Why ’90s TV Is the Best Companion for Your Own Bodyweight Workout at Home
I love bodyweight training. They are efficient, effective, and cheap – no gym membership required. All I need is a few feet of free space, and I’m ready to alternate between squat and lunges.
But bodyweight exercises are also – let’s be honest – a little boring. They require enough mental attention so that you can’t fully focus on anything else, but they are repetitive enough that you can keep thinking about how tedious the planks are and how tired your arms and abs are.
I know from experience that once you start thinking about how tired you are, you’ll probably start making excuses to stop exercising early. So I’m looking for ways to distract myself from the pain and successes of push-ups and burpees, and the best I’ve found is’ 90s television.
This was before DVR
I’m not sure if we all remember what television was like in the 90s. It was interesting — those were the Seinfeld , Friends and Must-See TV years — but also very slow. It was designed for viewers who couldn’t pause the TV when the phone rang, or rewind ten seconds back to catch a missing line of dialogue. It was also designed so that you can start watching anytime – because people could turn on the TV anytime – and still understand the whole story.
Networks knew their shows were watched by people who were also eating lunch, doing their homework, folding their clothes – perhaps even doing squats or jogging in place during commercial breaks. (Remember when all the magazines advised us to work onsite during commercial breaks?) So they made sure the shows were entertaining even if people couldn’t give them their full attention.
Everything else is too fast
Which makes the ’90s TV the perfect companion for your bodyweight workout. I’ve tried other distractions like podcasts and words go away too quickly; if I skip a sentence, counting crunches in my head, I lose the whole thread of the conversation.
But if I have Dr. Quinn, the witch doctor in the background, I can stop paying attention for a full 30 seconds and not miss anything.
Nostalgia factor
For those of us old enough to grow up wondering if we were Rachel, Monica, or Phoebe (I was obviously Monica – and as I got a little older, Miranda), there is a strong dose of nostalgia. from the show of the 90s. Building muscle is uncomfortable and nostalgia is comforting.
If your era of nostalgia comes a little later than mine, early 2000 television works much the same. I squatted for the five seasons of Friday Night Lights that ran from 2006 to 2011, mainly because I was oblivious to the football component.
The original release of Gilmore Girls (2000-2007) was a little more complex – it started out as a good training show, especially since most of the story and emotion was conveyed through dialogue rather than images, but by the end of the series, these episodes required that mental and visual energy that I could not give during push-ups.
You will likely notice a similar shift when you watch TV shows that end at the end of “oos” or “beginning” 10, because that’s when television began to transform into the type of high-density, focused content that encourages us to completely overeat. seasons in the night. By 2007, we had moved from TiVos to TV Tropes , with YouTube and Netflix introducing people to the idea of streaming TV online at their own pace. People watched TV and discussed it much more closely, and the shows became more complex as a result.
Let’s analyze a scene from classic 90s television.
How Slow is 90s Television? Here is the climactic scene from Dr. Quinn’s second season episode , “The Heinous Woman ,” “Where the Heart is: Part 2,” which is honored to be the highest-rated episode in the six-seasons, two-film series:
The first minute of this scene is best described as “filler.” We see Dr. Quinn walking down the train corridor three times; twice in the middle frame and once in the close-up. (She looks for Sally.) The two different actors in the background react embarrassedly, just so everyone will remember that this is a show about an unusual woman. We see Sally enter the train compartment – during which the camera lingers on his crotch for a full five seconds – and slowly removes all the bags, rolls, and water bags he carries.
Then Dr. Quinn finally finds Sally and we finally get a dialogue:
DR. QUEENN: What are you doing?
SALLY: It’s pretty clear.
DR. QUEENN: Are you just leaving?
SALLY: There’s nothing to stay here for.
DR. QUEENN: Without even saying goodbye?
[Pause.]
SULLY: Goodbye.
DR. QUEENN: Why did you come here at all?
SALLY: I told you.
DR. Quinn: Well, what’s the real reason?
SALLY: What difference does it make to you?
DR. QUEENN: I care!
SALLY: Well, you definitely didn’t look the way you did there at that meeting!
DR. QUEENN: I’m asking you a question.
SALLY: Why did I come?
DR. QUEENN: Yes. Why.
SALLY: Because.
DR. QUEENN: Because?
SULLY: Because I love you.
You can do a lot of push-ups during this scene and still get the point. If you do something like squats, you will see the screen during one out of every four movements – which is often enough to capture all the important things that are going on. If you’re at the end of a plank pose and skip a few lines of dialogue because you’re focusing on your core, it doesn’t matter, because 90s television is repeating itself. Constantly. Just like all those representatives that you make.