On Movement And Desperation
An interesting thought on the prisoner's workout is how practical it is to use the small space and long time you have to train your body. There's not really much else to do, the prison's food is consistent in time, type and quantity, you can't just talk all the time or do prison tasks all the time, at some point you will have time for yourself and the thoughts about everything pent up until now will come flooding your mind. I believe in counting and breathing, but this can be boring, you can get distracted, movement of any sort can crack this issue.
You can build some focus into performing it, some repetitions, different forms that move muscles isolated or in a compound way. In another hand you can just test your heart to your content, until your can barely breath enough to think of anything, to have some quiet and feel death while sensing the engines of your body alive.
You can't test everything though. Not everyone is fit for everything, some times you got to try to perform a movement and see if you can do it, then upgrade or downgrade their variations to what you can do, in this way, it's easier to become more aware of how your body feels and reacts to things such as contraction, release, repetition, timing, the space around you, the inmates probably watching you, the smell in there of your sweat, the cold or hot air. Focusing on this intensity until you are all dry and tired, forgetting about the guilt, the future if you even have one, the stares, sometimes even your current situation.
You don't have a trial to expect, or years ahead of you in there, or anyone angry with you for what you did, much less dead because of you, there's no forgiveness but also no forgiveness to be asked for or thought. You are here doing push ups. From 1 to 100. One by one.
Because you know you will need these arms in case you fall down, there's not much help outside of you now. Then you will go to squats, cause getting out of bed everyday is a must, even mechanically. Something might be waiting for you. Perhaps a child you left behind, to have legs strong enough to walk towards them, or perhaps just strong enough to go sit on the toilet and don't have that painful kidney stone for holding it. As you age in there, again, there's not much help so you end up thinking of these things.
All of this to say, in moments of desperation, working out and thinking of your next move, not a week or day or person, just your next hours or seconds, you need strength, mobility, to be awake, to rest, to not get sick, to be able to think. I'm talking of immediate actions, when there's no way around it. Just constantly struggling to survive so you can live another day. Hold on to your body. Hold on to yourself. Plan to breathe without pain for one more second. If you stop the movement and cling to your sorrows, to the horrors waiting, only more horrors will await. So reducing the damage like this, is some kind gift to yourself.