Fitness Test

I was listening to one of my favourite podcasts this morning, "This American Life", and it had a story about a radio producer who was paid to do a story about amnesia. He thought it would be easy to find someone with amnesia because it's so common on television and in the movies. Someone gets hit on the head with a coconut and they forget everything, and then later they get hit again and their memory comes back. But when he tried, he couldn't find anyone that had real amnesia, the sort where people couldn't remember who they were.
It reminded me of a student I had years ago, Takamasa. He was a great guy. He worked at the Volkswagon plant in Toyohashi, and worked and played hard. Overweight, red-faced, smoker, drinker, eater. His English was pretty basic, but he loved to talk and he improved quickly. He soon became one of my favourite students and I looked forward to seeing him every week. Then he stopped coming. After the third week of him not coming I asked my boss if he had heard anything about him. "He's in hospital. Sick. Maybe won't be back for a few more weeks," said my boss. I thought maybe he'd had a heart attack or a stroke or something.
So a couple of weeks later my boss comes up to me and says "Takamasa is coming back this week. But you should know that he does not remember you or anything from the last ten years."
Apparently, he'd collapsed at work, and when he woke up in hospital, he couldn't remember anything from the last ten years. The doctor asked him how old he was. "32," he said. "No, you are 42," said the doctor. The doctor brought his family in to see him. "This is your wife, and these are your children." Takamasa had no memory of them at all. He had been working at Volkswagon ten years ago, so he knew where he worked, but the last ten years were completely gone.
So when he came to class, I was a little nervous. I introduced myself, and we basically had the same conversation that we had had his very first lesson. He was wary, and much quieter than he was before. He was probably wondering why the hell he had been learning English. It was funny because he did remember words that he had learnt in my class two months before, but he didn't know how he knew them. He said he was getting to know his wife again and he liked her, and she told him that he was spending more time with his children that he used to, so they are happy too. He says he was working with most of the same people he worked with ten years ago, but they look older and fatter. So did he. There were no indications that he would ever get his memory back, and in the next few months that I taught him he never did. He just got on with his life and work, and he seemed to know the stuff that he was trained to know, but he just couldn't remember learning it. Weird, hey?
J and I did the P90X fitness test this afternoon. It's designed to see if you are ready for P90X, and to provide a contrast for when you are finished – you can go back and do the test again after 90 days and see how much you have improved. So here are the numbers.
Weight: 81.1 kg
Body fat (calipers): 12/13/14 12.37%
Chest: 100 cm
Waist: 86 cm
Left arm: 34
Right arm: 34
Resting heart rate (after sitting down for 2 minutes): 60
Blood pressure: 109/60
Max pull ups: 7
Max push ups: 42
Toe touch: +6
Max wall squat time: 2'03"
Bicep curls (10kg): 36
In and outs: 63
Heart rate after Jumping Jacks for 2 minutes (last 30 sec at full speed)
Immediately after stopping: 165
1 min: 127
2 min: 114
3 min: 111
4 min: 102
Here is the test if you're interested.
http://www.beachbody.com/text/products/programs/p90x/popup_parseb/vid_fittest.html
So. Tomorrow it begins. The first workout is "Chest and Back" followed by "Ab Ripper X". Basically it's push-ups and pull-ups for an hour, then more than 300 sit-ups. For the next 3 weeks the schedule is
Thursday - Chest & Back + Ab Ripper X
Friday - Plyometrics
Saturday - Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X
Sunday - Yoga X
Monday - Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X
Tuesday - Kenpo X
Wednesday – Rest or X Stretch
Plyometrics is the one I am most afraid of. My knees are feeling good at the moment, but after an hour of squats and jumping they might not.