If you’re not familiar with the popular series One Punch Man, it has taken the anime community by a storm with its silliness, ridiculous fights and pretty cool story. If you would like to read more about Saitama, the main character, I suggest going here but for now I want to talk about how he got so strong!
Saitama is the strongest anime character in history, and that’s a fact. Go ahead, leave your comment below because that’s where I stand even though I’m a huge Dragonball fan. Yes, he’s stronger than Goku and Superman because I have yet to see either of them defeat foes as Saitama has. Who knows? Maybe they can beat him up or challenge him, but I doubt they could win, especially if Saitama kept on training. How did he get so strong, though? He’s just an average guy with nothing interesting going for him except his strength. No super powers. Nothing supernatural or extraordinary happened. Nada! His training regimen was as follows (thanks go to Real-Anime-Training for the list):
No A/C or heater during the summer
100 Push-ups
100 Sit-ups
100 Squats
Run 10k (6.2 Miles)
Never skip a day
It’s absolutely insane that you could become as strong as Saitama with just this simple training, but the consistency is the key. Never skipping a day is what made him surpass all the other heroes in the show, not just doing it a few times here and there. As someone who has been going to the gym for years, I know that when you start skipping a couple weeks and then you go back, it’s difficult. Maybe you could benchpress 150lbs before, but now you can only do 120lbs or 100lbs, and you’re huffing and puffing. The secret to being strong is being consistent. You have to make yourself go to the gym, eat healthy, study or whatever it is that needs to be done daily.
The secret to being strong is being consistent.
This is not something my generation likes to hear, since we want everything fast, microwaved, and ready in 1, 2, 3! To be honest, I like that because it thins out the competition and makes it easy to tell who’s really dedicated and who isn’t. For Saitama, he didn’t care about any of that, he just wanted to be a great hero and decided to push his body to the limit… and as he saw results, he kept going. While everyone was making fun of him, he defeated every enemy the toughest heroes couldn’t touch.
While I was watching One Punch Man, I realized that life is the same way. Anything that I have accomplished in life I had to train hard for, be disciplined and not pay attention to what others were doing. From graduating with my Bachelor’s degree, getting married, starting a business, becoming a writer, eating healthy or most importantly, knowing God as my Heavenly Father, it took work. None of those achievements I mentioned were done easily or quickly. They took time, effort and risk. I’ve had to spend many late nights reading textbooks to graduate, learning from podcasts and other materials to become an entrepreneur, or hours in prayer and study to get to know God for myself and not just listen to someone else tell me about Him.
Saitama, to me, is my favorite hero because he’s not a big deal. He just worked his tail off and is the strongest guy in the world even though few believe he is. Success in life is not quick or simple, it’s difficult. Even living as a Christian isn’t easy, since we are called to walk through a narrow gate while the rest of the world goes through the wide gate (Matthew 7:13-14). This makes working out my life harder, because the easy things I would rather do (take revenge, lie, cheat, lust, etc.) I shouldn’t do because God has a better plan for my life than that.
Even people that live in disregard to God’s standards have to work hard at it. A prostitute or a drug dealer needs to understand his or her craft and do it well to see results, so how much more do those that want to do the right thing have to? It took me years to get married, because we were saving up money, talking to our families, figuring out our goals and many other details. When I went to college, it took me five years to graduate because, instead of going full-time every semester, I had to work full-time as well. After that, it took me a couple more years to land a job in my desired position!
I use my own life as an example because sometimes I work hard at something, and I see social media photos of people traveling the world and having a good time while I’m being “disciplined.” I would much rather say, “Forget this, I’m grabbing whatever money I have and going to do something fun or travel to another country!!” Discipline can be hard, but I once heard a pastor say “Pay now, play later or play now, pay later,” so I decided years ago to do my best to live my life that way in every area. It has paid off, and God has blessed me so much that I don’t have time to write it all.
What disciplines do you have in your life, and what rewards have you seen from it? Maybe you graduated, opened a business, got out of debt, or grew in your spiritual life. Whatever it is, share below as I’m sure everyone reading will benefit from it.
God bless.