Seems that every time I manage to become devoted to working out, a curveball pops up and throws itself.
This wasn't me waking up at 4 on one of my designated 5 a.m. workout mornings and deciding that the act of (a) getting out of the comfy bed; (b) performing the necessary ablutions; (c) pulling on workout clothing that fits, but requires a bunch of pulling and coaxing to get on; (d) pushing through the drowsy mind-jumble to make sure I have purse, keys, phone and water before going out the door; and (e) getting in the car and trying to dodge speeding, aggressive freeway drivers on the way to my southwest Little Rock gym even that early in the morning ... is just too much to bear.[CORONAVIRUS: Click here for our complete coverage » arkansasonline.com/coronavirus]
Nope. This pandemic has been one heck of a curveball.
The order handed down from the powers-that-be mandated that all "nonessential" establishments must close. Of course these included gyms, where a goodly number of people gather for sweat-inducing activity and the potential for the swapping of bodily fluids may be second only to romantic activities.
Luckily, Kameelah Harris, owner of WOW Fitness, isn't the type to just tell her open-training clients, "Oh well. Look, you guys just work out at home. I'll email you lists of the same exercises I put on the board at the gym every day. Just do these and then get in some cardio. Ta-ta!" She knew there were those among us who juuuust might be weak enough to let workouts fall by the wayside. Especially those, ahem, among us who've been working out hard enough to look like J-Lo by now but still feel like the "before" picture on a vintage Ayds Reducing Plan Candy ad. Thanks to Kameelah, I found myself joining a WOW members-only Facebook page; installing the GroupMe smartphone application so that members could quick-chat with one another there ... then reinstalling Zoom, the app for virtual meetings. So much for the app cleanup I did on my phone recently: These new app additions, along with a new Slack workplace-chat app, have me once again having to do a five-minute hunt on the iPhone screen every time I need to use something.
Instead of going to the gym, the WOW Fitness 5 a.m. crew now gets up for half-hour HIIT (high-intensity interval training workouts) led by Kameelah ... at 5 a.m., via Zoom. Anyone who lacked their own exercise mats and dumbbells has been loaned them from the gym. Zoom only allows a maximum 40 minutes but affords users the capability of simultaneously seeing all the meeting participants. A participant can choose not to turn on her video or audio. But that's not an option with our fearless leader, who wants to make sure we're doing the designated exercises, doing them for the designated length of time, and doing them correctly.
Annnnnd, Kameelah some-how has managed to make a 30-minute workout feel tougher than an hour-long workout there at the gym. There, you can at least catch your breath between tasks. Sneak in a break in the middle of the exercise. Sneak and do the exercise the easy way. Er, fudge on the number of repetitions when Kameelah's not watching. Definitely not have to drop and give her 50. But with a relatively small number of crew members doing the Zoom workouts, none of the above is an option. "This ain't no video," she told one exerciser who wasn't revealing herself onscreen.
Nope. Gotta do the jumping jacks. Burpees. Pushups. Dumbbell curls. Tricep extensions. Heismans and goalposts and bicycles, oh my! And the ubiquitous planks. Anyone who slacks can count on a good-natured but firm call-out from Kameelah. At least there are modified versions of many of these moves for crew members who may be just a few clicks above seated workouts. But we do get homework: Find a bike, treadmill or the street, and add 30 minutes of cardio.
No, this ain't no video. I've worked out to many an exercise video. The instructors in them didn't see me, didn't care if or when I got up to work out to the video, didn't care whether I did the moves correctly. And users can't talk to, and laugh with, the instructor and one another. They can't bond as they work to stay in good health ... something more important than ever in the Age of Coronavirus.
At WOW Fitness, accountability, and a sense of family among the workout crew, are gold when it comes to keeping on track. And although getting up around 4:40 to do a half-hour workout on Zoom in one's home feels no easier than getting up at 4 to get quasi-presentable and drive 10 minutes to the gym, I wouldn't trade anything for that kind of gold.
As the "new normal" continues, I hope you have a tribe helping keep you afloat. Even if you've had to coat your smartphone with new apps.
Zoom in on that email:
hwilliams@adgnewsroom.com
Style on 03/29/2020