Strength Training

He stood inside of the center of his Raikage office area, preparing to start his intense training that was required for him to get strong enough to protect the village from another destructive attack like the one they had fallen victim to much earlier. He was no longer a genin anymore and needed to truly prove that, even though he was already Raikage, he truly was strong enough to lead the village. Other villages would not respect him if he couldn’t prove that he was worthy of being called a Kage. So to begin his training to get stronger, he needed to improve his physical strength itself.

Walking over a large metal box at the back of his office, adjacent to his desk he opened up the heavy lid to the box and tossed to off the to the side. Looking inside the box he noticed a large variety of different weights. There were dumbbells, wrist and ankle weights, weighted balls, a curl bar and weights to slide on the ends of the curl bar. This was going to be more than enough to effectively increase his strength so that he could go toe to toe with some of the most physically gifted shinobi in the world. He wasn’t even sure where to begin, nor did he know how heavy the weights were. He decided that it would be best to start off with putting on the wrist and ankle weights, reaching down and lifting at one of the large wrist weights he was caught off guard by how heavy the weight was. It took some strain on his muscles to pull one of the wrist weights out of the box and put it on his right wrist, instantly causing his arm to drop down. He struggled to lift the other weight out with just his left arm, but once he was able to get it out, he finally got the weight put on his left wrist. ‘I’m surprised that they are so heavy, but if this is what it takes, I’ll use them until they don’t feel heavy anymore.’ He thought to himself, one hundred percent determined to make sure he could protect his village.

Beginning his training, he start out by walking over to a training dummy that he had brought into the office earlier. Lifting his arms up, the muscles in his arms strained from the heaviness of the weights. He Thrust out his right fist and attempted to punch the dummy in its chest, although it was slow and lacked much force behind the punch due to the weight making him strain just to keep his arm up. His arm fully extend, bumping his fist against the surface of the dummy’s chest barely making the dummy be moved at all. He ignored the effect his punch and withdrew his right fist and thrust out his left fist. Doing the same as he had previously done with his right fist, his left fist barely bumped d against the surface of the training dummy his muscles straining intensely from the full extension of his left arm. He refused to give up on the training session no matter how much the training was being proved as difficult, at the time, he needed to get stronger. He thrust out his right fist again, extending his right arm completely forward to bump against the dummy’s chest. He pushed out his left fist right after pulling his right fist, extending his left arm completely forward as he did with his right arm, his left fist bumping against the dummy’s chest. His muscles were starting to feel the effects of the heavy weights and punching exercise, making the strain of the muscle contractions more painful.

He pushed forward with his right fist, slamming it at the dummy’s face, extending his arm forward and moving up some more adding more strain from lifting the weight a little higher into the air. He pulled back his right fist while pushing his left fist forward and up into the air at the dummy’s head just as he had done with his right fist. He had fully extended and lifted his left air into the air before immediately pulled it back towards his, slamming his right fist up and forward once more. The muscles in his arms seemed to cry out in pain from the lactic acid slowly starting to develop within them. His right arm extended out completely and then he pulled his right fist back again, slamming his left fist forward right after and sending it up and at the dummy’s head as he had been doing with his right fist. He had just extended his left arm completely and bumped against the dummy’s head before his left arm seemed to give way to the weight on it and the arm seemed to collapse down at his side. He had never imagined how difficult of a training session this truly would become. He continued to extend out his arms in alternation over and over again, bumping against various parts of the dummy’s body. He wasn’t sure how long he could continue to keep up with straining his muscles repeatedly, over and over forcing them to work on keeping his arms straight and holding up the massive amount of weight that was on the weights around his wrists. It was painfully clear that the weights were incredibly dense and designed for extreme strength conditioning.

He took a very short ‘break’ if it could even be called that. All he really did was head back over to the box of ‘hell’ as he was now referring to it. He needed to strengthen more than just his arm muscles; he needed to improve his leg muscles also. Kicking was just as important to a fight as punching was. He reached into the box filled with ridiculously heavy weights and struggled to pull out a pair of the ankle weights, which was made difficult due to the wrist weights he was already wearing. Once he was finally able to drag the weights out of the box he put the on his ankles. He needed to gain more muscle strength in his legs in order to enhance the impact of his kicks. The speed was already there, but he didn’t quite have the strength to cause the powerful type of impact he would like to leave when he attacked his opponents, he desired a strong and forceful impact capable of causing some serious damage. If he could manage to develop the type of strength required to break bones upon impact, then and only then would he feel confident about going fist to fist against an opponent and fight them using only his strength. It was something that he had wanted to do for a long time, but he had focused on developing his chakra and learning how to perform higher ranked jutsu; now was the time to focus on his physical prowess and achieve that goal of becoming strong enough to ravage an opponent with his punches and kicks.

