00:11
Hello, hello, this is just me, Asami, and today I wanted to answer topic request from
a fellow podcaster むきむき夫婦のアメリカニッキーさんのコーマさんとチーさんですね、ご夫婦でされているポッドキャストなんですけれども、
実はコーマさんは研究者なこともあって、同じくらいの時期に博士号を取ったという変な共通点もありまして、お互いポッドキャストを聞き合って、
聞いてくれてんのかな?聞いてくれてるんでしょうね、おそらく。
But I am a huge fan of their podcast. It's very good balance of sincerity and silliness and
何を隠そう、私も実は体を動かすの大好きだし、鍛えるの大好きなので、
ただ、鍛える方向のベクトルがちょっと一般の方とは違うかもしれないかなっていう、あくまでバレエのために鍛えてるっていう感じなんですけれども、
It's a great podcast if you want to listen to something silly, something that would definitely make you laugh,
and if you remotely enjoy going to gym, this is definitely one for you.
Anyway, so they have asked me in the Twitter comments
英才ナイトで香港の事務事情だったり、最近の脳筋活動などのお話を聞いてみたいと言ってくれました。
So here it is. Let's see.
Well, I want to preface this talk by saying that I only started going to gyms regularly as of this September?
No, no, in summer, like August.
Prior to that, my experience of going to gym had been mostly for group classes and group sessions,
you know, ranging anything from HIIT class or cardio class,
and there were short bouts of period where I would go to the machine sections and do some workout,
but typically that period didn't last for more than, I don't know, a few weeks,
03:02
because I just don't have the same motivation or lose my interest, whatever.
So I would say that I'm relatively new to this gym culture thing,
and I don't really have anything to go off of,
because in Japan, I was working out with my trainer one-on-one,
so that's kind of a different story,
and here I am working out in a more sort of traditional gym setting,
where, you know, it's 24 hours access,
and you just walk in, do your thing, and get out.
No group sessions.
So please keep in mind that I don't really have a reference point other than this one gym that I would go to in Hong Kong on a regular basis.
Having said that though, I really enjoy working with my trainer who gives me new menu every few weeks.
I realized that what was a problem with me being consistent at the gym before this
is that I didn't really have a menu.
I didn't really have a thing to follow.
So I walk in, look around, you know, because I have a dance background.
I have an idea of what machines are meant to target certain muscle groups,
so I'll go around and do it,
but I have no clue if I'm on the right weight setting,
or if my forms are correct,
or if I'm doing the correct number of reps and correct number of sets.
So yeah, these are like big questions,
and, you know, if you go on internet, like, yeah, everyone's probably thinking,
well, Sami, you can just Google that stuff.
But Googling gym information is actually quite hard,
even for someone who is sort of Google savvy, I would say,
because I am a scientist,
and half of my scientist job is to figure out things on the fly,
and thank you, Google, for letting me do that.
But when it comes to fitness information,
there's so much bullshit out there,
so much pseudoscientific information,
or something that is not really...
It's scientific, but it's not grounded in, like, statistical mean of a population.
So, like, you know, these people are giving out advice to uber beginners,
or uber advanced people, and no one in between,
and just based on their information, it's really hard to tell what it's a target of.
06:03
So I always find it overwhelming,
whereas ever since I started working with this trainer,
he just gives me things to do, right?
So I just blindly follow, and I don't question...
I mean, I do question him about, like, you know, what is the correct form and stuff,
but, like, I generally trust him to know what he's doing,
and I have good reasons for it, because I've, you know, done training with him several sessions.
So I think, to my limited knowledge, he knows his shit.
So I trust him with his menu,
and having the menu, having a fixed thing to follow, is so nice.
It's... you just...
The only effort you need to put is to get yourself to the gym,
and then once you're in the gym, you have things to follow,
and you don't really have to think about it.
Just do it, you know?
You can become a dog.
So I really like that system that's going on for me,
and so I go to this one.
I would say, typically...
So I found two major types of gyms in Hong Kong.
One is the one that I go to type, where it's, like, 24-hour access with a certain monthly fee
that's usually relatively cheap,
but there's no sort of instructors to help you or anything.
You just, like, have a place available to yourself.
And the other one is more...
Like, they have hundreds of classes throughout the week,
and those are mostly group sessions of, you know, yoga, pilates,
HIIT, or, you know, cardio dance-type stuff, like group sessions,
but they do also have machines, so you are also able to access those.
But those tend to be way more expensive,
like maybe...
