The gym is closed.  No one knows when it will open.  I am cheap.  I sold my home gym stuff years ago and can’t bring myself to buy new or even used equipment.  Plus, who knows if you could even find any right now.  Home gym equipment has never seen sales this good as everyone is socially distancing and quarantining at home.

So, what to do?  I decided to go way analog and do something that would be a very memorable COVID experience.  I have always prided myself on being creative and working with what I have.  That led me to look around the house to see if I could piece together a strength training program from household items.  Sure enough, I have the first phase of a decent workout!

First, we need weight, right?  Where could I find weight?  I remembered there were some cinder block bricks against a wall that have never moved since bought the house in 2010.

I checked them out and weighed a few.

At 22.4 pounds each, they would be perfect for a dumbbell since I like to use lighter weights for curls for tone instead of bulk.

Now, how could I make this thing into a dumbbell?  It is sharp and crumbly.  How could I somehow wrap it up so it doesn’t scratch me up and crumble all over the place?  There must be something in the garage right?  After opening a thought-provoking brewed beverage, I gazed around the garage until my eyes caught the sight of an old wetsuit.  I wondered if I could use some of that material to wrap around the brick so it would have a soft exoskeleton?  Sure enough, I cut off a leg and pulled it over the brick.

Now I needed a handle.  Next, I found an old surfboard tie-down strap and ran it through a groove in the bottom of the brick.  Then adjusted the strap and duct-taped the loose stuff.  We were in business!

How could I do squats though?  More bricks?  Those bricks take up a lot of room, not sure how I could work with them.  That’s when I saw a 5-gallon bucket in the corner of the garage.  Hmmm, I think I have some smaller bricks in the front of the house that could be more compact and fit into that bucket better.  One after the other I stacked them in and got it to 45.4 pounds.

Good enough for starters.  I remembered an exercise called Goblet Squats, and I could turn that same motion into Bucket Squats I figured.  Plus, if I ever wanted to build this brick weight thing out even more, I could go to the hardware, get a strong pole, and put one of these buckets on each end for a total of 91 pounds.

That immediately made me surface a memory that I had some sort of pole in a little scrap wood pile I have in my garage.  After digging out chairs and a snow sled that had been thrown on top of it, sure enough, I found the pole!  It would not be strong enough for two 45 pound buckets, but it would be perfect for sliding between two of those 22-pound bricks to make a curl bar!

A little more gazing around the garage helped me spy an old yoga mat and also an exercise ball.  Let’s add it up:  Exercise ball, brick dumbbell, brick curl bar, weighted 5-gallon bucket, and a yoga mat.  We should be able to get some sort of program going!

So here’s the workout and a couple photos with the new COVID inspired gear!

Stretching

• Foam roll back
• Foam roll upper legs
• Foam roll lower legs
• Hamstring stretches with cross over to loosen hips
• Leg swings back and forth and side to side
• Hurdler Stretch

Strength

• Lunge Matrix warm up.  Indvidual legs 10 reps each direction 3 sets each leg.
• Bucket Squats 15 reps 3 sets with 10 reps of V-up abdomen exercise in between each bucket squat set.

• Single Legged Deadlifts of 10 reps on each leg while holding the brick dumbbell in the opposite hand.  3 sets of these with 15 reps of Supermans on the yoga mat in between each set.

• Brick Curl Bar with 10 reps each set.  4 total sets with 3 sets of planks with feet elevated on the exercise ball for a count of 100 each set.

• Single Brick Curl 10 reps each set on each arm.  In between each set, do a set of 10 reps of single-legged elevated push-ups.  Someday I will be able to those 1 armed push-ups like Rocky!

I need to figure out something specifically for triceps and I think I need to go find a bigger pole so I can do that double bucket squat.  However, in a COVID kind of world it’s not bad for what I could find around the house!