From tennis to workouts at home: How athletics have changed with the cancellation of spring sports

By: Clarence Jubac


Students taking the journalism class for Mr. Martin were tasked with a project during our time in quarantine. This project allowed students to set a personal goal of whatever they wanted for themselves. For my project, I decided that I wanted to stay in shape by working out at home.

I had to make the best of what I had at home with the small variety of different weights and equipment I have. But even though I didn’t have a whole ton of things to make staying in shape easier for me, I was still able to manage, but didn’t have any clue on what exercises I could do to put them to use.

As I said before, I chose this topic for my project as a way to keep in shape, and just to get stronger while at home. My normal day to day life of exercise and working out before this project was just playing tennis at least four days a week, or going out as much as I could. This project gave me the opportunity to mix things up a bit, and start adding a variety of other ways for me to get some exercise.

I started off by looking into some videos and websites online on what are good workouts I could do at home with minimal use of equipment. 

I decided to base my workouts and exercise off this fitness channel called OFFICIALTHENX. The channel happened to have their own app too, so I used that to help follow along and see how to do these exercises. The app is free and has a bunch of content and videos to see, but only to the naked eye. Once you click one of the workout programs, and start doing the workouts that are set for each week, you see that some workouts are locked since you don’t have that special membership. So I hope that by writing about them, they could hook me up on a deal to fix just that🙏🙏🙏.

During the days I worked out, I’d sometimes start by either going for a run or playing street tennis, most of the time I’d go to the high school for that. After about an hour of street tennis, I’d start doing the no equipment needed exercises on the THENX app that provided exercises for each week, and lift weights for a few minutes afterwards.

I have to say that completing the first week of going off the workouts of the app wasn’t too bad for me. When it really started to get tough was the week afterwards. My body felt numb and sore from doing the workouts of the second week, and it seemed that my body still hasn’t adapted to this new change of pace.

This continued on a bit for the next week after that, but I felt like I was starting to get used to it, and the soreness started going away in the following days. I’ll admit that although the weekly workouts had rest days set up, I did take an extra day or two because I just didn’t feel like doing anything. 

Overall, I’d say that I have achieved my goal to stay and shape, and maybe have even gotten a bit stronger along the way. This project and the time I had in quarantine has given me the opportunity to find something I truly think has become a good habit of mine, and is something that’ll lead me to a healthier life down the road. 

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