To really understand, try reading this the way I’m trying to write it.  After every three or four words, stop reading and drop your arms to your side because it hurts to hold them at keyboard level for more than a few seconds.  Then, after way too long, relocate to the couch and prop your elbows on pillows so that you don’t have to engage any fibre of your deltoids or pecs in order to keep your fingers on the keyboard.  Then express disappointment in how long it took you to figure that strategy out.

That’s how this has been for me so far.

Granted, it doesn’t help that I’m taking a class on street combatives twice a week.  As with many types of self protection training, this involves the development of mental fortitude, largely through physical pain brought on by high-intensity physical activity.  Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem, but I’m pretty sure that Baker and Laur, the combatives instructor, have been collaborating to make me die of kidney failure brought on by shredded pectorals poisoning my blood.  How, you ask?  Well on both Monday and Wednesday, which were the storyline of How to Lose Your Pecs in Two Days, I also had ISC class.  At the end of both classes,  we did lots of push ups and burpies, and we did them roughly 8 hours after I left the gym.  For me, 8 hours is just about the perfect amount of time for my chest to have regained exactly all of the feeling after having gone numb at the gym.  And when that feeling returns, it is the feeling of all the hate and negativity that made the River of Slime in Ghostbusters II, manifested into pectoralis major form.

I can feel him in there, trying to escape

Here’s what it’s looked like:

Monday – Down the rack DB chest press [5 reps each].  Started with the 100lbs dumbbells and worked my way down to the 60s.

Up and Down [5 reps each] – Started with the 55s and worked my way up to the 90s, then back down to the 55s.  Did this three muscle tearing times.

Other stuff.  Honestly, I can’t remember.  I think i used my legs a lot, though.

Back to the Bench – [5 reps each] Started with the 100s again, and worked all the way down to the 2s.  Yes, 2s.

They were heavy.

Wednesday:

Incline Chest press with incline flye, lots of heavy, heavy bench press, push ups, dips, incline Smith, more flyes.  I’d love to go into more detail, but this typing is starting to make my chest hurt again, so I’m out!  Heading to the gym now.  Pray for arms day for me.

When I got home and cleaned up, I put on a clean shirt amd had to stop for a minute to make sure that a) it was the shirt that I thought it was, or b) it was actually my back that was hanging off of my shoulders, ‘cuz it sure felt like someone else’s.

But back to the gangster nicknames.  I’m not talking about 2009′s gangsters, with their aliases veiled in how they want to be perceived by people who they want to be scared of them.  No, I’m talking about the glorious monikers of the bootleggers and the bank robbers in the Public Enemies era with Baby Face, Oklahoma Jack, Jackrabbit and the like.

It all started because Brian had an angry phone conversation.  How an angry phone conversation leads to him being forever referred to as Bootsie is beyond me, but it might have something to do with the fact that he was wearing boots when he stormed out of the house and came to the gym.  Now, for those of you who don’t frequent gyms yet, here’s a quick tip… Don’t wear boots!  At least one of two things will happen.  You will either get a nickname, or you wind up doing leg raises with heavy-ass boots on, and that makes leg raises a lot suckier.

For a while Brian has been known as the Ab Narc because he always freaking knows exactly how many reps everyone else has done during ourAb Hell sessions that Baker tacks on to the end of almost every workout.  He’s like the Rainman of abs… move on to the next set before you’ve done all the reps from the last and there’s the Ab Narc, “42.  Yeah, definitely only 42.”

Ab Narc had run it’s course, though.  It had spawned the Mark Narc, who always knows where Mark is at in his sets, and the second that happened, the Ab Narc was watered down and didn’t pack the punch that it once had.  It was time for Brian to evolve to a nickname that wasn’t a poorly veiled insult, and that would stick with him forever.

Baker said it first.  “Bootsie,” he smiled, “We can start calling you Bootsie.”

