Day 115, Baby-Hands

One week when I lived in Morocco my community village decided to put in a concrete tarqua, which I guess in English is known as an irrigation ditch. (There is a whole range of agricultural words I only know in Berber and not in my own native tongue)

So anyway, the first step to make this thing is that you have to dig a big ditch through the village. So of course I'm trying to help out and show I'm part of the community or whatever. I get down there with a pickaxe. Within 30 minutes I got blisters on my hands and couldn't go on. Which leads all the guys of the village to laugh at my "baby hands." There isn't much going on in Berberland, so it became the running joke in the village for a few weeks. "Hey baby-hands, can you come rub my face with your so soft hands?" or "Which of these scarves is softer, baby hands? We can't tell because we don't have baby hands." Eventually my hands toughened up but my reputation never did.

Anyway, I've been doing all this bar work, with the chin-ups, leg ups, and the stuff I was talking about yesterday, and my hands are getting pretty raw, with raised callouses on the pads of my palm. Chen was like, "just get used to it" but I know he was thinking something along the lines of "baby hands"

I was down with getting toughened up hands again, that's no problem, but it occurred to me that this time around things are very different. I use my hands for my job, adjusting people in yoga poses, and for that you need as soft a touch as you can get. Would you like some rough scratchy hands on your shoulders as you're trying to move deeper into Up-Dog? I know I wouldn't.

So this time I decided to not try and be a hard-man about it, and just get some freakin' weight lifting gloves and protect my baby hands. So I went to Sports Authority today after classes and got these cool gloves.

Which is what I really wanted to talk about in this post before I got off on a Berber tangent. I was in Sports Authority, this huge mega sports store, and I swear, every person in there was either scrawny or overweight. It was almost funny. There was this guy with a huge beer belly checking out the protein powders. And a dude with little stick arms testing out the dumbbells.

This is ironic and funny of course but I also find it very uplifting. No matter what kind of shape people are in, there is something inside of them that inspires them to change. Companies take advantage of this self-improvement instinct by selling absolute beginners top-of-the-line stuff, but that's beside the point. What I've learned over and over in this project is that people want to be better. They want to take care of their bodies, they want to be the person on the outside that they know they have inside. And that's a beautiful thing.

But there is a risk that all that excitement that leads you to buy some weights or an exercise machine will fade away as soon as you find that buying stuff is the easy part, it's the actual work that feels like, well, work. And then you have a house full of exercise crap that you slowly grow to despise so much you end up throwing it out.

So, my advice to everyone is, if you want to take up a new sport or exercise routine, start off with the cheapest most beat up equipment you can find. This will tell you truly whether you enjoy the hobby for itself or if it was just a passing fling. And you get two bonuses.

One, your house isn't full of junk from failed fitness projects,

and Two, if you do decide to pursue the exercise, you'll know what you actually need because you've already been doing it. So today for example, I knew just what i wanted out of the gloves, where I needed the padding, how tight they should feel, etc... Who knows what I would've bought if I had rolled up in there on my first day of the PCP?

Time and time again I have seen beginner yoga students come to class with 80$ Lululemon mats and $150 yoga clothing ensembles. And you know what? They usually give it up after a few weeks. And you know another thing? Invariably, the people who most stick with it are the ones who come in an old beat up pair of shorts and a t-shirt, with a thin exercise mat they won in a contest a few years ago.

So don't buy any more stuff, until you can say exactly why you need it and for what purpose. Anything else is just throwing money at your idea of yourself as a better person, rather than actually doing it.

Day 93, Giving the Eggs a Rest

I've had just about enough hard-boiled eggs, man. They're a pain to prepare, a pain to peel, and they taste like nothing, but like a bad, eggy nothing.

