If you don’t have a sweet garage gym setup (me neither!) with a power rack, full weight set, adjustable rings, etc. etc. etc. FEAR NOT.
There’s a level of resilience that’s being built right now- and it’s not through having all the gear and a climate controlled garage.
It’s through making it happen with what you have.
There’s just something about doing bent over rows with a paint can that burns into your brain that there’s no excuse to not get some fitness in most days.
Check out this photo, taken by a friend of a friend (credit: Sean Kilpatrick)
That’s the Canadian Men’s Olympic Rowing Team getting a workout in at the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
Old rusty bars, and soup cans full of concrete for weights.
It’s pretty awesome- but I feel like far too many people would look at this equipment and see an excuse to not do anything.
Unless you’re willing to get creative, it would be easy to simply look at this bare-bones beach paradise gym and say “what would I even do here?”
When I saw this photo it immediately made me think of Rocky IV.
Rocky Balboa vs. the massive Russian, Ivan Drago, who had been smashing people and famously killed Apollo Creed in the ring.
The famous Rocky IV Training Montage tells the story (watch this if you need hit of motivation).
It begins with Rocky stepping out of a wood cabin in the middle of back-country Russia. A quick look around before running through the snowy roads, almost as if to say “I guess this is it now”.
Drago gets to work- pushing the limits with his team of scientists, power meters and measurments on everything, and new cutting edge equipment.
Rocky chops wood and lifts rocks.
It’s a classic story of the perfect manufactured athlete (drugs and all) vs. heart and toughness.
We all know who wins.
Could you imagine they each found one morning that their regular training routine had been interrupted?
Drago’s gym doors padlocked; Rocky’s makeshift equipment all vanished.
Who throws in the towel and who goes on to succeed?
I’m taking heart every single time.