One punch man is the story of an average guy who has trained himself to the point where he is the strongest hero on Earth. Apart from resonating with the “average human” theme of this site, it’s also a fantastic show!
Although I wouldn’t usually recommend taking training advice from a manga or an anime, a number of questions have been floating around on Quora about the training regimen the protagonist, Saitama, follows:
Since the anime got some people thinking about training, here are some of my own thoughts on what good (and bad) advice the show gives.
Don’t burn yourself out
Training without a break is bad for you! Your body needs time to recover and replenish itself, so working yourself out every day doesn’t give it time to heal. You get stronger while resting after an exercise, so not resting slows down your progress!
How much rest you need depends on what you are doing – power lifting needs more days of rest than callisthenics, for example.
If you can really train every day with no ill effects, then you’re probably ready for something harder, which will need a rest. Just remember not to train so hard all your hair falls out!
Have a goal
Saitama trains so he can beat monsters. Hopefully you don’t need to make that your motivation, but setting a clear goal for yourself helps!
Whether it’s losing fat or getting stronger, set yourself a target, say squatting twice your body weight or doing so many push ups in one go. That way you can focus your training and
measure progress.
Keep it simple
Simple works, and it doesn’t get much simpler than body weight exercises and running. You don’t need to spend hard earned money on complicated equipment – it’s probably just going to gather dust anyway. The same goes for fad workouts and plans.
Work progressively
One of the main reasons “100 push ups, 100 squats, 100 sit ups, and a 10km run! Every day!” isn’t a very good plan is that it’s fixed. Someone who’s just starting off will get wrecked before finishing the push ups, while someone who’s gotten used to that regimen will not get any further benefit from it.
Hitting a set of 100 anythings is a great goal, not a starting point. To begin with, start small, and build up as you get stronger. For strength training, you really don’t need to do more than 20 repetitions at a time – when you get to the point where you can do that easily,
it is time to switch to a more intense exercise if you want to keep getting stronger!
Sleep and eat properly
While Saitama doesn’t seem to bother too much about what he eats, he does try to eat a lot of it. Exercise needs fuel! For best effects though, you really want to make sure that what you’re eating is real food, not a concentrate of refined sugars.
One thing he doesn’t like to miss is his sleep. Sleep is obviously vital to help you recover from your exercise, but it also does a lot of other things which, in summary, stop you from looking and feeling like a zombie, so don’t skip on that.
Don’t obsess
If your life revolves around one single thing, you’re going to get very bored!
One of the themes of the show is Saitama becoming very bored because he cannot find any challenges.
While most of us are unlikely to reach a point where we’re strong enough for that to be an issue, we want strength and fitness to live better, not just for the sake of having them – so do stuff you enjoy and don’t be a one trick pony!
Stick with it!
While you’re (probably) not going to be able to punch a mountain in half after three years of training, you should start seeing some benefits of whatever programme you are doing well before that.
It’s not an overnight thing and most programmes take a few months of hard work, but effort does show in the end, so don’t give up on a difficult programme just because it is slow. On the other hand, a programme which is effortless is, at best, highly suspect!
If you have any further thoughts about this subject, hit the comments below! And if you haven’t watched One Punch Man yet, check it out on
Daisuki!
All images in this post are from the One Punch Man anime and manga, collected from various sources.