Plus, the worst part is that they make you gassy. I hate that feeling, especially as I usually find myself in teaching situations where I have to hold the gas in. (which leads me to a question. If you have to fart but you don't, and then a few minutes later you don't have to fart anymore, where did that gas go? Did it go back into your stomach? If anyone has the answer I'd be grateful to hear it)

Still it was important to me to do the entire PCP with nothing that you couldn't find in a regular grocery store. I was so sick of seeing sports clubs and gadget manufacturers taking advantage of people's desire to improve their health, filling their pockets, and offering no real help in return. So I stuck with the eggs, and they worked.

But now that I have reached Peak Condition, I don't need to gain any more muscle and I'm happy to say goodbye to 5 egg whites a day. But I need to keep my protein levels high in order to maintain and refine the muscle that's here now.

So, with Chen's blessing, yesterday I bought my first protein powder. I didn't know what to get so I just picked the mid-price one that said it would maintain muscle. I chose cocoa flavor.



It's pretty nasty and chalky. I'm drinking it mixed in with decaf coffee tonight which helps. But let me tell you, it beats 5 egg whites. I have two scoops after my workout and two before bed.

Day 83, I Give Up...

Yes, I give up... on trying to fashion some kind of chin-up bar. I spent days combing the net, talking to carpenters, metalworkers, and even a car designer for BMW. All of the solutions were too bulky and/or expensive.

The best thing I saw came from reader Jake Sibley, who was so kind as to offer to help me with international shipping (thanks dude!). The Perfect Pullup. But they don't ship to Japan and by the time we got all the buying and intermediary shipping figured out the project would almost be over.

So, I've resigned myself to the only other choice for someone who doesn't enjoy the gym atmosphere. The playground. Yesterday I racked my brain for all the playgrounds I had seen on my adventures around Yokohama, and took a kind of Pull-up bar tour to find the best one for my purposes.

First up, the playground at Yokohama Stadium.


A little on the short side, plus, this park is always busy with one of the following, depending on time of day, a) housewives and their little kids b) elementary schoolgirls or c)drunken homeless men. Next...

Near Odori Park

Here's a jungle gym that might work... the height is right...


let's give it a try...

Agh, the parallel bars stop my shoulders from finishing the movement. No good. Onwards...

Near Minami Police Station

Here's a set next to some swings...

Uh... I don't think this is going to hack it.

I feel as ridiculous as I look. Not going to work.

Next up, a kind of neglected playground near Yokohamabashi.

Yes! It's high enough. And I'll be able to get shoulders through those gaps in the ladder rungs.


Perfect! And it's not too crowded. Plus, the kids here (you can just see them in the top right of the next photo) were pretty nice. For some reason they all started calling me Michael. Probably their elementary ALT English instructor is named Michael, and they figure if it works for one male Gai-jin it'll work for them all. Fair enough.

So, this where I'll be every third day for the next few weeks. Come by and join me for a few sets of chin-ups and the ridicule of small children.

Can't beat the price!

Day 76, Still On the Hunt...

... for a Chin-Up bar. I've looked all over the web and called a few sports stores, and I'm seriously thinking about trying to make this thing:



I found the plans for this on this awesome DIY exercise site.

I have a long history trying to make crackpot gadgets and it usually ends up in failure and costing triple the price of a professionally made one.

I've never fallen into many of the cliche male stereotypes. For example, I have absolutely no problem asking for directions, as I am constantly lost, I have no problem admitting I'm wrong, because I usually am. But I do have that tendency to get knee deep into a building project only to find out that it won't work. Among my many failures include:

A 50 gallon barrel used for holding clean drinking water, accessed by a spigot. (It leaked)

An in-store beach display including moving waves on a rotary engine. (It shook itself to pieces)

A turtle home including an active waterfall (turtles can't stand being near moving water... oops!)

A greenhouse for growing herbs in winter (it tipped over in the mildest of breezes, killing the plants a little each time)

A meditation bench (worked for me but I let a *cough* heavyset friend try it and the screws were ripped right out)

... and many, many (many) more.

So, am I really going to try and make this thing out of plumbing pipe and electrical tape? You bet! What could go wrong?

Day 68, Does this Product Exist?

