I was training like Luffy, Whitebeard, and Shanks at the world’s only One Piece gym in Japan

One Piece is one of the longest and most well-known stories in the world. In addition to the manga, anime and merchandise in all possible forms, there is now a dedicated gym to One Piece in Tokyo. MeinMMO editor Sophia Weiß visited the gym for you.

The One Piece gym Brag Men is located in Shibuya, one of the most famous districts of Tokyo. It spans the entire ninth floor of a shopping center and has everything a gym needs: cardio equipment, machines, free weights and a classroom.

It is named after a book from the One Piece manga that tells incredible stories from the Grand Line. By the way, Brag Men translates to something like Show-off – That’s why no one in the world of One Piece believes what is written in the book. The literary work can be found in Chapter 115 (Volume 13) and Chapter 397 (Volume 41).

To find out if the real Brag Men in Tokyo are show-offs or well-trained urban pirates, I treated myself to a few hours in the gym during my last trip to Japan.

An event gym with a lot of attention to detail – The Brag Men

One can simply visit the gym – even as a foreigner and unregistered visitor. There are a total of five different packages, one of which is specifically for teenagers aged 13 and up. How exactly that works, is explained by the gym on its homepage.

The prices are higher than I am personally used to. This is due to the fact that it is an event gym in the middle of Tokyo. Here, the high rents and licensing costs come together.

But that should not deter anyone from visiting: The gym is equipped with incredibly much love for detail. Directly opposite the entrance, you see a column where the Japanese voice actors of Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, and Sanji have immortalized themselves with their signatures.

To the left of it on the wall, Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, left a motivating quote for the trainees:

Many of the walls in the gym are adorned with life-size panels from the manga: Behind the adductor and abductor machines, the pirate emperors Big Mom and Kaido meet for the first time. Behind the lat pulldown, Luffy confronts Blackbeard. And next to that, Whitebeard’s first appearance occupies the wall.

A second column is entwined by Luffy’s black-red Gear 4 hand and seems to grip so tightly that the concrete is cracking. The course room is set up as if it were the foredeck of the Thousand Sunny – including large screens on the walls that illusionize you into thinking you are at sea. What that looks like, you can see on the Brag Men Instagram.

At the same time, the best of the One Piece anime soundtrack plays in the background. There’s even a shelf with all the mangos available for One Piece and seating. For a little break between sets.

Here are a few impressions for you. Click on the images to enlarge them:

Extra effort under the watchful eyes of the pirate emperors

For me, the trip was definitely worth it: One is that I fulfilled my training quota. The other is that I trained in perhaps the coolest gym ever.

Sitting at the lat pulldown and seeing Whitebeard’s big mustache go up and down in front of me was extremely entertaining. At the leg press, I was incredibly scrutinized by Kaido’s mural. Accordingly, I, of course, added a little extra weight.

I certainly didn’t want to disappoint the pirate emperor. That I had to fight with severe muscle soreness the next day, he didn’t notice.

I had a lot of fun with the gimmicks that didn’t have anything to do with training: If you want, you can do arm exercises with a sandbag shaped like a ham. A statue of Chibi Buggy, that is Buggy the Clown without his torso and legs, lets you try to pull him apart.

But even the whole decor is just so … One Piece: A stool looks like a Poneglyph. The floor resembles ship planks. On the walls, boxes stack up like in the storage room of the Sunny. The doors to the classroom have portholes.

Basically, I trained on the ship of the Straw Hats. Zoro and his gigantic dumbbells were just not there. He probably got lost while training. Classic.

After three, almost four hours of sweating, I was quite exhausted. Showering, buying one of the location-exclusive T-shirts, and off to eat udon. Japanese noodle soup is, by the way, the perfect nourishment after a workout.

Would I train at the One Piece gym again? Yes, absolutely. Can I recommend the gym? Absolutely, as long as you like One Piece.

Brag Men is a great event gym that has been meticulously designed with a lot of heart and attention to detail. A visit is definitely worth it. So if you have a few hours of unplanned time on your next visit to Japan and are spending a few days in Tokyo, do stop by. I combined my visit with the weekend of the Monster Hunter Now Carnival. You can read about everything that happened here: I walked through Tokyo with 20,000 players to get beaten up by dragons in an event for Monster Hunter Now