We built a gym!

 COVID has been hard on everything and especially places like gyms. I started going to the gym in January 2020. You know what happened next, they closed down in March, reopened in July and closed for real at the end of June.

With the closing one of our friends stepped up, he's got some commercial property that wasn't being used so he bought some of the equipment from the old gym and converted that space to use it in.

First we had to take down a wall.

A sledge hammer and a lot of trash bags...

Hauling out of the old place. This isn't all of the equipment, we filled my pickup and the one towing the trailer too.

The new place is a second floor walk up, it was all hands on deck, well 7 of us anyway, to move in. I don't have any pictures, it was a pretty rapid process.

Getting set up. The hardwood floor is covered with a sheet of plastic to protect it, then a layer of interlocking mats. This has made for an excellent surface to exercise on. Notice also the fans and new lights. There are actually 3 fans, they move a lot of air. Not pictured is the tiny little air conditioner which isn't really up to the task. We need to tint the west facing windows, solar gain on a black floor is substantial.

The weight rack, more recently this got cut back to just one side and slid to the left side of the door. We didn't really need the whole rack as we didn't get all the weights. The room is really just a little too narrow for where it was sitting, I think it works a whole lot better in it's new space.

So now Angie and I are on the "board of trustees" for "an elite fitness club". It's a private club and the only way to join is to know somebody who is already in. We're limited for the number of members because of space restrictions capping class size. For now there are only 6 classes a week which may expand in the future.

We do circuit training, the instructors set up 12 stations, each with one exercise and the students cycle through the 12 stations doing each one for 45 seconds. I know 45 seconds doesn't seem like a lot but if you've ever done burpees you should know better. We go through the set of 12 three times, it takes just a bit over an hour when you add in warm up and cool down.

The students range in age from early 20s through mid '60s, maybe into the 70's in the fall if some of the oldest students come back. Mostly I'd say mid thirties and mid forties.

So what will the future hold? I dunno, but at least for the short term it's nice to have a place to workout. I know that personally having a place to go and going to classes with other people makes me much more likely to attend. I also know that I'm a lot stronger than I was before I started going a year and a half ago so I hope we continue like this into the future.