筋トレ社長 (Muscle-Training President)

by Yu-Ling Kung

I am a small Asian woman in my forties, living in a big city. I joined a gym last year, and it has now been one full year. As an academic and comics nerd, I never imagined that I would spend my time lifting weights. But after years of computer-based work left my posture in poor condition, my partner insisted that I needed to take real action. That is how I began strength training and how I found myself reading comics about fitness.

In Japanese fitness-themed comics, sexualized female bodies are often used as visual appeal, inviting fantasy through female trainee characters. Muscle-Training President (筋トレ社長), written by “Testosterone” and illustrated by Tamura Ayako (たむらあやこ), takes a different approach. This book is currently available only in Japanese and Traditional Chinese. (A first-chapter preview is available via the publisher: https://viewer-trial.bookwalker.jp/03/20/viewer.html?cid=23c07a28-be8b-40b8-8de1-e0ec84e4732b&cty=1&adpcnt=g2vvr2xz&utm_source=kadokawa.co.jp&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=button)

Muscle-Training President (English translation of this manga’s title) is adapted from Testosterone’s bestselling 2016 aphoristic, prose-based motivational book.[1] Testosterone works in the business world and advocates for strength training. In addition to this comic, he has written several prose-based motivational books on fitness, some of which—including Muscle-Training President—have been published in Chinese in Taiwan. In his brief bio, he writes that he once weighed 110 kilograms (242 pounds) and began weight training while studying in the United States, eventually losing about 40 kilograms (88 pounds).[2] He later trained in mixed martial arts, which exposed him to training theory and sports nutrition. These experiences made him aware of Japan’s limited familiarity with strength training, and he has since devoted himself to promoting related knowledge.

The illustrator, Tamura Ayako, has a striking personal background. At twenty-two, while working as a newly hired nurse, she developed Guillain–Barré syndrome, a rare and severe neurological condition. Initially told she might remain bedridden, she eventually recovered and went on to build a career as a manga artist, producing manga based on her own experience of illness and commissioned projects such as Muscle-Training President. (For more information, see https://nextyle.tv/episode/tamura-episode001/, for a Japanese language video). Their pairing naturally draws interest: both creators have lived through dramatic shifts in their physical lives.

Muscle-Training President is set primarily in a gym and features only two main characters: a muscular, experienced middle-aged regular (a stand-in for Testosterone) and a skinny, insecure younger beginner (representing readers who are new to training). Their relationship is not framed as a formal master–student dynamic. Instead, it unfolds through conversations that are part instruction, part everyday advice, and part reflections on confidence.

Each chapter centers on a specific topic—why people begin strength training, the relationship between muscle and resilience, different ways of understanding discomfort, or how discipline may translate into advantages in social or dating contexts. There is little emphasis on plot progression; the comic instead builds its ideas about the body, training, and self-perception through the ongoing exchanges between the two characters.

Although I enjoy the jokes that only people who train can truly appreciate, I keep a certain distance from the mentor’s philosophy. His core belief is that being muscular can solve many difficulties in life, and that physical strength naturally produces a more positive and resilient mindset. One example he gives is that powerful countries—such as the United States—are strong because they have “large muscles.” By the same humorous logic, he argues that if the younger character developed visible strength, he might avoid being targeted by bullies and prevent conflict before it begins.

This reflects a kind of preventive logic: by becoming stronger in advance, one may avoid trouble before it happens. For some people, this can feel true—strength training can make the body more reliable, provide a concrete sense that effort leads to results, create daily rhythm, and offer short-term emotional regulation. At the same time, such a view assumes that physical strength is universally accessible and universally helpful. It leans toward an able-bodied way of thinking, overlooking the fact that not all bodies can pursue or achieve physical strength to the same degree.

Within the framing of a commercial comic, this philosophy becomes part of what is being sold to the reader, sometimes in a humorous or exaggerated tone. Even though the mentor is portrayed with empathy, and even shows interest in cooking, nutrition, and other areas often culturally coded as feminine, these qualities do not erase the underlying problems in his worldview—namely, its admiration of strength, its strong-man logic, and its tendency toward an ableist ideal of the “fully capable” body.

In its eleventh chapter, the comic presents a meaningful shift. The mentor explains that during training, people often forget their initial goals, which he describes as a higher form of engagement. The movement from external purpose to embodied practice allows earlier insecurities to loosen their grip. Likewise, letting go of social expectations about “attractiveness” opens a space in which approval from others no longer defines the self. This moment reframes the comic’s earlier logic of strength versus weakness and suggests a different way of understanding the idea that being muscular can help with life’s difficulties and foster a more positive and resilient mindset.

For me, this part moves beyond purpose-driven training and beyond binary thinking about strong and weak. At one point, the mentor even invokes the Buddhist term “no-self” (p. 73), suggesting a state in which purpose and self-consciousness briefly fall away. When I began training, I assumed it would only take time and energy away from an already full schedule. I brought work with me, hoping to manage tasks between sets, but soon discovered that I could not think about work at all. The mind quiets in the gym, and that quiet displaces the constant presence of digital devices. This form of embodied stillness has become an unexpected benefit of training, and it is where this comic’s contribution to conversations in graphic medicine feels most meaningful to me. This leaves me hoping for approaches to training that emphasize an integrated sense of bodily and mental balance, rather than goals shaped primarily by competition or by oppositional ideas of strength and weakness.[3]

Yu-Ling Kung is a doctoral student at the National Taiwan University of Arts. Her research has received support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture through a grant for a project on agricultural comics. Kung contributed the entry “Traditional Chinese Medicine” (2016) to Humans and Animals: A Geography of Coexistence, edited by Julie Urbanik and Connie Johnston (ABC-CLIO; ISBN 978-1-4408-3834-7).

[1] 筋トレが最強のソリューションである マッチョ社長が教える究極の悩み解決法 (English translation of the title: Strength Training Is the Ultimate Solution: How the Muscle-Bound President Teaches the Ultimate Way to Solve Life’s Problems). This book is not currently available in English. The Japanese edition is available from Amazon Japan, and a Traditional Chinese edition is available from Books.com.tw.

[2] In Strength Training Is the Ultimate Solution, Testosterone notes that during his first year of high school he was approximately 160 cm tall and weighed around 110 kg (242 pounds; p. 46, Traditional Chinese edition). He does not clearly specify how long the weight loss process took, nor his height at later stages. He does mention that when he became an amateur MMA fighter, his weight was around 80–90 kg (175–200 pounds; p. 115 , Traditional Chinese edition).

[3] Related ideas appear sporadically across Testosterone’s other writings. For example, in 超筋トレが最強のソリューションである 筋肉が人生を変える超・科学的な理由 (2018; English translation of the title: Strength Training Is the Ultimate Solution: Scientific Reasons Why Muscle Can Change Your Life) , he frames strength training as a practice that extends beyond physical exercise, comparing it to meditative or ritualized activities. He suggests that during periods of heightened stress or personal difficulty, training can function as a disruptive intervention, even if its effects are not easily explained (p.36 , Traditional Chinese edition). The book also includes short comic adaptations of readers’ accounts, depicting individuals dissatisfied with their lives who encountered his work, began training, and subsequently experienced changes in their daily lives.