Man, what a difference 68 days makes. Tonight I spent a good 30 minutes browsing Power Towers. What the hell is a Power Tower? I didn't know either until I started searching for "pull up bar set" and was educated as to the proper gym rat name for these things. (Isn't it amazing how the internet educates you without there being any one person who teaches you? Extelligence) A Power Tower is a rig like this:

I'm thinking of putting one in the studio, but none of the ones I've seen is acceptable. They're ugly and scream sweaty gross gym. And, I'm trying to find something that will allow me to do pull ups and have several levels of bars for leg stretches. So, basically, I need a ballet barre for legs that goes all the way up to the ceiling for upper body training and those evil kung fu situps I wrote about in Day 65.

I need this!!!


There seem to be two worlds, the guys who want to look like Schwarzenegger and the lightweight yoga types who want to put their feet behind their heads. And never the twain shall meet, at least in terms of manufacturing gym equipment it seems.

So, I'm going to have to make the damn thing myself. I haven't welded since university but if I can find a good arc welder with an automatic feed it would be an easy project. There's no way I'm going to stick weld the thing.

Any ideas readers?

(crickets chirping)

Day 66, PCP supplies

Man, another long day. But I got my nutrition right at least. It takes a good half hour of planning to get your diet right if you're going to be out of the house all day. You have to consider two meals and two snacks, all with the right amounts of food, and all as you're trying to get out of the door on time in the morning. I couldn't do it without my scale and lunch box, or rather, lunch boxes.

First, my scale. I love my scale. It's pretty. It's something I have to use everyday, and it's just nice to see good design on a daily basis.


Next, my lunch box (es).

Check it out. Here are three large, square containers with airtight seals. They're large enough to accommodate the sometimes big amounts of protein and vegetables we PCPers have to eat sometimes. So, fill them up with nutritious goodness...



And, thanks to the magical doohickey, they all snap together to make a tasty tower of nutrition. Easy to carry and fits in a gym bag.




Getting the right tools makes everything easier.

Day 12, Buying a scale.

Well, it's been almost two weeks and I can see a big difference in my belly. I'm not saying I was fat before, but there were the beginnings of love handles and a little doughiness in the navel and chest areas. So I thought it would be a good time to check my weight, because the dietary guidelines change depending on how much you weigh, so if I dropped weight I might cut some grams from the daily routine.

I happened to know my weight when I started this project, because I was in an inn in Kyoto that had a scale in the hot-spring room. It was 65 kilos, or 143 pounds.

But I don't have a scale in my apartment and indeed have never owned or used a scale since I was a wrestler in high school (my freshman year I wrestled in the 103 pound division! By my senior year I was up to 119. Tiny, huh!) So I wanted to buy a scale.

I went to the local Don Quixote (a weird ass store which I describe in more detail here) to get a simple scale that would, uh, tell me how much I weigh. Little did I know, that kind of scale went out years ago. Now they're all Star Trek electronic gizmos with these sensor pad things and digital read-outs that tell you your body mass index, with all these buttons and stuff, ranging from 30 to 200 dollars. I couldn't find any that just told you how much you weigh. My budget was 10 dollars. I was about to give up, but I managed to find one of Don Quixote's fine young employees.

(translated from Japanese)
"Do you have any scales that, uh, tell you how much you weigh?"
He starts to gesture to the rack of electronic scales, but I interrupt.
"I saw those, but, I just want to know my weight."
"Just your weight?" he asks, as if this was a request he had never considered.
"Yeah, you know, like, uh, how much I weigh, like 60 kilos, 50 kilos..."
"Oh, I see. Just one like that." He takes me around a corner near the hair irons.

And so, here it is, the only scale in this megastore that I could find that tells you, uh, how much you weigh.Price, $9.97. Hell, it works. And my weight, 63 kilos (138 pounds). Plus, now I will often be reminded that Daytime means Playtime.

The Pooh thing is just a sticker that I could peel off if I wanted, but, I dunno, I kind of like it.