Getting a summer body through esports

It’s March — the days are getting warmer, the smell of summer morning teases us every other day, and the urge to get hair highlights grows stronger with every moment spent on Zoom.  But while fantasizing about trips to the beach and bikini shopping is all well and good, I’m not sure my summer bod is ready. My aspiration for a quarantine glow-up died with my discovery of DoorDash, and my workout routine consists of opening the fridge and walking around Trader Joe’s. 

But recently, while scrolling through the magic of TikTok, I came across a post that read “In two months, your boyfriend’s IG feed is gonna be flooded with bikini models.” Now, I don’t have a boyfriend, and my feed is all rabbit pictures. But I do have insecurities, and even though I know it probably shouldn’t, the post hit home. 

So I threw together a workout playlist, found a slightly deflated basketball in my garage, and made my brother play basketball with me. After about 30 minutes, I had thoroughly beaten him 17-0. But since he’s only 8 and several heads shorter, it was basically me shooting shots while he waved his arms around my torso — not much of a workout. So later that night, I came up with a new non-approach to getting my summer body — esports. 

I have limited experience with esports; the only games I have are Diablo II, Minecraft, and PUBG mobile. Diablo runs at about five frames per second and PUBG is a game reserved for breakup crying, so Minecraft would have to be my sport of choice. 

I suited up in my rabbit girl skin that would definitely get me roasted in any Discord chat, and set off into the land of Hypixel. After running a few laps around the server, I headed into BedWars to really get in some cardio. The objective of the game is to destroy another team’s bed while keeping your own bed safe. Unfortunately for my teammates, I was too busy running to defend our bed and lost several games as a result. Thankfully, my rabbit-girl character did not need to win in order to get plenty of exercise. I couldn’t really tell, what with the characters being about 10 pixels, but I think she looked tired.

By the time I logged off, I felt pretty satisfied with my progress toward my summer body. I had probably burned a few calories shooting hoops with my brother, and my rabbit girl was on track to becoming a bodybuilder with the strenuous exercise I’d given her. Also, if nothing else, my diaphragm must have gotten a hundred times stronger from laughing as I missed hoop after hoop and listened to my teammates rage in BedWars.