After that, they just started rolling off like a racetrack roll call.  I was Too Tall, which I hated, Andrew was the Fat Man, Brian was Bootsie, and Baker, well he’s still Beeftits.  That last one isn’t very 1930′s or gangster-ish, but Baker is going to need a Scarface-calibre nickname to take Beeftits away.

But Too Tall?  That didn’t work for me.  Andrew got an ironic nickname.  He has 5% body fat, and all of that 5% is in his triceps, so Fat Man was perfect.  Also, and here’s a free tip for you if you’re looking for a 1930′s gangster nickname that has a nice ring to it.  Insert it into the following sentence: “You’re gonna play ball, see, or [insert potential gangster nickname here] is gonna take you down riverside and give you a pair of cement shoes.”  So the most ironic nickname I could think of for myself, being 212 centimetres tall, is Short Man.  That sucks, though, but Shorts works for me.

So it was Bootsie, the Fat Man, Shorts and Beeftits.  Dylan is out of luck.  He didn’t show up, so he’s stuck with Moosestink until inspiration strikes again.

Watch where you tread, see, or you’ll be swimming with the fishes

I’m far from an expert at anything, really.  I used to be a pretty good magician, but I would never call myself an expert; not out of modesty, but out of a strong desire not to be mistaken for a LARP-er (Google it) and wind up getting drawn and quartered in a cardboard castle.  I am, however, familiar enough with general common sense to know that there is no reason on this planet why we should not be taking better care of ourselves physically through some level of active lifestyle.

It is an indisputable fact that our bodies need physical exercise in order to function properly.  We are built for a grueling lifestyle of building shelter out of stone or ice, hunting animals insanely bigger than us with sharpened sticks, and wrestling cat-shaped piles of muscle and teeth that enjoy eating people-shaped piles of meat.

Adorably terrifying

Then one day someone took a circle-shaped rock (or possibly an air-filled rubber tube encompassing an aluminum circle, but I doubt it) and used it to push around a crude device that made moving rocks and wood and things a lot easier, and we can fast forward to the day where I’m writing this using touch typing instead of carving it into bark, and you may damned well be reading this in bed on a device that weighs less than your pillow.

My point?  We now have to make time around our busy schedule of working, sleeping and watching House to keep ourselves healthy.  Many people don’t think much about it, and others have simply have given up, but odds are that if you’re reading this, regardless of how iPod-ish a device you’re reading it on, you haven’t given up yet or are at least seriously considering making a commitment to your well-being.

Here is where your motives behind your decision to stay active and healthy make a big impact, as they may well begin to define the person who inhabits the new you-shaped body.  I’m going to list a few of the reasons that I see people citing as why they’re going to start hitting the gym.  Then I’m going to suggest just why you might want to reconsider your chief motivation.

To Impress Him/Her

This is a tough one to get away from because whether you know it or not, everything you do you’re doing to get laid, and I don’t want to hear any arguments out of you about it.  If you believe the Democrats we came from monkeys (or possibly space.  Scientologists are Democrats, too, right?).  And unless you’re harboring a grudge against the space-pirate who imprisoned you in your current meat-sack, then you have one single purpose in life: sex.  More specifically, reproduction, but that’s a longer word and I only want to type it once (like I said, it’s an old computer and no matter what I copy, every time I hit paste, all I get is this: http://www.lostblog.net/postimages/lostben.jpg and I’m not sure why).  At some ancient level, all of our decisions are made in order to advance our chances of breeding with the most attractive mate possible.  There are all kinds of factors on how physical form relates to health, and how health increases the odds of successfully raising offspring, and I could go into it further but like I said earlier, I’m not an expert in much.  Basically…

… equals good.  (For you women reading, this is the rough equivalent.  I think.)  While it is perfectly natural for us to be (entirely too) attracted to someone like her, everyone reading this is exactly three Super Bowl rings and one cleft chin away from ever winning her over.

