In the beginning

Guess I should tell you how this all started.

I was at my 20th high school reunion this summer (Maui High Sabers c/o 90) and ran into a classmate of mine by the name of Robert "Bumper" Kikuchi. In high school he was like the fastest guy on Maui so of course I expected him to be out of shape. Except he's not. In fact he has his own Crossfit gym and invites me to workout. No problem I think. I had a friend of mine introduce me to it earlier this year although I kinda got injured and had to stop. You just go to http://www.crossfit.com/ and follow whatever the workout is for that day, which is a pretty tough workout usually. Anyway I figure Bumper doesn't have anything new for me so I go check it out.

The place is nothing more than a garage with weights all around and ropes hanging from the ceiling. But he's got me sweating after a 3 minute warm up and then has me lying down on the ground and gasping for air over the next seven minutes. I couldn't believe it. We did something called thrusters and burpees back to back and I almost saw the bright light and went over to the other side. It was nuts.

Meanwhile I look around the gym and there are high school girls ripping through a more advanced workout than I just did. It was embarrassing. And painful. I was hooked.

Then a week later my cousin, an MMA ring girl here on Maui (yeah yeah I'll post her picture later) invite me out with one of her fighter friends, a Filipino guy by the name of Wally. Anyway after a couple of beers Wally invites my cousin and I both down to the gym where he trains for a workout. We go and check it out later that week. Basically my cousin and I were the only ones there without scary tattoos and large, calloused knuckles. But everybody was really friendly (yeah, I know, could have been because of my ring girl cousin) and the workout was fast and furious. Wally had me hitting the heavy bag with jabs and crosses, hooks and uppercuts. Then we worked on speed drills in the ring where I tried to hit the pads while moving around. Then we did something else that involved more punching and push-ups when we weren't punching. Then I asked if I could practice kicking just so I wouldn't have to punch anymore. If it were a real fight I would have gotten beaten down like Tina Turner. I was tired, blind from the sweat in my eyes and couldn't break a bubble with my jab. I liked it.

So now I had two gyms, two types of workouts to consider. I still hated cardio, but at least I was having fun now. Then this blog idea started to form in my head and here we are. I figured if I was going to try and kill myself while doing these workouts I might as well let everybody else in on the joke. Excuse me while I laugh and ice my knuckles.