‘Con do’ attitude fuels this workout program
Being quarantined at home removes two hallmarks of the typical exercise regimen: space and equipment.
Instead, normal routines have been transplanted into living rooms and spare bedrooms, often assisted without weights or with only a small fraction of the dumbbells or barbells available at your local gym.
Weight-free exercise programs held in limited square footage is the hallmark of ConBody, a New York City-based gym preaching the effectiveness of a routine developed in the smallest and most confined space imaginable: the inside of a prison cell.
Founded by Coss Marte in 2016, ConBody translates the tricks Marte learned during a seven-year prison stint — he was convicted as a 23-year-old “for running one of the largest drug-delivery services” in New York City, he said — into a workout that can be performed at home while using only body weight, making it a perfect fit for the underquarantine exercise crowd.
“It’s perfectly suitable for people who live in small, contained spaces like I do, or how I did in prison,” Marte said. “When you lose your equipment, you lose everything that you’re used to working out with. I feel like we have what we need. God gave us everything we need, and that’s all we need. Just our body.”
Marte says his daily prison routine included 1,200 push-ups and 1,000 burpees along with certain exercises that could be performed only with the help of a cellmate — in the most extreme example, one will do squats or push-ups while carrying the full weight of the other. If less reliant on another person, ConBody workouts are rooted in the same principle: that body weight can provide all you need to pull off a strenuous workout.
Marte suggested five exercises for those quarantined at home:
❚ Jumping jacks. With your legs together, bend your knees and jump, spreading your legs and stretching your arms above your head. Then jump back into the starting position. (You know how to do a jumping jack.)
❚ Squat jacks. Open your legs as if doing a jumping jack, but “you’re touching the ground instead of bringing your hands up,” Marte said.
❚ Mountain climbers. Assume a push-up position, with your hands under your shoulders, and begin kicking your knees up to your elbows or chest. The keys are to keep a flat back and to make sure you don’t arch or dip, Marte said.
❚ Flutter kicks. Lay flat on your back with your hands under your tailbone. With your knees locked, lift your feet six inches off the ground and kick up and down.
❚ Isometrics. This includes planks, or maintaining a push-up position on your hands or elbows, or doing squats against a wall for 30 to 45 seconds.
Do all five exercises, stop, and then do them again.
“Just repeat and rinse,” Marte said.