Barbells and dumbbells are appropriately ergonomic (handles, balance, etc.) and won't ruin your back if you use proper technique. Lifting a heavy stone is a recipe for injuring yourself severely.

People need specific indoor gym equipment if they lift, which is a very valid form of exercise. Or, you know, if it's raining or thunderstorming or a humid 100°F outside.

And bodyweight exercises only get you so far, even if you're doing one-handed or one-legged versions.

You can't just dismiss the fitness routines people have spent years choosing and refining and getting better at. The fact that you seriously suggest lifting a heavy stone demonstrates you don't seem to know much about safe fitness at all.

I've been lifting for 15 years, mostly in the gym. The last couple of years though, I've realized how much you can do with bands. You can't beat them on cost and convenience in the realm of home gym equipment. The only thing you can't reasonably do with them are squats. Deadlifts can be substituted with pull-throughs which are a better posterior chain movement anyway. Yea, you might have to do more reps. That's infinitely better than nothing.

Unless you're a competitive strength athlete, or trying to be one, not having access to a gym is frankly an excuse. In my younger days I used to have a very rigid mentality when it came to strength training which eventually led to burnout and extended vacations from the gym. Having mental flexibility instead of striving for some notion of perfection is what's kept me in this game long-term.

EDIT: typo

I am not, It must be very hard, to take away something you love and trained.

Society is asking you to sacrifice a big thing for something that may not benefit society at all. The chances of you catching and then spreading are ~ 1/1000. Assuming a 1% mortality. We are asking 100,000 people to give up something they love to save one loved one.

My own value system is that my enjoyment is not worth 1/100,000 of a person life. I would say in the order of 1/1,000,000. Based upon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALARP is where I get my figure.

I am interested which figure you think is reasonable - 10^5 or 10^6 or between or higher or dismiss the risk entirely ?

^ They definitely aren't asking

On that note, construction workers do severely damaging work every day (not being sarcastic, they mess up their bodies for people who will haggle to the last cent). Show them more respect.

You can usually find a threadbare heavy equipment tire more easily though since most people with stones just let them sit whereas tires need to be disposed of.

Some light reading on the subject:

https://yoga-horizons.com/pdfs/Fatmans-Guide-to-Cable-Traini...

More arrogant than putting other lives at risk because you can't put your routine on hold, or alter it for a bit? No. It isn't.

"Lift a heavy stone"? That's a joke, right?

No, and it's part of strongman competitions. It's not dangerous if you have the right form and don't overdo it. Same as dumbbells & barbells.

He answered your question directly and then you change the goalposts. Clearly you hold the opinion that gyms should remain closed, and that's fine, but why even ask the question?

This is the part I'm confused about. If gyms were open, people who's lives were at risk still wouldn't go to the gym. Only people who didn't care would go. They are consenting to the risk that would inherently come with it. It isn't the type of place that at risk people HAVE to go, so why shouldn't we open it for people that are fine with the consequences? Also, restaurants are all completely open for dine-in in many of the places that gyms have yet to open. How does that make any sense? No one magically stops breathing for the hour+ they're in the restaurant.

I think quarantine should be down to the individual and the rules they'd like to implement on their private property (including their business), but you've probably already gotten that by now.

Too bad most people leave their private property and interact with people in public spaces where their personal rules are moot.

I imagine that the problem is much worse for bodybuilders and powerlifters.

Working out has solved a ton of problems for me. Anxiety, Depression, Mood Swings, Rage. You get into a routine, and you don't want anyone or anything to mess with it. It's what makes you feel good. For me its the difference between a productive day and an unproductive one.

Changing things up, especially with improvisation, can result in injury. Or just not getting a desired result. For example, I squat 400lbs or more. Would I try to squat a 400lbs stone, not only no, but hell no.

For some that go to real gyms, it's not just the workout. It's the comradery that comes with doing hard things with friends. It's socialization.

I think it has very little to do with being a rebel or a denier, and a lot more to do with it being a way of life, for a lot of us.

It can be very hard to keep the same high quality of workouts without going to a specific facility and training with the guidance and motivation from peers. Not to be rude, your suggestions sound like ideas from someone who doesn't really work out much. Pull up on a tree branch? Lift a heavy stone?

Everyone's risk profile is different. I work in statistics and data, so I certainly have a different understand that gives me a more realistic perspective on the dangers.

