Gym Pods: Post-Lockdown Trend We Hope Doesn’t Hit Australia

Crazy Californians.

Gym Pods: Post-Lockdown Trend We Hope Doesn’t Hit Australia

The 'workout pods' in action. Image: Frederic J. Brown/Getty Images

In the Wachowski’s iconic 1999 sci-fi action film The Matrix, humans are kept in transparent tanks by evil robots in order to harness their bioelectric energy. This is widely regarded as a compelling yet horrific, dystopian vision of the future.

The COVID-19 world of 2020 is a wholly different sort of dystopia, which has radically changed people’s way of life. But clearly not everyone’s seen the Matrix films, because if they had, they wouldn’t have come up with this highly questionable workout solution.

In order to entice people back into working out with them, a California gym has constructed ‘workout pods’ made out of transparent shower curtains and pipes… So now, humans are willingly building transparent tanks to work out on evil machines (i.e. treadmills) and burn energy.

“You take the blue pill…the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill…you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Image: Frederic J. Brown/Getty Images

Peet Sapsin of Inspire South Bay Fitness in Redondo Beach, California came up with these makeshift pods as a more cost-effective alternative to erecting plexiglass dividers, TODAY USA reports.

While we admire this gym’s inventiveness – lockdown’s had a huge financial impact on the fitness industry – we have a few questions for Sapsin about this Matrix-esque setup. Does the plastic fog up as people work out? Do you wipe the pods down between users? And do you understand irony as a concept?

At least you’re not shaving your patrons bald and sticking metal pipes in the back of their necks, I guess.

We just hope this trend doesn’t make its way to Australia’s shores. Being that there’s far less coronavirus cases here than in the States, we should be safe from this sci-fi faux pas.

Burpee on, Californians.

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