You have an intense six-week holiday season ahead. Here’s an equally intense list of fitness options—this involves sumo wrestlers, samurai swords and a <em>Dukes of Hazzard</em> stunt guy—to help keep your mind sharp, your nerves steeled and your biceps ready for eggnog-curling.
Assuming you could use a refresher on the finer points of sumo wrestling, World Sumo champion and Ocean’s 13 actor Byamba Ulambayar leads weekly group classes. You’ll squat, kick and charge the 350-pound hulk, trying to budge him a few inches. Good luck with that.
If you’re unsure where you can go to learn to leap, flip and climb over soaring walls in a 7,000-square-foot obstacle course designed by a BMX pro turned X Games ramp architect—well, Northridge. That’s where you go. Northridge.
In a West LA park, past the basketball games and barbecues, you can learn to master defense techniques with traditional Japanese swords, staffs and spears. The key, they say, is discipline and focus. Guess who’s carving the turkey this year...
Sure, bench presses exist. But sometimes you need a new challenge. Like meeting up with a Venice bodybuilder to lift colossal stones, steel kegs and logs. And swing a heavy sledgehammer. And drag around some monster-truck tires. And a car. No, no relatives are inside.
To be prepared for anything, bring in the legendary stuntman from The A-Team and The Dukes of Hazzard. (The good ones, on TV.) He’ll guide you through two weeks of being lit on fire, high falls, trick driving and believable fake fighting. Hearing “White Christmas” for the 3,000th time will no longer seem like a big deal.
