Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Under the Hula Moon | May/June 2005

Under the Hula Moon
By: JOCELYN FUJIII

Road Warrior Fitness

Last year, weary of the physicality of long-distance travel, beaten by the Olympian feats demanded of luggage-toting earthlings like me getting from point A to point B, I made up my mind, at last, to get fit. Pushing, pulling, dragging, lifting, shuffling and steering my baggage through airports and onto aircraft had left me with
a single goal: to survive my next travel stint without breaking a bone.

So I contacted a trainer. His name is Mike Sapp, and all I knew was that he had transformed one of my friends into an athlete capable of the triathlon. My friend told me that, after training with Mike, she had achieved the level of a 24-year-old in a documented test of athletic strength. She trained so she could hike the Cinque Terre—five steep villages along the Italian Riviera—without holding up her group. My goal was more modest. I fantasized about hoisting my 23-pound carry-on into the overhead compartment without fainting, as I nearly did on my multiple-leg flights to Costa Rica last year.

At Gold’s Gym, where Mike Sapp works with his clients, I took my airy-fairy self into the gritty world of grinding metal, grunting gym rats and flying sweat. In two-and-a-half months of twice-a-week workouts with Mike, I went from Olive Oyl to someone who could carry 40 pounds—approximately the weight of my suitcases—halfway across the gym. This doesn’t sound like much, but for a 108-pound weakling this was monumental, and the distance was farther than my average airport schlep. Mike helped me strengthen my shoulders for the overhead bin and taught me the optimal posture for lifting bags off the carousel: back flat, knees slightly bent, one foot slightly in front of the other, weight in the legs, free arm on the thigh for support. I made friends with dumbbells, worked the cables, did leg presses and teetered on the stability ball. While focusing on my travel survival, Mike counseled me on nutrition and pushed me through physical and mental barriers with the laserlike focus of the advanced Zen practitioner that he is.

"People do all these things to avoid the pain—listen to music, watch TV—but I think it’s more effective to put your full awareness into what you’re doing,” he says. “Totally focus on the form.” He taught me to exhale slowly in some exercises and to focus on a point below my abdomen, which came in handy when my luggage tried to bowl me over.

Travel motivated his other clients, too, among them a 72-year-old woman who trained specifically to gain strength and confidence for her tours—“to walk a certain distance without a handrail, to carry whatever she needed to,” says Mike. Another client increased the intensity of her training by 30 percent when she decided to climb Mount Fuji.

When I next flew to Costa Rica, my carry-on glided into the overhead. I wasn’t exactly Atlas, and it’s not as if I could do it with my pinkie. But I was positively giddy. I settled into my seat and observed the microcosm of 21st-century air travel coming down the aisle. Briefcases with sleek laptops. Ears sprouting cell phones. Heads bobbing to MP3s. State-of-the-art, heat-sensitive Tempur-Pedic foam pillows. And bags. Big, unwieldy bags that lumbered down the aisle like Humvees. My own carry-on was puny by comparison. I put on my germ-filter mask, flipped on my ionizer, popped in my ear plugs and fished out my road warrior survival kit of lavender and tea tree essential oils. “Daddy, look at the weird lady,” chirped a little girl across the aisle. I reflected on a time when “weird” would become commonplace, when the increasingly physical demands of travel and the challenges of shrinking private space would necessitate new behaviors.

Technology has created more powerful engines, seats with tantalizing, rest-inducing features and laptops that compress time in both cyberspace and air space. We are more sophisticated than ever, but we are also more material. Babystrollers are built like SUVs, carry-ons have never been larger—up to 40 pounds on some airlines, 45 linear inches on others—and the prison of our luxuries has turned us into space hogs.

Technology teaches me about cubic inches and patience. We want to get there fast and delete the pain in between, just as I tried to with my physical training. But, thanks to Mike, I know better now and, soon, under his tutelege, I will be a warrior.

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