He walked over towards the dummy, lifting his feet up as high as he could on each step, bending the leg at the knee and bringing it upward into a perfect 90 degree angle. It was difficult to actually lift his feet up like due to the extreme density of the weights attached to his ankles. He tried to slowly bring his feet down as to strain the muscles more, increasing their constriction so that they would be forced to work themselves more. He knew that if he put as much strain on his muscles as he could possibly handle he’d become stronger even faster, although it was much easier said than done to do that. The strain he was putting on his body just at the start of this training was already immense and exhausting, he had no other choice than to fight through the pain of the workout, if he couldn’t put himself through this than there was no way he’d be able to become strong enough to survive a large scale battle. He knew that his village was counting on his to be their leader and their protector; his job was to make sure that nothing bad happened to the village.

Ignoring his body crying out in pain, knowing that it was simply a sign of his current weakness, he pushed through. He had to ignore his pain in order to become stronger and prevent the pain of others. Finally reaching the dummy’s body again after already tiring out his legs from working them out on his way over to the dummy, he gave out a sigh of exhaustion, preparing himself for another routine of working out his muscles. He tensed up his abs, tightening his core muscles as he got ready to work his arms and legs to the extreme. He titled his body to the right and lifted up his left leg at an angle, swinging his body around and slamming the edge of his left foot towards the dummy’s head. He lost some momentum due to the struggle he was experiencing in trying to lift his foot up into the air and move it without it dropping back down. It strained his legs muscles greatly to stop right at the dummy’s head and hold his leg in the air, the muscles constricted and seemed to be in pain from not being able to relax while he held the leg in the air, forcing great tension upon his muscles from the weight being held up in the air.

His body weight pivoted on his left foot as soon as the foot had landed back down on the ground. Shifting his weight around he lifted his right foot up into the air and slammed the form of his right foot against the side of the dummy’s soft surfaced head, doing this in a similar fashion to the way he had previously done with his left foot. As with his left leg, he held his right leg in place after hitting the dummy in the head, only this time he could feel he was making progress. The dummy was nearly knocked over from the force of his right foot, and when he held the foot in the air, it seemed to be somewhat easier, yet it was still incredibly difficult. He held the leg in place, straining his muscles over being dragged down by the dense weight that was on his ankle. He let his right foot come down to the ground and he stood straight up in place, looking at the dummy. The thoughts of needing to get stronger continued to engrave themselves in his brain, it was all he could think about anymore was the idea of gaining more power to protect his village. As he stared at the form of the training dummy that he had been working with, his anger swelled. No longer did he see just a plain old training dummy propped up before him, no he now saw the previous Hokage, the person who started the damaging attacks against Kumogakure. Enraged by the sight of the man he felt had caused even more unnecessary pain to the village, he slammed his right fist out in front of him, punching the dummy in the chest. Combined with the weight’s density and his own rage fueling the power of his punch, he slammed the dummy backwards into the wall behind it. He had left a large indent in the front of the dummy’s chest surface and had caused a small crack in the wall where the dummy’s body had impacted from the force of his punch. He knew his punch’s power had been somewhat intensified from the momentum of the dense weight on his wrist, but it was his rage that allowed his muscles to ignore the weight and move his right fist as if nothing was even on it.

He had a new sense of determination and drive, knowing that he was truly developing an incredible amount of strength from training with such immensely heavy weights. He knew he needed to focus on continuing to develop his strength, but he had grown tired of using the weights attached to his wrists and ankles, it was time to check out the other pieces of strength training equipment that was in that box he had grown to hate but now respected. The items in that box were helping him get stronger and would ultimately help him be able to defend his village more adequately. He took the weights off his wrist and off of his ankles without walking over to the box; he had a different idea on how he’d do one final piece of training with those attachment weights. He planned to toss the weights across the room and into the box, requiring enough strength to easily throw them the 15 foot distance and to have the accuracy to actually make the weights land within the confines of the box itself. He started with the wrist weights, grabbing one of them with his right hand and supporting the weight with his left hand, he looked at the box over by his desk. In one quick motion he forced his arms to extend forward and lunged the weight towards the desk, using most of his muscle strength to fling the weight into the air and send them in that direction. He had some doubts about whether or not the weight would in fact land within the box, but it did. He heard the loud sound of a clang like noise come from the box, obviously an aftermath effect of the weight hitting the rest of the different types of weight training tools within the box.

