
Moscow subway sells free tickets for 30 sit-ups - vladgur
http://english.pravda.ru/news/russia/08-11-2013/126095-moscow_subway-0/
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anonymfus
As Russian I want to share my first association:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C-jcCWu31s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C-jcCWu31s)

Westerners could try to understand it by watching entire movie:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-dza-dza](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-
dza-dza)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I47CNxwlt9U](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I47CNxwlt9U)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eti9Qn4bZDg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eti9Qn4bZDg)

~~~
prawn
Highly recommend everyone gets a copy of Kin-dza-dza (with subtitles, if
necessary) and watch it. Very quirky and amusing sci-fi. Apocalyptic/alien
exploration crossed with Les Visiteurs.

~~~
colinbartlett
Mosfilm, the huge Soviet-era movie studio, has published a sizable portion of
their catalog for free viewing on YouTube:
[http://youtube.com/mosfilm](http://youtube.com/mosfilm).

A lot of them have English subtitles. Kin-dza-dza is indeed up there.
Brilliantovaya Ruka (The Diamond Arm) is another favorite of mine available
with subtitles. And perhaps the most popular is the holiday classic The Irony
of Fate.

~~~
JackpotDen
Thanks very much for sharing

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jdmitch
According to the BBC coverage of this story(and what is actually shown in the
video), it was squats rather than situps:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
europe-24873180](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24873180)

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vladgur
Unfortunately the article links to the wrong video.

Link to actual youtube video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojo9M1cPSPI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojo9M1cPSPI)

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glomph
I envision people standing there doing squats all day churning out tickets and
selling them/asking for change.

~~~
vidarh
A year or so ago, there was a thread on r/fitness about this group of people
who had tried to do 1000 kettlebell swings a day for 10 days, and it turned to
a discussion of whether it would even be possible to do this for squats or
other exercises.

So I decided to try. I managed to put in about 400 a day, and I think I
reached 600 one of the days.

I'm an amateur power lifter. My squat max is about 190kg, and I do about 80 or
so weighted reps on my squat days, ranging from 70kg on the lightest warmup
set up to about 160kg x 5, and 5 sets of 10 at 80kg.

That feels like nothing compared to doing 400 body weight squats per day. The
soreness and burn was just terrible, but worst was the demotivating effect of
knowing you have still more sets (I varied my sets between 25 and 100 reps;
~35-50 seemed to be optimal for me in getting as many done as quickly as
possible)

I'd like to try a high rep program again (probably not that high) for a few
weeks to see how it works during a cut, as that was the original purpose of
the kettlebell experiment mentioned, but the brutal effect on motivation is
not something I look forward to.

~~~
kitd
To be fair, as a powerlifter, I suspect you are highly adapted to maximising
peak power, rather than prolonged power over 400 - 1000 squats. I would think
that anything above 100 largely becomes an endurance exercise which requires a
very different adaptation.

As a 48yo rower, I can do IRO 300 squats before feeling the burn too badly,
but then I have been doing endurance-type training for the past 35 years. I
have known lightweight rowers who were pretty much unlimited in the number
they could do in 1 hit. Their only limit was needing to eat/sleep/etc!

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jakejake
We have a penalty system at work if you break the build or cause the music to
skip, or any number of other frivolous "office infractions" you have to put a
buck in our tip jar which is used to buy beer. If you don't want to pay the
buck, though, you can optionally do 20 pushups instead. So far only one person
has opted for the pushups though.

~~~
yetanotherphd
That sounds suspiciously like brogramming to me. You must donate $20 to the
Ada Initiative as a penalty for your non-inclusive work culture. Or
alternative, do 50 lunges.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I don't get it. Are women supposed to be averse to pushups? Maybe you haven't
met my sister; she runs marathons and is a Soo Bahk Do black belt. Pushups: no
problem.

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moocowduckquack
This sort of thing could be put to good use, for instance if they installed
massive ranks of bicycle generators, they could let people get tickets by
actually powering the trains.

