In the hit Japanese manga series One-Punch Man, Saitama, a part-time convenience store worker, adopts a grueling physical training routine for three years straight to become an invincible superhero capable of defeating any foe with a single punch. His training routine was recently replicated for 1,096 days straight by a Japanese middle-aged man who recently showed off the effect of his hard work.
To become One-Punch Man, Saitama did 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, and ran 10 kilometers every day for three years. While this same routine didn’t transform the protagonist of our story into a real-life superhero, it definitely made his physical transformation hard to ignore.
Tasuke began the ‘One Punch Man Challenge’ on April 21, 2023, when he was 41 years old, 1.75 meters tall, and weighed 74.7 kilograms. He wasn’t in bad shape compared to a lot of other people his age, but after three years of daily exercise, the difference is staggering. He went from looking like an average office worker to a middle-aged ‘Chad’ with a visible six-pack, generally toned physique, and enviable endurance. Oh, and unlike the real Saitama, he got to keep his hair!
Over the last three years, Tasuke ran 16,136 kilometers and performed 109,600 repetitions of push-ups, sit-ups, and squats. And while he didn’t end up destroying monsters with a single punch, pulverizing mountains, or becoming the single most powerful being in the Universe, the real-life Saitama proved that perseverance, especially when taken to the extreme, has very clear results.
Before you go and follow Tasuke’s example, it’s worth pointing out that emulating such an extreme training regimen can be a recipe for disaster. Saitama lives in a fantasy universe, but in the real world, running 10 kilometers daily and doing 100 pushups, situps, and squats can cause serious injuries, especially in the early days, when the body hasn’t fully adapted to the physical training.
Interestingly, Tasuke isn’t the first person to emulate One-Punch Man’s training routine. Last year, we featured another real-life Saitama from China who used the three-year training regimen to turn his life around.
