How To Get The Perfect Quarantine Body

What we do with this time will shape us for years to come. So each of us has a choice to make: You can either emerge from this quarantine as a glimmering adonis or as a quivering blob. If you want to go with the option that rhymes with “mimmering madonis” here’s how you do it.

Day 1 — It all starts with a simple push-up followed by 300 more push-ups. If your form is good you should feel your neck bulging, your arms billowing, and your spirit breaking — then soaring.

Day 2 — Food is fuel and if you’re not maximizing every bean you’ve already failed. Personally I like to look every bean in the eye before I swallow it and say “It’s you and me, baby.”

Day 3 — Gyms are closed so you’ll have to get creative. Make weights by filling two gallons of milk with sand and fashion a pull-up bar out of the stale baguette you bought in March. It will ruin the milk and badly bend the baguette but there’s no sense crying over bent baguettes, as the saying goes.

Day 4 — Breathe in for four seconds, hold it for seven seconds, and exhale for three hours. Longer if possible. Remember: Air is full of empty calories.

Day 5 — Sleep is key to building muscle and in quarantine you should be sleeping faster and dreaming harder than ever before. The trick is to go to bed in full workout gear and imagine that you’re in a gym until you drift off into an ab-shredding slumber in which you dream about doing squats for the recommended 8 hours. To add realism imagine that the gym is smelly.

Day 6 — Aesthetics no longer matter so forget about six-packs. You want to mold your midsection into the shape of something practical like a rain barrel. It’s all about functional strength now. With society rapidly breaking down the question isn’t how many reps can you do, it’s how much storefront glass can you smash? And how many MacDonald’s soda fountains can you carry back to the sewers?

Day 7 — Forget what I said about six-packs being bad. They’re good. Except you’ll be doing a special sequence of reverse crunches to sculpt your torso into a row of shot glass-shaped depressions. Bars are going to be closed for a long time and only those who can do body shots effectively will survive.

Day 8 — Quick check in. Are you doing OK? Stick to the program and you should emerge from this quarantine stronger, faster, and able to breathe underwater. That’s where the gills come in. Stress-drink enough flavored seltzer and glistening apertures redolent of pamplemousse will begin to open along your throat. But the gains don’t stop there. Let’s talk appendages.

Day 9 — Visualization is a powerful tool on any fitness journey so visualize your first post-quarantine high five. Imagine how good it will feel and how your friend’s eyes will pop open when he expects to slap your hand and gets a fleshy handful of prehensile tail instead. The look on his face and the respect in his screams will make it all worth it.

Day 10 — Finally, one important note: If you haven’t already started growing a second head you should do so now. That way you’ll double your brain power and get two votes in any life or death tribal voting scenarios. Trust me, if you emerge from this quarantine without a second head you’re going to look pretty darn silly.