While she might be off the market, there are plenty of other women out there, and for each one of them, there’s a guy who wants to do something to make her notice him, and a lot of them have decided that washboard abs and an Incredible Hulk upper torso/arms are the way to do it.  So what do they do?  Get a membership at a gym (good), possibly see a trainer about a program designed to gain some size and definition (hey, it’s your body.  Shape it as you please), and then use her, or even just the desire to be physically attractive to women in general, as their primary motivation to keep going to the gym (no, you fool!).

How It Will Bite You In The Ass

Here’s a fun experiment.  Go to a bar.  Nowhere too loud, ’cause I want you to be able to hear other people talking.  Now scan the room.  I want you to find someone.  He should be pretty easy to spot.  He’s wearing a tight t-shirt.  It’s either black, white, or it has some faded or indecipherable design on the front.  It’s only tucked in above his belt buckle, which is probably super cool.  He obviously works out, a fact that is most obvious by his arms.  They’re hard to miss, because the sleeves of his t-shirt are shorter than they should be, if they’re present at all (the North American Sleeve Weevil can eat the sleeves of the average t-shirt overnight).  He’s also probably well tanned.

Now go sit near enough that you can hear him talk, especially when it appears that he is making a move on a girl.  I’ll wait here.

I’m willing to bet that at some point during his conversation he brought up “yeah, I hit the gym when I have time,” contrastingly mixed in with “I dunno, I gotta hit the gym,” mixed in with a healthy massive dose of “Forget about that guy.  You can tell he doesn’t even work out.”  He probably also sounds kind of like Keanu Reeves while he’s saying this.  Whoa!  This is especially entertaining if he is talking to a female friend of yours who you had previously instructed to be clearly unimpressed with his physique.Hey, you found him.

My point is this… If your reasons for staying fit are solely so that you can impress members of the opposite sex, then it is increasingly likely that you will wind up having little else to present as your social personality, and that can be really irritating to be around.  Yes, fit equals attractive, but Gym Douchebag usually equals, well, douchebag.  He’s one dimensional and seems to come off as thinking that he’s better than anyone with a higher Body Mass Index (for the record my BMI is 25.1.  Apparently I am overweight).

Nobody wants to be that guy, and fewer women than you’d think want anything with him other than a few hours and hopefully no Judd Apatow-style comedic fallout.  And before you think to yourself (or say out loud to no one) “Hey, a few hours is all I’m after,” grow up.  Yeah it’s fun from time to time, but the lifestyle that generally accompanies it is so counterproductive as far as your health is concerned that in the end, it’s nothing more than a real easy way to get sick.

Consider…

Being physically fit is already a step in the right direction to being attractive.  There’s no need to focus solely on that as your motivation, seeing as it comes as a natural side effect.  This doesn’t mean that you can’t take off our shirt at the beach and flaunt your abs (hell, why else would you have them?), it’s just unnecessary to draw any more attention than you’re already getting by talking about it all the time.

To Be More Intimidating

Tired of being pushed around by those playground (or office, or carpool, or subway…) bullies?  Sick of hiding extra lunch money in some kind of James Bond-esque shoe compartment?  Here’s the answer… secretly join a gym, visualize your tormentor’s face each time you knock off a rep, and get steadily bigger until one day it dawns on everyone: you’re huge.  Suddenly everyone is nicer to you, everyone listens to you, and no one takes your lunch money.  In fact, all you have to do is flex and suddenly your friends/enemies/coworkers/her……….>…are all buying your lunch for you.  Or maybe you just want people to take you more seriously, and getting big can’t hurt, can it?  From time to time when you raise your voice you get your way.  It’s not like you abuse it, right?