He grabbed another of the weights and did nearly the same process, only this time he grabbed it with his left and supported the weight with his right hand. It was somewhat more difficult to hold most of the weight with his left hand as he was a right handed person and thus not quite as skilled or strong with his left hand and arm. He pushed his left arm forward in full extension, pushing his right arm forward with it, and sent the weight flying into the air. It was more difficult to aim with his left hand being the main appendage tossing the weight and so the weight nearly missed the target altogether. He was lucky though as the target was large enough of a box to not be that easy to miss when aimed at. The weight hit the edge of the box and nearly tried to go off the edge before falling into the confines of the box. It didn’t surprise him that the box had not moved an inch as there was clearly a larger amount of weight inside of the box itself and thus the weight although incredibly heavy wasn’t even close to weighing enough to make the box tilt or move at all. He let out a breath of air and lifted one of the ankle weights with his right hand, and just to make things more interesting and challenging for him, he used his left hand to lift up the other ankle weight. He tossed his right hand up in the air, nearly grunting as he stressed the muscles in his right arm during the lifting extension, but it worked as he flung the ankle weight through the air and watched as it landed perfectly in the center of the large box next to his desk. Next would be his left arm tossing the final weight, which was going to be difficult without the help of his right hand to support it. He tensed up his body and then threw the weight with his left hand into the air, his left arm screaming in pain as the muscles were stressed and strained immensely from the action. It worked though, with the ankle weight landing in the center of the box without coming close to missing which meant he had made sure his accuracy had not faltered even with the immense stress he had put on his arm in that situation.

Somewhat exhausted from all of that weight training he had just put his arms and legs through he considered stopping for the day, after all he had in fact gotten stronger and it wouldn’t be quite as noticeable until he gave his muscles some time to relax and recover from the training; but he couldn’t shake the desire of getting stronger as soon as possible due to the anger that had swelled up from remembering how useless he had been when Kumogakure was first attacked. There was no doubt in his mind that he would protect his village this time around and that there would be nothing that could stand in his way when it was all said and done. He walked over to his desk and cleared everything off the surface of the wooden desk, then went over to the side of the desk where the large box full of strength training equipment was located and pushed the wrist and ankle weights to the edge of the box. He used both of his hands and struggled to pull out a somewhat long and thick weight bar.

Once he had finally gotten the weight bar out of the box he went in front of his desk and jumped up on the top of the desk and laid down. This was going to be somewhat risky but he had to do it, lifting the weight bar that was more dense than all four wrist and ankle weights combined, he gripped it tightly and held it above his chest. His arms felt weak trying to just hold the weight bar above his chest, his arms fully extended as they tried to keep the weight bar from collapsing on his chest and injuring him badly, if not possibly killing him. Slowly he let his elbows start to bend and bring the weight bar down closer to his chest. Once he had the bar almost close enough to touch the surface of his chest before adding onto the stress and strain of his muscles by pushing the weight bar back up into the air, extending his arms completely, his elbows straightening out. He pushed himself further, lifting up his back and bending his upper body upward into a sitting position, at the same time he lifted the weight bar high into the air making it be lifted above his head. He leaned back into a laying position on his back and bringing the weight bar back into position above his chest and then bringing it back down towards his chest. He felt like his arms were going to break at any moment during the exercise, wondering why he had even decided to do it. It was clear that his arms needed to take a break at some point in order to recover from everything he had just put them through, it seemed as though all the muscles in his body were aching from the extreme weight lifting he had been doing. He repeated the process of lifting the weight bar up into the air and bringing it back down a few more times, with the final attempt he nearly dropped it on his chest, which would have been very bad.

Figuring that it really was time for him to stop and take a real break from the weight lifting, he leaned back upright into a sitting position and held the extremely dense weight bar in front of his body. He wanted to do at least one last thing before he truly took a break, lifting the weight bar over his head again, he looked across the room over at the dummy that he had been training with earlier. He still had some leftover anger towards Konohagakure and everything they had done and all the pain they put him through. He was relieved that they had finally suffered and paid for the crimes, but he wondered if they truly had learned their lesson, considering he had never even had a chance to speak with the Hokage when he made his first attempt at it. His rage was still strong for the previous Hokage, and so he imagined the dummy as being the Hokage responsible for most of his own pain and his village’s pain. He flung his arms forward towards the dummy and let go of the weight bar, tossing it straight at the dummy’s body. There was a loud crash sound as the weight bar slammed into the dummy and the wall, leaving a large line break in the wall and pretty much cutting the dummy in half from the immense weight and force behind it. That was all he needed to do for the day, he had accomplished plenty during his intense strength training. Looking at the dummy that he still imagined as the previous Hokage he could only think of how he wouldn’t be so weak the next time someone attack the village, especially if Konohagakure no Sato recovered and decided to attack again. He almost hoped that it would happen, so that he could have a shot at redemption and a chance to prove his worth as Raikage and leader of Kumogakure no Sato.

He walked over towards the dummy and slammed his right fist straight into its face, his fist impacting the dummy’s surface with such force that the head caved in on itself. With that he grabbed the weight bar and dragged it back over towards the box next to his desk. He’d be using it again, but for now he put the weight bar back inside of the large box and called it a day.

(Word Count 3,645 +18 Strength +18 Jutsu Points)

18 strength, 18 JP.

Note: I am approving as a temp mod. Due to staff seeming busy.

Officialy approved