15,000 yen to 20,000 yen per month,
as opposed to the machine-only gym,
which I pay about 5,000 yen per month in Japanese yen.
Yeah, so something like that.
And I go to the latter.
And what else?
I realized that, at least in my gym,
it's sort of a mix of local and foreigners,
but there are some smaller sort of boutique gyms
that offer, like, the machine settings,
and some instructors in some classes,
so sort of like an in-between of the two examples I gave you earlier.
Those tend to be more, like, expat-friendly.
09:00
I think they like having this community of people who work out,
but also they're kind of crossfit-y,
and they like having, like, workout buddies or workout friends there.
If people want to build a community,
if you want to build a friendship group,
maybe those are the ones you should go to.
My gym is very much like, you don't talk to anybody,
you just go in and do your thing and get out,
which I prefer, so maybe that's why I don't have friends.
But that aside, I see, so in my gym,
I typically go in the mornings during the week,
unless I had a long day at work,
or if I'm late to my ballet class,
which also happens at night in some days of the week.
If I'm late and I cannot make it, I'll just go to work out,
because it's better than not doing anything.
And sometimes, I try to have one day of the week
where I don't do dancing or training,
but those are usually the days where I have a long day at work,
and I want to do something and sweat it out.
So when that happens, I also go to the gym as well.
And that happens at night.
And I realized that the morning people and the night people
are kind of different population.
Just, you know, who is the regular people who come here.
I feel like the early morning, like pre-work,
workout people are very consistent.
It's always like the same, you know, 5 to 10 people
that I like, same kind of faces I see.
And at night, it's different each time.
And I just don't know who to expect.
Yeah, and I have not seen like ridiculously large people
that I sometimes see in American gyms.
Just like, are you on steroid, bro? type people.
I've not seen those.
But I think many of them look just like
professional white collar job people.
And quite a large age range, which I really like.
I think everyone can benefit from having more muscles.
And at least for the time I've been there,
they're typically sort of keep it to themselves type.
Sometimes there's a couple who are there working out together.
But most of the time, people are doing their own thing.
And that's it.
So pretty easy, pretty professional.
I haven't had any creepy incidents in a gym, so that's good.
12:02
I did have one funny experience in a gym though.
And that is because I am out of America and I'm in Hong Kong.
I just assumed that everything is a metric.
And all, like there's maybe four or five treadmill machines.
And except for one of them, they're all in kilometers per hour setting.
But one of the machine was in miles per hour.
And I just didn't register that.
I didn't know that one of the machine was indeed miles per hour.
Because that's just not what I expected from Hong Kong.
I thought imperial units are only in America.
And people don't really care about miles and inches here.
But I guess one machine has to cater to some sad American people
who cannot convert and get behind the metric units that the rest of the world is.
So they kept it as miles per hour.
I was just so confused.
I think I'm running at eight kilometers per hour.
Turns out it's a miles per hour.
That's like 1.6 times more than what I want it to be.
And I was just confused this whole time.
Did I work too much at ballet the night before?
Why can I not run?
My legs are tangled up.
I cannot even do it.
And I thought after trying to do a couple of circuits,
I'm like, I just don't think I have it in me.
So I begrudgingly stopped the machine and I left
because I didn't want to get injured.
And after I left the gym on my way to home,
that's when I realized, wait,
the screen did say 12 mph,
not 12 kph,
like it normally does.
Oh, oh shoot.
Was I trying to run at 12 miles per hour?
Oh shoot.
Yeah, so that's when I realized.
So there's that.
So be careful.
You are not free from Imperial units,
even when you're in Hong Kong.
But other than that, I really like my gym.
It's always clean and have not had creepy incidents.
And usually also not that crowded,
at least in my gym, my neighborhood.
So what more can I ask really?
And the best part is,
it's only about three minutes walking distance from my apartment.
So I literally just need to roll out of my bed to go.
And I don't even use a shower there
because it's a lot easier to shower in my own,
you know, nice private shower at my home
than using the gym shower.
So I can just work out, come back home,
15:01
shower, get dressed and go to work.
And I can't believe that I've been talking about the gym
for 16 minutes now,
but I would love to talk more about my gym habits
and I guess muscle nerdiness.
So maybe if you tune in and if you let us know
that you want to see a collaboration between me
and MikiMikiFufu-san,
maybe that will happen in future.
We'll see.
We'll see how things go.
But I feel like I'm not going to get rejected from them
by saying, hey, let's talk muscles.
So stay tuned.
All right. Bye.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening
and find us at Eigo de Science on Twitter.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
