Getting Buff, Japanese-style
Yesterday afternoon (Thursday, which might be today depending on where you are) Compton and I had a strength workout to complete. So we ventured out of the hotel and, following directions from Lars Flora, found a gym, "Joy Fit." Flora had warned us that this was a private club so we would have to convince the manager to let us pay a daily fee to use it once. At first we had a tough time trying to communicate with the staff because we didn't speak Japanese and they didn't speak English, but then there was this Canadian guy from Vancouver who had been living in Japan for four years teaching English, and he translated for us and got us shoes and everything. We had to borrow shoes because we had to take off the shoes we had run over in and put them in lockers upon entering the building. In Japan you basically do not wear shoes inside, ever.
So we paid our ¥1850, put on our borrowed shoes, and made it into the gym to lift. Our weights in Seeley are pounds so we had to think a little bit about how many kilos we should be lifting. We finished the leg portion of our workout and then Compton kept following the plan and I went and played on some of the other machines. There was a slider machine where you stood on a platform which was attached to the machine straight in front of you and then you held onto the bars and swung your feet from side to side. The machine had a display where, once I figured out how to get it started, there was a display with a digital image of someone doing the workout so you could mirror the person on the display. They would switch motions every 30seconds... it was pretty exciting for a five minute workout.
Then I tried the jiggler. I don't know what this was supposed to do or why you would want to use this machine. It was a platform that you stood on and then it would rock each leg up and down and you could increase the speed of rocking so it basically just made your whole body jiggle. Like I said, I don't really understand the point.
Despite getting distracted by the strange machines, I did actually get a pretty good workout in and now am enjoying a day off (Friday).
So we paid our ¥1850, put on our borrowed shoes, and made it into the gym to lift. Our weights in Seeley are pounds so we had to think a little bit about how many kilos we should be lifting. We finished the leg portion of our workout and then Compton kept following the plan and I went and played on some of the other machines. There was a slider machine where you stood on a platform which was attached to the machine straight in front of you and then you held onto the bars and swung your feet from side to side. The machine had a display where, once I figured out how to get it started, there was a display with a digital image of someone doing the workout so you could mirror the person on the display. They would switch motions every 30seconds... it was pretty exciting for a five minute workout.
Then I tried the jiggler. I don't know what this was supposed to do or why you would want to use this machine. It was a platform that you stood on and then it would rock each leg up and down and you could increase the speed of rocking so it basically just made your whole body jiggle. Like I said, I don't really understand the point.
Despite getting distracted by the strange machines, I did actually get a pretty good workout in and now am enjoying a day off (Friday).
posted by LAV at 14:56
1 Comments:
That sounds like a very typically "Asian" workout experience! The photos are really pretty, with all that snow. Glad to know you are having a good time!
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