“Can’t go to the high tech gym? Just strap a fallen tree to your torso and drag it up a mountain!”

You asked why people would want specific equipment. You didn't ask whether the tradeoffs involved are worth it. The replies here mostly answer the question you asked, not the one you're pivoting to.

A thing that is very important about rituals is that there are almost always triggers of when the ritual should be performed. Often that trigger involves being in a specific place.

For exercise, that trigger is going to the gym.

For work, that trigger is going to the office

For religion, that trigger is going to the church / temple / etc.

When you deprive people of the ability to be in the correct place, then their trigger is blocked and their rituals don't happen.

Yes, you could retool your rituals (work from home is the biggest example of this), but for many things, the motivation or desire just isn't there.

The spaces are too important to the ritual itself.

So I can totally see why people would want to go to the gym even if they weren't supposed to.

I finally started biking recently, but I struggle to get motivated and get out of the apartment to do it. That was never a problem when going to the gym.

Ive had a certain degree of success mimicking this by adding smells via essential oil defusers are key points like “starting work” or “preparing for bed”, but I can’t say I’ve found a silver bullet. Still, I think there’s something here.

Gym, as in the physical location, is also very much part of the "fitness habit". It doesn't feel the same doing it outside by yourself.

A 6x6 area can be hard to find. In my apartment, getting that requires moving two bulky pieces of furniture.

It has since healed, and I am better now. However, there was a point in time where I had to continue going to the gym and keep using those weight machines. It took a few years before I was back to normal and could start working with more generalized equipment. So there's more than just a sports-focused need (like MMA fighting or football) for gym equipment, and that equipment cannot easily be substituted, nor can it be done safely with a bike or a heavy stone.

When you’re feeling depressed or lazy, just showing up at the gym can kick start an upward spiral.

Nothing to do with body dysmorphia or doing something "illegal" but based on the fact that covid is not as severe that warrant stopping recreational activity.

Is simply risk vs benefit.

But after so many months off, I'm reaching the point where the lost gains might not be recoverable. I have to decide sometime soon whether to get back into the gym or give it up permanently.

It's not a total loss since I've been doing handyman work for my boss and 50 incline pushups 2-3 times per week. I'm in generally good health and my face is thinner. Still stinks though.

I bought a used weight bench and plan to use it soon. And I'm still paying my gym membership, only $20/mo for life at a converted Gold's Gym. But we get such a boost in the first 6 weeks of n00b gains after a break that I feel it's better to go all-in rather than dabble.

Oh and to answer your question: pumping iron is a hack. My girlfriend does kickboxing, and it's a tremendously physical exercise revolving around burpies and other crossfit-style functional training. It's really good. But, I feel that weightlifting provides a much higher bang for the buck because it takes advantage of 2 to 5 day overcompensation cycles in the body so that gains continue indefinitely. So my intensity under the bar over an hour and a half period never even reaches the intensity of her warmup. Yet I put on perhaps 2 to 4 times as much muscle as I would cross training, for 1/2 to 1/4 the effort, which works out to about a 4 to 16 times better return on investment (an order of magnitude better result).

I pump iron because I'm lazy, is what I'm saying.

https://yoga-horizons.com/pdfs/Fatmans-Guide-to-Cable-Traini...

s/need/want/

This article could just as easily have been written about speakeasy bars that have opened during lockdown.

I could probably target my leg muscles more effectively at a nice gym with barbells, but after 5 months, I'm still working through bodyweight based progressions for deadlifts and squats, so I don't feel like I've plateaued yet. I've made big progress too. When I started I could barely do a single pull-up and now I'm up to 3 sets of 6 per workout. Similar story for pushups, I can crank out 20-30 of those now no problem, where I struggled to hit 5 before.

The ease with which you can get fit at home has been one of the pleasant surprises of this pandemic.

But some people have been going to the gym for decades and take it very seriously as a hobby. Losing access to the gym will set them back years.

Zero tolerance?

One potential infection of a 300million+ population?

One potential death of a 300million+ population?

Since you don't work out, I assume you like food. Imagine if you had to spend months eating nothing but Soylent because of $reasons, then when you complain you get chirping like "I don't get it, it's the same nutritional value, you don't need any real food".

Further, "Heavy stone" workouts do not easily lend themselves to progressive overload, or varied programming.