How It Will Bite You In The Ass

You’re going to get your ass kicked.  Don’t argue.  It is going to happen.  See, it’s great that you can do a whole Arnie-load of pushups.  Really, that is awesome.  The world needs people who can do whole piles of pushups.  But if you insist on using largeness to influence how people behave around you, you’re going to piss people off, which you might not be too worried about.  I mean, you’re HUGE!  But fighting is a very different thing.  If it happens to be something that the person you’ve pissed off is particularly good at, then size really isn’t that much of a factor.

Need proof?

And you, in all your new found enormousness, will eventually run into Danny Larusso (I hope you all know that he’s the karate kid) or some of his friends, and get your ass kicked.  If, however, you run into Danny Larusso AND some of his friends, read this).

Consider…

…the fact that by simply working out, your body releases endorphins.  These make you feel good, which generally puts you in a good state of mind.  With a good state of mind comes confidence.  Maybe not a lot, but some.  And yes, you’ll get bigger, too.

It is the natural cycle of the gym.  Yes, those first few weeks might hurt like hell, and you sure won’t see results immediately, but in the long run, the payoff is more than just improved physique.  It comes with better self image, which can lead to positive influences on all sorts of situations.

Balancing Out the Bad With the Good

There are a lot of ways to have fun in this world, and while some of us ride horses at breakneck speed or swim with the dolphins in Hawaii, many of us embrace equally safer and more dangerous pastimes: binge drinking and unhealthy eating are two examples which spring to mind.

pictured: fun

While outside of Montana binge drinking is not likely to get you a broken neck by being thrown from a horse into a barn wall, it is taking a toll on you that is not immediately obvious.  According to the CDC, it is associated with everything from unintentional injuries to neurological disorder and sexual dysfunction (!).

Yet today we see more and more people partaking in this dangerous habit, and it is more and more often accompanied with attempts to “undo” some of the more obvious effects.  Got wasted last night?  Run it off.  Downed a two-six of Jameson’s?  Sounds like motivation for a heavy chest day.

And you know what?  On the once in a very long while occasion, this might be a good way to get your blood moving around your body again.  So if that’s the case, why wouldn’t it make sense that it can be used as an eraser of the effects of a partying lifestyle?  Sure, you might not make any really impressive gains at the gym, but then again you also just might.

The same principle applies to food with more and more people.  If you’re going to go to the gym anyways, then you can skimp on a healthy lunch and down a Big Mac and some fries.  Maybe you won’t be undoing all of the damage, but you’ll be a step ahead of if you weren’t going to the gym, right?

Why It Will Bite You In The Ass

It really isn’t my place to tell you that the binge drinking and partying lifestyle is wrong.  Hell, going out and tying one on occasionally is generally good for your psychological state so long as you’re smart about it.  While I don’t subscribe to it at all, we each have the choice to make for ourselves.  I merely feel that it’s important to consider the toll that you are taking on your body when it becomes a regular pastime.  This is going to catch up to you at the gym, and be a strain your overall health.

I will now take the time to deliver some shocking news…  Just because you ran 20km, or had an awesome workout lifting heavy, heavy weights doesn’t mean that you can “reward” yourself with a pile of bread pudding or a night of drinking.  If you want to treat yourself, go ahead, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that the time you spend in the gym will balance out against the negative effects of putting unhealthy food groups inside of you.  That which we add to ourselves as a result of training comes only after a lot of hard work.  It can take weeks, even months before any truly noticeable changes take place.  But that is not the same with food and drink.  When we are not smart about our intake, it doesn’t take long before it shows.  A day of crunches doesn’t outweigh a night of pizza and beer.  Please now refer to the bold text in italics above so I don’t seem like so much of a jackass.

As far as using exercise to jump start your system after a night of getting wasted, well, that’s a whole other story.  There’s a damned good chance that you’re going to hurt yourself in the gym.  One day your brain is going to be too busy holding your liver back from kicking your ass, and it’s going to forget to tighten the collar that one time you go to bench 225.

