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CHAPTER TWO

COVID CREATES NEW BARRIERS TO FITNESS

For context, and before I launch into the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has affected my
life, I must mention that I am a healthcare provider and work in facilities where there are patients that
tested positive for COVID. I treat many of these patients daily.

I am an optimist by nature, always believing the glass is half full and that where there is a will,
there is away. However, COVID-19 pandemic has truly tested that part of my character. My weekday
routine before COVID was:

 Get up at 4:45 a.m.
 Drink a 16oz bottle of water
 Engage in 2 minutes of none-stop low impact movements
 Play a few speed rounds of online chess (which I was slowly becoming good at)
 Change into my work out clothes and arrive at the gym by 5:30 a.m.

Three of those days, I would play basketball with a group of guys around 6:00 a.m. and that
often lasted until 7:00 -7:30 a.m. So, I would engage in some strength training, calisthenic, or
plyometric exercises for the half-hour before game time.

During the days I did not play basketball, I would still get up at 4:45 a.m. and maintain my
same morning routine but might play chess a bit longer, and more often than not, arrive at the gym
around 5:45-6:00 a.m. It was a great routine! I felt refreshed and revitalized every time afterward,
prepared to take on the physical demands of my workday successfully. It did take some time to get
into a good rhythm for this routine, several months as a matter of fact. However, once I got into it,
there was no turning back. For six months, this is how I lived and operated.

Achieving a good rhythm for a fitness routine for me means that even when you aren't able
to keep to the same schedule every day or every week, you still maintain the same good habits you've
established for yourself up to that point. It also means that your mind starts to behave like water, in
the sense that you gravitate toward whatever crack or opening of time available throughout that day
or week, to carry out your routine in replace of the usual time.

I had finally achieved this after months of trying to re-establish a culture or way of life that
maximized my potential to be the healthiest version of myself. Then COVID hit and, well, everything
changed.

In the beginning, when COVID hit my part of town, gyms remained open with special
precautionary measures taken to assure the safety of their members. Not as much was known about
it as there is now, so the gym's basketball court remained open. Fortunately, none of the guys, to my

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