Park Workouts with Show Me the Body

I really started when I began training with my sifu, David Kaplan, a kung fu Shaolin teacher. My older cousin Gabriel, who drummed for Show Me the Body, was working as an extra on a set, and they met and got along. He taught him kung fu—said I’m a cool Jewish guy, you’re a cool Jewish guy, let’s hang out. My cousin wasn’t really into it, but introduced me to David. I was young. He had such a large impact on me: to have respect for myself and change. I was writing graffiti, being an idiot and working with him turned it around.

Straight kung fu. We’d do a lower body workout on the blacktop or the polo park on Christie. If it was raining, we’d go to the pagoda in Columbus Park. There’d be gamblers inside, it could be really crowded. And here was this Jewish Jesus doing kung fu—this bodied Jew from Bensonhurst—and everybody in the park gave him respect. They’d offer him cigarettes. Other folks would tell me, “It’s important to respect yourself.” David trained under Shi Yan Ming, who founded the American Shaolin temple, and he trained with the Wu-Tang guys. He got out of that, started his own school, just him in the park. I’d give him a few bucks a week. Now he has a small kid and lives in Rome.

It’d be calisthenics or hitting the pads. I do it because I have to work out, which sounds like I need to get my traps bigger. But it’s mental. It’s something my Sifu said: It’s difficult to change your body if you’re stuck on something. But it’s easy to change your mind if your body is already there. It’s easy to turn how you feel around if you break a sweat and smile—having the opposite reaction you facilitate within yourself. I’m not a scholar of lifting. It’s not about longevity, it’s something else.

My regimen, if it could even be called a regimen, it’s weight day, no weight day. Weight day is heavy things: pick ‘em up, put them down, and weighted pull-ups and dips. No weight day is full calisthenics, and I also hit pads. I rest on Sundays. Very un-Jewish of me, but Sundays are when I spend time with my daughter. If I miss a day during the week, I’ll get down on myself and will think, “This Sunday, I’ll get money.” But like you said, we’re part of this modern crushing reality of health, and you still observe the Sabbath. To me that’s commendable. Also, it’s pragmatic for longevity’s sake.

People get so much pleasure on the Internet tracking what they’re doing: “This is back day, this is shoulder day.” I don’t do any of that stuff. I did for a bit and it felt corny. I do what makes me happy. If I don't hurt myself, it’s a good thing. It’s not about ignoring technique, but anybody who tells you there’s one way to do something—music or working out—you should run. That’s not your friend.

On tour, in the early days, I’d wake up before everyone else, and would do push-ups. I’d have to get it in because when everybody got up we’d all start drinking. I thought “if I’m going to do this I need to do this before all these assholes to wake up and start calling me fucking names.” Then with Noble—I don’t want to talk about him too much: he’s my brother who passed—we were brothers for the past six, seven years on tour. We’d train—pull-ups or push-ups—we’d keep the discipline between each other. We shared couches growing up.

And since then working out and the discipline has been a positive way for me to interact with younger folks who look up to us and to Corpus, our crew. But it’s not just a crew: we have self discipline and we take care of each other. It’s not just going to the show and going to party. We work together, we work out together. That’s one of the lovely things about doing calisthenics. Not only do you get to be outside, not only do you get to sweat, but you get to be together. At the photo shoot the kid on the bars, within a minute he was hanging with us, in the pictures. You only get that vibe from calisthenics, soccer, prayer, and drug use.

I never thought about that. Maybe. My aunt’s a yoga practitioner—not woo woo—medical. She’s a hardbody, tiny Jewish lady. No joking around. “Open your eyes. Look where you’re going.” And so I was already into body movement before I started kung fu. And listening to hip hop, you’re infatuated with it—and Merauder “Master Killer.” So at first kung fu wasn’t necessarily spiritual—I just wanted to be hardbody. I didn’t want to change my life, I just wanted to get healthy. But then the impact it had on my life made it spiritual and important.

It’s definitely still not easier. Working out on the road remains difficult.

Because of time. You could sign up for LA fitness for free, since they don’t update your systems—and it’ll be either a six minute drive or a 35 minute walk from the venue. So I’m walking 35 minutes through Detroit. And then we have to load in. Or I can bring weights to the venue—I’ll bring kettlebells and weights backstage. But if I work out inside, everyone’s gonna smell it. So at home, it’s easier. By me, on the other side of the cemetery, there are quick and easy bars past the highway. And if I had a full day, I’ll put my daughter down to sleep at 8 o’clock and will tell Shorty, “I’m gonna go to the park.” And so it works out. But when you have a child, your time is much more specific. She goes to sleep, I go to the studio, and work from 8 to 1:30. It makes you quantify your time in a really different way. You want to spend more of your time hanging out with this small person.

Gyms here and there. My friend has a baseball gym near me in Blissville, training players from all over the city. I’d go every other day and hang out. As for weight, I’m doing things I like to do. If I see somebody doing something that looks exciting, I’ll try that. Weighted pull-ups are a new thing for me. It’s so fun. For weighted dips, I can do eight reps plus 50. But I’m still getting it. I ain’t big shit.

So much of weight day is tiny body movements. It’s treating everybody as though they want to be a bodybuilder. Telling us to max out on protein, to max out on… what’s it called—creatine shit?

I don’t understand it. I also hate the Young LA/Gym Shark gym style. It looks so terrible to me. Tiny rash guards and huge sweatpants. Can we stop? I’m happier that we’re graduating from tapered, tiny sweatpants. I didn’t even know what Young LA was until I started going to the gym.

I feel so demeaned as someone who’s involved in hardcore when someone says they’re listening to our record at the gym. I think, really? Only then? If you only listen to heavy music in the gym, you’re a norm.

No. I listen to independent journalism. 404 Media, Popular Front.

I cook a lot, I don’t track anything, but I get a lot of protein in. I also don’t like to eat late. I’m an abyss, I eat a lot. But I can also go without it. I can’t do Soylent. On tour—after touring Europe once you come back to America and you eat something here, your tongue goes numb. And I love New York—I’m not like a fucking pro-European guy. It’s embarrassing as an American. When you’re on tour here, it’s two bananas, a yogurt at the gas station. But I eat like a car. If I feel like eating out, it’s for a reason. I’m not a fan of food culture. I think food culture is a sign of the decline in the empire. Like in France—they all had gout. It’s a full sign of end times when bro is smoking crack and can’t find a meal and people are talking about crustaceans.

With kung fu, you understand you can do these things, execute these moves. I think about Kung Fu and martial arts as a healing practice. My sifu said you can’t destroy anything until you can heal yourself. Your ability to destroy anything is less if you’re incomplete. And after using kung fu, my relationship with violence has become completely different. It’s on a completely needs -basis. When you get good at martial arts, getting into a fight can be really serious. Since I started doing kung fu, I haven’t instigated a fight. I’ve been doing this 15 years, since I was a teenager. Violence still comes to me, but I never just look for it.