And don’t forget that alcohol, as a depressant, makes you depressed to some extent.  In other words aside from the headache, the nausea, and the other headache (the one you woke up next to) it will make you not want to go to the gym, thereby causing you to waste however much money your membership is costing you, which benefits the Man.  And we can NOT let that happen!

Finally, it can become a downward spiral into chemical stimulation; not necessarily anything illegal, either.  But when you need coffee to keep you up, supplements for pre-gym energy, more coffee to get you through work, and a drink or other depressant to wind down at the end of the day, you’re suddenly caught in a cycle dubbed by a friend of mine who is currently in it as a “Counterbalance of Substance,” that will eventually do you some damage, or at least force you to go on one of those god awful cleanses.

Consider…

…balance.  Yes, go out and have a good time, but try and be smart about it.  Try a night where you don’t do any shots.  Not one.  Stick with your highballs (no, you can’t drink them like shots to make up for all the shots you aren’t doing) or beer, and maybe focus on being social instead of getting wasted.  I’d be willing to bet that you enjoy your night more.

And here’s another idea… Humour me… go for a month without drinking.  Give it a try.  During that month, make it in to the gym 5 days a week (or whatever your schedule permits).  Even go as far as using a complex algorithm (or basic arithmetic, whatever works for you) to figure out how much you typically spend on going out, and put that money towards hiring a personal trainer for the month.  After the month is over, step back and see how you feel.  I’m willing to bet that overall you feel, well, better.

At the end of the day, you each have your reasons for wanting to be healthy and fit, and nothing can take them away from you.  Nor should anything I write make you stop taking care of yourself because, “Oh My God, he’s right!  That’s me!”  I’m only asking you to look at that which motivates you, and see how it affects the person you are.  After doing that, ask yourself something:  Do you want it to consume your life, or compliment it?

Stand it upright and it’s a penguin!

This is just one of the literally billions of bizarre content examples of what is out there on the internet, and the peaduck might even be good enough to make it onto the next Weezer music video.  Nothing is immune to being made stupid by someone who is bored, trying to make their fortune by selling peanuts shaped like waterfowl, or is really on to something but isn’t too bright.

Nothing is immune, and that includes the fitness industry.  There are countless examples of shockingly bad content out there, be it poor demonstration of form, lack of knowledge as far as layout of the program, and even complete obliviousness to any kind of common sense in the gym.  I figured that I could warn you about them, perhaps pinpoint examples of why they’re bad influences on the early and eager training candidate, but I think that most of them convey that message well enough on their own.  Instead, I’m going to rate them on their awesomeness.  Just click on the title (or any underlined text, for that matter) and link to the relevant content.

#7 – 5 Minute Tone Body, Fitness with Tammy

While I might not be a doctor, I do know a little about the human body, specifically muscles.  Many of them have nicknames, but “frontal abs” was not one I had come across.  But hey, she has a bit of a Southern twang, so I’m not going to judge; maybe they just have different nicknames for abs down there.  No, my main concern was with the fact that she didn’t appear to have any, frontal or otherwise.  Also, watching her lying on the floor and swinging her arms in a motion that allowed her to jerk her body into something that, from a distance and through the fog, might look like a crunch was a bit hard to focus on due to the rockin’ soundtrack.

Tammy then takes us through three more kindergarten-level ab workouts, all of them ringing in at one set of twelve reps, each one displaying form so poor that I saw it squeegee-ing windshields downtown.

At the end of the day, I firmly believe that if I follow her ab routine, I will indeed have abs like her.

Rating: 0.5 Mariko Takahashis out of 7 (ie: not God-awful stuff, but nowhere awesome enough to be worth watching for entertainment’s sake)

#6 – Dive Bomber Push Ups

OK, I have to make a confession.  When I read the title of this exercise, I thought it was going to be something much, much different.  Look at it.  Dive.  Bomber.  Push Ups.  Those are some of the manliest words ever assembled in a sentence together since I learned that there is actually a guy out there named Staff Sergeant Max Fightmaster .  I can just visualize S/Sgt. Fightmaster screaming the words “DIVE BOMBER PUSH UPS” at a group of tougher-than-a-coffin-nail US Army Rangers as they advance, guns blazing, on the greatest enemies that Freedom has ever encountered, stopping only to show that they have no fear of death by dropping down and knocking off five freaking DIVE BOMBER PUSH UPS in the middle of the most epic battle the world has ever seen.

