and do 5 squats every time I pass someone, 7 pushups every time someone says “hello”, and sprint for 10 seconds every time I hear “on your left!”
- 10 cartwheels, 10 kip ups, bear crawl 30 paces; 5 rounds.
- Overhead walk this huge rock to that tree, max-L-hang from that limb, sprint with the rock back here and do 15 squats; 20 minutes of that, as many times as I can do it.
- “Tag you’re it!”
