Exercising outdoors once a day is one of our last remaining Coronarights as locked-down human beings. At least it is in much of the Western world (and for the record I mean the exercise part being our right and not the being a human being human right thing or at least not yet. Mind you…). And you know just how important a right outdoor exercising is when governments keep threatening to take it away – thank you Paris!
There are a few basic rules to outdoor lockdown exercise and you know what they say about rules being made to be…
Rule No 1. Apparently exercise constitutes you actually moving so any of us seen hanging around on benches pretending to bench press or performing some slomo lying down yoga thingy should expect to be arrested. Saying that no one has actually set guidelines on what specific form of movement constitutes exercise. So, for example, when you’re really hungry you could literally kill two birds with one stone by chasing after your dog so hard that it drops dead – it’s totally legit exercise and you’ve just nailed your bbq fodder for the night without having to don the hazmat suit to go fetch it at the Tesco. The key here is the word ‘moving’ so you could argue that moving the deck chair around the park is legit exercise – though we would suggest bench pressing it over your head every so often so you really enhance that legit bit.
Rule No 2. When performing outdoor exercise you must not break social distancing rules other than with the family unit living under the same roof. So if you want to practice boxing then you CAN use toddler as punch bag but not your boxing buddy who you ‘accidentally’ bumped into in the park. Jose Mourinho might want to pay attention to this one. You can practice fencing with the teens or bashing them with a baseball bat or dropping them over the side punting down the lake. Tree hugging is allowed so long as it does not act as foreplay to something much more interesting and try not to tree hug the cat cos apparently animals can catch Covid-19 which I guess is no shit sherlock given animals gave us this friggin pandemic in the first place. So actually you might want to rethink the chasing the dog till it drops bbq bit but you don’t have to rethink the illegit sun bathing thing any further than buying a stretcher and getting the tweens to carry you round the park at a double quick march while you stretch out in the shorts with your headphones on so you get to hear ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ rather than the tweens whingeing on while you enjoy optimal tanning tactics with the sun reflector under your chops. Just make sure not to do this for too long in case you get skin cancer (maybe not in England) or park infected with the Corona – mind you if you do catch Corona (not the drink) the tweens can just keep stretchering you all the way down to A&E and if you don’t you know what excuse to pull out your rear end when you get chased down by the police – which could also get constituted as just another form of exercise.
Rule No 3: Outdoor exercise must not contravene the social gathering rule. This one is really simple – whatever Jose Mourinho tells you to do just ignore it and if Jake Gyllenhaal and that spidey kid challenge you to the outdoor version of standing upside down while taking your t-shirt on and off just remember they are paid enough to do dumb fuck things like that and they probably have way better abs than you so do a Ryan Reynolds and just say ‘no’. Mind you if Pamela Anderson asks you to do it then that’s a whole different game of socially distance compromised football. Sorry Jose. Again. But, if a whole load of you all ran round the park at the same time stretchered by tweens and on the sound of sirens you all headed in concert to the nearest hospital then please do the decent thing on arrival and put your tweens forward as recently graduated medical students which could prove to be a bullet proof way of silencing them while you volunteer to clean the toilets which would be a bullet proof way of silencing you and finally bring a whole load more meaning to listening to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ on the stretcher. Just let me know which hospital you ended up in so when I land Coronavirus I can steer as far away as possible from it.
All considered, I think I’ll just exercise at home.
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Philip Letts 