Remote Queerfitting
The magic carpet ride of queerfit happens for one hour, twice a week. That, alas, leaves 166 hours a week of not-queerfit. How sad is that?! And sadder still, what about those poor souls who don’t live in Atlanta or who have conflicting schedules and can’t get to a queerfit workout at all?
I’m on the road for the next few weeks, and will be having to queerfit remotely. This got me thinking about what makes a workout a queerfit workout. After long study and deep thought, here’s the distillation…
One point for incorporating any of the following elements into a workout. When you get up to 4 points, then you’ve turned your workout into a queerfit workout:
Use odd objects. The real world is not a shoulder press machine with safety stops and padded seats. The real world is not a rigid, perfectly straight barbell. The real world is odd, as in asymmetrical, unbalanced, awkward. It’s queer as hell. Trees, for example. Couches that need to be moved. Kegs. Dogs. Children. All quite odd in their own way. Since we’re training for this queer real world, one point for you if the workout you make up uses odd objects. Sandbags are great, but so are tree limbs, your luggage, or your office chair. The odd object can also be you.
Do it in public. Working out inside a gym is the norm, so one point for working out in public. Look for a playground with pull-up bars, or a space with a chest high retaining wall. I especially love workouts that incorporate barriers – walls, police barriers, fences – by turning them into something to get up and over.
Go hard hard. Even though most of our queerfit workouts fall between 12 and 20 minutes, there are lots of ways to go hard for workouts lasting anywhere from 4 minutes to an hour. You can’t actually go hard hard for an hour, or even for ten minutes – it’s physiologically impossible. What you want to do is