Standard warm up for dive bomber push ups

Instead, we’re treated to a crash course on both how to blow out your shoulder/wreck your back doing a stupid exercise, and how to try to explain to your significant other that no, that isn’t porn, you were just working out.  “No, honey, I’m being totally honest with you.  They were dive bomber push ups.  Well she is a trainer.  She has a website and everything.  And you know those Russians, they’re always coming out with exercises that no one else does.  That’s why they’re all so robust and lumberjack-like.  Can we talk about this later?  I think I need to go to the hospital.  My shoulder/back really hurts.”

Dynamic shoulder movements like that, especially weight-bearing ones, can really, really cause you some sincere problems.  The shoulder is a particularly vulnerable joint, the back is really, really easy to damage by hyper-extending it, and they both need more protecting and less dive bomber push ups taught to you over the internet by someone training out of a basement that may or may not have a grow-op just off camera.

Rating: 2 Mariko Takahashis out of 7.  She lost points for her dangerous choice of exercise, but gained some back by starting her own gym in a basement because of the dress codes in most “real” gyms.

#5 – Zumba Fitness

First things first.  I love Zumba.  Zumba is awesome.  I have done Zumba, and I enjoyed it, even if I won’t do it again.  It’s fun, it’s great cardio, and it may single-handedly save America from complete obesity.  The only reason it is on this list is because it isn’t weight training, and it`s really, REALLY entertaining to watch.

As you can see by clicking on the link, Zumba is a high energy dance atmosphere that is a very intense cardio workout.  Sessions typically last for an hour, and what an hour!  Latin, African, hip hop… the music is energetic and so are the participants.  Just look at that guy in the front row.  I’m willing to bet that he’s a college basketball player whose coach is making him take dance classes to work on his footwork (speaking from experience here, people.  It happens), and I’d also be willing to bet that when he showed up, he was less than happy with the situation.  Look at him now, though.  After his NBA career, we’re going to see him on Dancing with the Stars.

But Zumba isn’t much of a way to get big muscles.  I know, I know, it isn’t about that, and it is good for you, but I can’t help but wish that at some point they would break away and do some bench press or deadlifts or something.

Rating: 5 Mariko Takahashis out of 7.  It looks like a whole ton of fun, but most of the points came from the props owed to the college basketball player and the knowledge that he’s sleeping with every woman in that class.

#4 – Kettlebells

OK, I’m really going to go to town on these guys.  This video clip will be the reason that most chiropractors and spinal surgeons retire early, because if any percentage of the population does what these guys do, backs are going to be broken.  I won’t even bother with my usual kettlebell argument that you can accomplish everything that kettlebells have to offer by using dumbbells and not being dumb.  I won’t even go on my usual rant about how they are nothing more than an attempt at an exotic (well, Russian) fad that has only become popular through marketing and mystery instead of proven results.  No, I’m just going to focus on this amazing video.

The soundtrack is brutal.  I suppose it`s trying to emphasize the Russian-ness of kettlebells and working out shirtless in the middle of an empty field (or possibly playground.  Hopefully the police will be there soon).  Instead it sounds like the soundtrack that a young Richie Rich would pipe through his mansion`s heating ducts in order to slowly drive his parents to insanity so he could seize control of their assets, buy a giant robot spider and bring it to board meetings.

"Go ahead.  Veto my motion to buy Legoland.  I dare you"

Personally, I think this video would have been a lot better if it had used the Rasputin song.

