Gym Alternatives
To get your cardio, try running to catch the subway just as the doors close. You can also incorporate an upper body workout if you stick your hands in the doors and try to pry them open, ignoring the fact that it solely depends on the conductor pressing a button.
Start taking the stairs up to your office instead of the elevator, and try your best to not stop after a coworker you don’t know very well gives you a strange look when you come out of the side stairwell.
Strengthen your back by carrying the weight of your demons.
My cousin Eddie got a great score on new steroids from Estonia that the FDA hasn’t approved yet, I’ll give you his number.
Get your squats in by using public toilets more often, carefully hovering over the seats so your precious bottom never touches the soiled porcelain.
Doing a heavy load of laundry is a great way to work both your glutes and biceps, plus you’ll feel accomplished even if it’s the only thing you do all day.
Trick your brain into thinking you went to the gym by putting on basketball shorts before your nap.
Don’t bother buying your own fitness equipment, you can do your morning handstand pushups anywhere.
Book free trial sessions with every personal trainer in the city until there are none left. By the time you go through all of them, you can go back to the top of the list because they won’t recognize your newly ripped body. (Remember to use a different email address so they don’t suspect anything, though.)
Take stretch breaks at work so you can stay loose and limber for typing numbers into a spreadsheet all day.
Start running. Talk about it all the time. It’s the most important thing in your life. You’re thinking about signing up for a marathon, actually. It just makes you feel alive, you know?
Read anything you wrote in middle school and exercise your abs with the involuntary full body cringes.
Shower with your bathroom door open if you don’t have time for a full workout and miss that locker room feel.
Join a rec softball league, but be careful that no repressed memories from Little League come back to the surface, like when—and this is just a generic example that definitely didn’t happen to me—instead of being a good coach, teacher, and role model, Dalton’s dad laughed at you for having panic attacks, called you names, and encouraged your own friends and teammates to bully you. Again, I would like to reiterate that this is a complete hypothetical and did not happen to me.
Drink so much coffee that your heart rate is the same as it would be if you ran 100 yards. That has the same effect on your body, right?
Exercise your chest muscles by standing in front of the mirror and trying to do that Terry Crews thing where he pops them back and forth.
Do sit-ups in your own home when you’re watching TV. And learn how to fly, too, while you’re at it.
Sign up for a boxing class, but make sure it doesn’t include actual sparring so you can have a great workout without getting punched in the face until you lose consciousness.
Swap out your office chair for an exercise ball to engage your core and have something squishy to angrily press down against when a coworker asks you to resend them a report you already emailed them two days ago.
Be a man and offer to carry Stephanie’s trig textbook for her to class, Dylan.
Get the same serotonin rushes friendly interactions with strangers at the gym give you by discussing politics on social media instead.
Target muscles you don’t typically focus on by precariously leaning over tall balconies to reflexively clench your sphincter in fear.
Stand more by limiting yourself to just one crowdsurf at Slipknot concerts.
You know. (Sex.)
Frown more often because they say it takes more muscles than smiling does, although in my experience, smiling is much more difficult.
Enhance muscle definition by—well, actually, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We have a ways to go before we can even begin thinking about definition.
Build a custom routine for at-home High Intensity Interval Training, but first test the waters on how loud you can thump and grunt in your apartment without your neighbors checking if everything’s okay.
Swimming works every muscle, if for some reason you’re interested in your actual health and not just trying to make your body conform to what society deems attractive.
Seriously, reach out to my cousin Eddie. These pills are basically what doctors prescribe NFL players to quickly recover from muscle tears, except they have more horse tranquilizers. Eddie says they’ll be legalized soon, and you know Big Pharma, they’ll just jack up the prices to screw over the little guy. Lucky for you, Eddie is looking to unload them as soon as possible to anyone who can buy in bulk.
To maintain the mental health benefits that exercise provides, keep your brain sharp by thinking about how many other times your ex could have cheated on you that you’ll never even know about.
Remember that your body is simply a random combination of atoms with no meaning or purpose whatsoever.
You know what? Just take the day off. You’ve earned it.
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Sam Spero and Patrick Goodney do not know each other. They have never met. It is unclear why this is attributed to both of them. They can be found at @SRSpero and @buenarodilla respectively.
