TALKING TECH
Duncan Bell discusses the great workout gear drought of 2020
“To call Wahoo’s KICKR an exercise bike is a bit like calling a cruise missile a pop gun”
One of the more heartening things about the recent global apocalypse has been that people have still been taking the time to stay fit.
Many people quite reasonably assumed the UK’s population would come out of the other end of this twice as wide as when it went in. Not so, statistics say, and really it’s not so surprising. When the news is full of nothing but the grim fate awaiting the unwell, booming interest in fitness and health seems like a natural reaction to me.
If you are one of the many people who have been trying to avoid becoming half man, half sofa while stuck at home, you will probably know it has not been easy. Not just for the usual reasons to do with willpower or lack of space in your domicile.
No, the big issue with getting in shape in 2020 has been the near total lack of fitness equipment to buy. It started as a perfect storm of demand wildly outstripping supply, just as it became much harder to ship replacement stock from China, where practically all home gym equipment is manufactured.
You didn’t really read about this, as there were no scenes on the news of people wrestling over treadmills in Asda, or piling their shopping trollies high with dumbbells while people tut-tutted at them then tweeted about how, like, totes selfish they are, basically.
However, things later took a bit of a sinister turn. Soon, it became apparent to those with eyes to see, that chin-up bars and weights benches were even more soughtafter than bog roll and sanitising aloe vera hand gel. As a result, certain people started using the same type of bots used to snap up tickets for concerts – remember them?! – and limited edition Nike trainers to snaffle fitness gear.
This meant the only place you could buy kit for your desirable home gym was on re-sale sites, at massively inflated prices, from men called Wayne.
I never really got anywhere with the whole home gym thing as a result, until I was fortunate enough to receive for review Wahoo’s KICKR exercise bike. Actually, to call it an exercise bike is a bit like calling a cruise missile a pop gun. It’s basically a MAMIL-pleasing, high-end road bike that just happens to have no wheels.
If you’re the sort of person who really likes to test themselves, I heartily recommend this workout plan. First: spend three months doing nothing more vigorous than repeatedly lifting large glasses of agreeable Rioja and chunks of pie to your gaping maw. Second: try pedalling a Wahoo KICKR with the resistance whacked up. What doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger, right?
Meanwhile, Joe Wicks was becoming one of the most recognisable faces of
Covid, and something of a national treasure, for his daily PE lessons. Although these were aimed at kids, they were also quite seriously exhausting high intensity interval training workouts.
So home exercise has become ‘the new normal’ for a lot of people. When gyms reopen, I doubt their former members will flock back.
A lot of the hygiene issues of gyms seem gross now we’re all hung up on cleanliness. But you know what? They were gross before, guys!
It’s just that back in 2020 BC (before Coronavirus), few people had considered working out at home – or in the park, or running or cycling on the streets – instead. Now, everyone has. Suddenly, being showered with the saliva of the man gasping for air on the cross trainer next to you, or seeing actual butthole sweat left on an exercise machine seat seems somehow less appealing.
Anyway, who wants to go on paying for a gym when you’ve just splashed out hundreds on some basic weights from a bloke on Gumtree, or thousands on a treadmill off the back of a lorry? Home workouts are likely to remain the new normal for quite some time to come…