The following is a series of excerpts from my thought process as I watched this video and text flashed across the screen.  It’s time coded so that you can better understand the state of confusion I endured to bring you this review.

0:09 – Discover Russian Kettlebells! – According to ancient Russian mythology, kettlebells were first discovered by a shirtless Russian scuba diver.  To this day they are harvested from a secret lake guarded by shirtless men who surge forth from the depths whenever they uncover a newly grown kettlebell.

0:15 – Change your body! – Russian newspapers are very open about the black market organ trade.  For that guy’s sake, I hope that the spine is an easily obtained organ.  Russia has beaches?

0:30 – Develop specific strength! – Specific to what?  I mean, he’d make a kick ass juggler of heavy objects, I guess.  There’s probably some money in that somewhere touristy.  Man, this scene goes on forever and it… Power! – Whoa.  That came out of nowhere.  Hmm.  He doesn’t look too powerful.  They should have used the other guy for the power part, since he’s… Flexibility! – Geez, they’re really trying to shock you into seeing the benefits here.  And flexibility?  Really?  He hasn’t done anything other than turn slightly to the side and bend forward at the waist a little.  I mean, that’s great and all if you’re turning to get a jar of jam out of the cupboard and then have to get the peanut butter from a different cupboard below you, but wouldn’t just moving the peanut butter be easier than specifically training with kettlebells to get your condiments?  Also, who works out in jeans?  These guys, that’s who.

1:25 – Loose fat! – After 51 seconds of watching a guy wearing jeans and a red shirt warm up for a long day of juggling, we cut to a shot of a rather chubby fellow, also wearing jeans (the same pair…?) but no shirt, and a bulletin warning us about some fat that has escaped and is looking to score some triglycerides on the street.  I figure that similar bulletins reading “Loose tiger!“ are displayed on large screens at zoos when the tiger cage is unexpectedly opened by someone who desperately wants to ride a tiger.

The luxury model has XM satellite radio and GPS

2:00 – Learn to enjoy your body! – Uh… I`m not gonna touch this one.  The mental toll it would take to go into any detail of what a Russian video on how to enjoy your body entails would probably leave me with way too many of Doc Brown`s quirkier personality traits.

The video goes on to display shocking grammar, scenes of two miserable looking grown men flinging around a piece of iron in a desperate bid to get a paid leave of absence due to medical hardship from their jobs guarding the kettlebell lake, and then degenerates into desperate demands to either use kettlebells in the morning or at night.  It culminates with the claim that waving a kettlebell around in a dangerous manner is a sport, at which point I stopped watching and wished I had done so four minutes and twenty two seconds ago.

Rating: These guys actually owe me a daily deposit of 27 Mariko Takahashis from now until the day they don`t wake up with agonizing back pain.

#1 – Mariko Takahashi`s Fitness Video

I know that I skipped numbers two and three, but this video managed to take all three of the top spots.  How did it do this, you ask?  It did this by psychically informing me that if I didn’t give it the top three spots, it would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life and beyond.  I mean WTF!!!  Look at what is going on here!  I can’t figure it out in any way that satisfies my need to know what the hell is happening on my screen.  Her arms and legs… and I swear to God that those are real dog heads.  I feel compelled to look behind me every few seconds to make sure that one of those… dogs(?) isn’t sneaking up on me to take me out with a stealth ninja attack.  I’m trying to make myself not check for them, but I can’t help the feeling that the one time I don’t is the one time one of them will be there, ready to strike me down with one of those bone-shaped dumbbells before howling “VICTORY AND HAPPINESS” as it perches over my lifeless body.

As far as technical issues with the exercises themselves, I didn’t get around to them.  I couldn’t see past the frightening images on my screen to critique her form or choice of exercise.  All I learned from this upsetting experience is that I’m now scared of poodles.

The face of terror/evil

Rating: She IS Mariko Takahashi (or “all the Mariko Takahashis that those other guys owe me” out of 7.