Riding my bike around Seoul has been fun~ish. Some good exercise I suppose, but definitely a struggle for a weakling like me to get much further than a few blocks without needing to chug some Powerade and take a 20 minute break. Still, there is no doubt that this kind of pathetic attempt at a normal athletic activity should make good content for my personal quest to produce a training montage video of great training video montage moments.

In that regard, riding around Seoul has led me to a much better discovery. Working out street style!

Amazingly, throughout Seoul there are tons of public areas full of free exercise equipment. It really is ridiculous that anyone joins a gym here because the streets can be your own personal Fitness First. Along the Han River where I usually ride my bike, look at what pops up every few meters:

Then again, it’s one thing to use that equipment, but it’s another all together to make your own exercises out of authentic stuff on the street… like I saw in this awesome infomercial:

I already worked out on the street equipment, but since I love that Street Stretch idea this week I started coming up with some of my own apartment-centric exercises!

Paper Ripper – I’ve got mountains of boxes filled with print outs of my old (failed!) PhD thesis that I need to rip up and throw out! A few good reps of a 10 deep stack and it’s ready to go in the trash while ripping my forearms to shreds in the process!

Tile Puncher – I didn’t know that if you punched a tile in your Korean bathroom that the thing would just shatter in a totally satisfying explosion of white dust! The first one I did just for fun, but the second was full-on box-ercise!

Outdated Media Lift – Now that all of comics, movies and music are pretty much instantly accessible online, what the hell am I supposed to do with all these piles of CDs, Wrestling DVDs and “graphic novels” that I’ve got here in my Seoul apartment? Why, use them to lift of course! 

– yes, that’s the Boyz II Men Christmas CD on the top of the stack… I’m not ashamed!

Can you believe it, I’m finally getting into shape! I figure I’ll be twice the strength of the average man in no time!