Take a small bathroom stool and place it on a stack of books. Make sure both the stool’s legs and the books touch the ground. If your books are too short, stuff some newspaper to get the exact height. Any empty space between the books and the legs should be filled with more paper, held together by duct tape. Use all the tape you have, so the wrap holds tension.

Do this twice, and you have a bench.

An abandoned construction site across the street got me rebars, clay bricks, and those large canvas bags they use for the garbage. You can use one rebar – but I didn’t know how much they can bend, and I wanted a bigger grip, so I tied four of them together- first with steel wire, wrapping the bars from top to bottom. It’s very important to make sure the wire is tight – the trick I use is to stand on the bars, wrap the loose end of the wire around a brick, and use that as a hold to tighten it. You need to do it after every turn, or your bars will come loose.

Did I say you should use all your duct tape on the bench? I lied. You should always have more duct tape. Wrap the bars, top to bottom again. I wrapped the whole thing three times, just so I won’t feel the individual bars and steel wire when I hold the whole thing up.

For weights, a brick weighs around five pounds. I put up to six in each canvas bag, and place water bottles for smaller weights.

The hardest part, or the easiest, is holding the damn thing up. Don’t think you can rig something with the wall – if you don’t have a wall made of cement, that wall is going to cave in once you get to real weights. The easiest way to do this is with a few wood planks, cement, and two buckets. You stick the planks in the bucket, pour cement on them, hold them straight, cut a groove on the top of planks to hold the bar… And you got your own bench stand, made to order.

Personally, I knew there was a guy living down the road who was all about woodcrafting, so I just showed up and threatened to take off my mask and cough at him if he didn’t pony up some planks. Guy was atleast sixty and terrified. Easy.

You see, the gym being closed is the only thing I can’t live with. I don’t care about the quarantine, about cops patrolling the streets, about not being able to go to a freaking park for the foreseeable future. Shops were open for food, which was, honestly, the only reason I got out of the house anyhow. So I had to go with a mask and some gloves, big deal.

But I was not letting some chinese flu stop me from getting my gains. Muscle gains, that is. Corona shmorona, my squat, bench, and deadlift waits for no one. Everybody else was getting soft, watching netflix and jerking off, but not me. When the gym opens up again, im going to be the biggest guy there, by far. All the steriod junkies won’t be able to get their fix with the quarantine, so theyll show up like a deflated ballon, claiming the ‘quarantine was tough bro, couldn’t lift at home, makes me angry bro’.

Damn fraudsters. I’m going to get just as big while keeping my downstairs equipment working.

I had everything ready to get my gains back on track, but I forced myself to test the equipment.

I placed the bar on the make shift bench and put all the weight I had on it. Stood on the thing for good measure. Bench didn’t even shift. Did the same with the wood planks, stress testing the whole set up. Kicked it, pounded it with a hammer. Solid as stone.

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As usual, the only thing I forgot to test was myself.

I warmed up with some stretches and mixed my preworkout. Chugged that down while brewing a triple strong flask of coffee, to sip between sets. I turned on my stereo and blasted some Mastadon. Then, approaching my home built temple of iron, I reverently placed the bar upon the rest.

I started with my bench sets with an empty bar, to warm up and get a feel to the bar. It was weird – it was a bit smaller than a normal olympic bar, and I could still faintly feel the individual bars through it, giving it a granular feel. Still, for a homemade bar it was decent, though much lighter than the olympic bar.

Well, I could fix that easily. I added two weight at each side, bring the weight to roughly 140 pound. I pumped out eight repetitions, feeling my strength. I haven’t trained for a week, besides some pushups. I was feeling good, strong. My muscles were all well rested, but not weakened from the break.

A set of 200 pound went without a hitch, and I loaded another bag each size, for 260.

Now, 280 is my max, so I only intended that weight for one repetition, just to see if I got stronger or weaker overall. I got underneath the weight, grunting when the weight passed to my arms, felt the tension in my chest and making sure I’m as tense as possible, to reduce energy escaping from the lift.

I lowered the weight and pushed it back, without any real effort. So little effort, in fact, I decided to go for a whole set. Around the fifth repetition I started to struggle, so I ended it there.

I rested for my three minutes, sipping at my coffee. Another set passed by without too much effort, and the third set was hard, but manageable.

I rested again, waiting for the fourth and final set. I was excited from lifting after a period of inactivity. The pre workout was kicking in and the coffee on top was giving me a pleasant buzz, an energetic rush filling my head. Mastodon’s blood and thunder was filling the room with the sounds of battle and metal growls. In short, I was feeling the best I was all week.

I decided to take it a step further. It was time to break my record. I divided one of the weight bag to two, putting three bricks in a new bag, that loaded, it brought the weight to around 290. I switched the music to my best song – cowboys from hell. I got under the bench fast, so I could start the lift when the drums kicked in. The guitar chucka-chucked away as I lowered the bar, and I start pushing the exact moment the drums started playing. The bar moved slowly as my arms pushed out, my whole body contributing to the movement. My legs were pushing the floor, my butt clenched, my abs held like an iron vice.

You ever used preworkout? It’s just a bunch of caffeine with some other additives that make you energetic and strong. Nothing fraudulent or harmful. But when you use it, you start noticing a few strange things. First, you don’t get tired, while your muscles do. You know how, normally, you get tired as you exercise? With enough caffeine you don’t. What happens, instead, is that your muscles tire on their own, slowly getting weaker as you work them. Ask the biggest guy in the gym to do some pushups after a hard chest and tryceps day, and watch him laugh as he can’t even lift himself a finger off the ground.

So while I thought I was strong, I was not.

Three quarters up, I failed. No matter how much I pushed and struggled, the bar remained at the same height. I pushed at struggled at it, my face contorting as even my neck muscles contracted. For an eternity, the bar hung.

At any point, I could lower the bar carefully and roll it over my abs, dropping it safely at my feet. It’s called the ‘roll of shame’, and it’s not perfectly safe, but when its either that or get stuck under the bar its definitely the better option.

But I would not back down. My pride would not allow me, even though no one could see me. I struggled and struggled, using every last bit of my energy. As the bar started to come down, I realized that I had no more energy left to push the bar towards my chest. It was going to land on my neck, and I was going to die.

A blood choke is when you deny blood to the brain, and It knocks you out in a few seconds. I really didn’t stand a chance. No matter how much I struggled on the way down, the moment the bar touched my neck it was over.

The last thing I remember thinking was that 280 was always going to be my best. Shame.