Exercise on Ship

Now that I’ve discussed the all the things you need to think about or plan into your ship schematics I want to go into moral enhancing rooms or ideas. The first thing to think about is that your crew is stuck on a ship, the same thing as being kept indoors, for long periods of time. How many of you would/do enjoy 24/7 around the same hundred people for a full week with nowhere to run, nowhere to work out emotions you can’t show at work without causing problems? No matter the crew size or ship size, that effect is what happens on ship, especially with so many naturally aggressive and competitive males stuck inside. With that in mind, as well as the fact that the military these days is very careful to ensure the members meet certain physical standards, both in ability and appearance, and you need to think of where people will exercise. You could always expect that everyone brings their own exercise materials but everyone knows that means at least half the crew will actually exercise maybe once a week without a designated place. You could always have a designated cargo room where the running track circles around the boxes and a small storage locker holds small things for group exercise classes such as yoga mats, blow up balls for crunches, and stretch cords for resistance. Another thing you could do is have a small room with a few machines and empty space for stretching or small weight use and a designated running route through the hallways in low traffic areas or part of the hall for running and the other part for walking. In the television show Andromeda there seems to be a running route through the ship but then the ship has almost no crew for most of the series so going for a run anywhere was unlikely to cause anyone problems. What modern naval ships do is they have a room with a few basic machines (bike, elliptical, treadmill, maybe more if there’s space) and the basics in weight lifting (benchpress, pull-ups, free weights,…) in a smallish room with a punching bag off to one corner and during the day, weather permitting, the crew can run on an unobtrusive track on the maindeck. Some of the smaller ships have very little maindeck space so a running track would be too laughable to have but they still have a gym judged to be proportional to crew members.
One last thing to think about is that on basic room can fit for a number of sports if mats are put down with different markings. In high school soccer games and football games are played on the same fields and volleyball games are played on the same court as basketball, on different nights though of course. It wouldn’t be so hard to have different mats rolled up against walls on a backup cargo room that could turn a single soccer field into three or more basketball courts or a basketball court and a tennis or volleyball court. Remember, planners know that space is at a premium on ship and often find ways to put a lot into a few spaces, unless of course your ship is a luxury ship where everything is about space and comfort.