Kobe, Japan

In the middle of sleepless nights, New York Yankees outfielder Ichiro Suzuki sometimes wanders out of the hotel room he lives in during the winter in Japan and seeks solace in an area off limits to other guests.

He jiggles his personal key into the door knob of a storage closet in the back of the parking garage and steps right into his own dream world. Seven specially designed training machines he has delivered here each winter have transformed the drab space typically reserved for the hotel's spare furniture into his personal gym.

In this most unlikely of settings, Ichiro does his most important training. He also credits his toil here for never having spent a day on the disabled list for a muscle-related injury in 12 seasons since coming to America. That's allowed him to rack up 1,278 hits in Japan and another 2,606 in the major leagues—putting him just 116 shy of 4,000 for his career.

While the 39-year-old Ichiro has become famous for idling his time in the outfield between pitches with deep knee bends and toe touches, he's more devoted to his machines. He says they allow him to stretch and condition what he considers the most crucial muscle groups for baseball—those around the shoulder blades, pelvis, and hip joints—beyond what he can do with simple calisthenics.