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dchichkov
They've used to do that kind of thing in the past
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barge_Haulers_on_the_Volga](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barge_Haulers_on_the_Volga)

~~~
moocowduckquack
I was thinking of Charlie Brooker's version from Black Mirror.

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th0br0
This is an amazing idea. Wish it would find widespread (global) use.

(Although this would potentially lead to a completely subsidized transport
system... but then you could increase the barrier to getting the free ticket
or have the barrier depend on the person's physical fitness... and you might
get the cost for the tickets back from the decrease in healthcare costs...
it's just got so much potential!)

~~~
fchollet
But this couldn't be introduced in the US, and maybe not even in Europe. In
the US you would definitely get instantly sued (and lose) for discrimination
on physical fitness.

~~~
Afforess
Not if you also offered a method to pay cash for the tickets. No
discrimination then.

~~~
cocoflunchy
I'm not so sure about that... what if you're a disabled person?

What if you started giving free tickets to people who can do 60 sit-ups, or
100, instead of 30? Wouldn't this mean free tickets for men only (or mostly)?

~~~
th0br0
So give the disabled people a free ride (which, YMMV, they should be getting
anyway and actually are already in Germany)

As for the men-only part... enhance the system to not use a fixed number but
have that number depend on the applicant's estimated gender, age, weight etc.

You could even gamify this, gain money from selling people's user statistics
(ugh!) etc.

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marquis
No points for climbing those stairs when the escalators are down? They are the
deepest subway I've even been in (also the most beautiful, goes without
saying).

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Points for running them! Also hopping up one-legged. Like by son's Tae Kwon Do
national team did for conditioning.

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salilpa
indian railways please implement this in india. we have a sizable obese
population who would do anything to get a free ride. health and money at one
go. so much win

~~~
dinkumthinkum
This whole idea is pretty weird. Not surprising it comes from Russia. It is
very reminiscent of the idea promoted both by the Nazis and communists that
citizens should be fit for the state.

~~~
yummyfajitas
How is it any weirder than forcing people to purchase financial services that
pay for medical treatments, something that most countries do? Once you make
people's health a collective responsibility, it hardly seems unreasonable to
demand that people maintain fitness.

I just wish they didn't do situps. Situps are terrible for your back. There
are so many better options - just make people hold a plank for a minute.

~~~
hrkristian
It was probably one of the easier exercises to monitor automatically, I should
think a camera is less prone wear&tear than a pressure mat for planking...
There is also hygiene to think about, not in the sense of an actual concern,
but in the sense that people will be more averse to lying face down on a mat
used by maybe hundreds of people every day.

I do agree with your sentiment BTW, here in Norway there's been quite a bit of
talk about similar programs through the years, but there are just too many
pit-falls on the way, usually doesn't even get past the "Rights for X"
organisations' whining.

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QuasiAlon
Another example to something in this realm comes from Brazil, where you can
cut time from your prison sentence by riding bikes.
[http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/07/12/stationary-
bi...](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/07/12/stationary-bikes-get-
brazilian-prisoners-closer-to-freedom)

and yea, totally Black Mirror S01E02. The best one imho.

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everettForth
I'm all for promoting physical fitness, but this seems like discrimination
against elderly / disabled people.

~~~
RKearney
I see no problem with promoting good health. There are plenty of elderly
people who can do sit-ups.

People who weigh over 350lbs eat free at Heart Attack Grill. Are they
discriminating against non-obease people?

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baddox
> Are they discriminating against non-obease people?

Yes. It doesn't get any more straightforward than that.

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gambiting
Just like giving free rides to disabled people is discriminatory against
healthy people?

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baddox
Yes, absolutely. Is there something I'm missing here? These questions seem
easy.

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gaius
In the French Foreign Legion they have _l 'aperitif_, which is that you do 10
chin-ups before entering the mess hall. SWMBO has vetoed me instigating a
similar policy for our dining room.

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cdurr
This is fatshaming. Thin privilege is getting free subway rides.
thisisthinprivilege.tumblr.com (couldn't resist)

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elementai
I suppose it wont last long past Sochi-2014 Olympics.

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gcb1
every crazy dictator is found of eugenics.

