In Durango, certain races require you to work out depending on your age. This rule was different depending on which house and pod I was in. Some required participation if you were "under 35" and some were "35 and under". Since I celebrated my 35th birthday in there, I was right on the edge. If I was required to participate and chose not to, I ran the risk of having a trip to the bano with the designated torpedo.
While this isn't entirely a bad idea on paper, in my experience I saw it as more of a way to enforce control and submission. Most of what I saw was the woods/whites were more worried about who was or was not participating vs leading a quality workout for those who were there. There was one exception and that was the week I spent at the D8 working pod. Since there were about 200 people in that one pod, the responsibility was divided and the dude that led the woods workout was really good and on point. He was motivating actually cared about providing a good workout.
We were limited in what we could do. Bodyweight exercises were king, while some people built reverse curl, row, and fly stations by tying up socks and wrapping them around metal poles or bunk posts. Pushups, ab workouts, lunges, squats formed the core of these workouts. Sometimes people would do water bags but that's challenging because it's hard to get the bags, they often have holes in them, and at 8 pounds a gallon, you needed a lot of water to get real weight. The unsentenced pods had 2 private showers each and I would do pullups on the shower rods.
Within my first month, my mom went online and found me a great bodyweight only workout book and had it sent in from Amazon. MCSO will allow you to receive books in the mail as long as they are sent directly from the distributor. You can only have 3 of them, but I was excited to get something and have atypical exercises to show everyone like the "bird dog", the "reverse push-up", the "flying v" among about 30 others. This book was extremely popular and everyone wanted to borrow it.
I worked out anyway, so doing mando workouts wasn't a big deal, but the thing I did have an issue with was being told I had to do it or else I would have to go to the bano. We were already in jail and are constantly being told what to do by the DOs, why should I have to listen to another inmate?
Today I am grateful for the ability and freedom to work out whenever I want (or skip a day if I don't feel like it). I'm grateful to have access to a gym with all kinds of good equipment and not have to use water bags and be limited to calesthenics.
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