Folks,

If Superman ever had a training regiment to get strong (not that he needs it, he'll just be over-saturated with the solar radiation. But I digress.), what would it be?

I doubt he'd really need it. Considering that he goes toe to toe against herald-level beings on a daily basis, his constant super-heroing it kind of already his workout.

@jeremy1989: Well, in All-Star Superman and when Superman benched the equivalent weight of the Earth, he had technology to simulate rediculously heavy weights. I am sure he could simulate it with technology somehow.

Actually he needs a training regimen, a lot.

And he can go many ways about it.

1- Use a green kryptonite synthesizer, which he could regulate the intensity, and then he could do some physical training with it on. That way he would have something lowering his power level while he was training to grow stronger.

2- Build a star chamber, which would operate much like a green lantern central power battery, only instead of the emotional spectrum it would tap into stellar energy of every star in the galaxy, which he could refine and alter to be more efficient to his physiology. And instead of a temporary power boost like a sun dip, he could become more powerful permanently

3- Use kryptonian sunstone tech together with kryptonite, to create a device that would emit normal green, red, blue, silver and black radiation... Only filtered and keyed in to kryptonian dna to produce the exact opposite effect. Green would enhance all is normal powers, red would enhance his mind, blue would enhance his levels of consciousness.

Just a few ideas I've thought about quite some time now.

@heavenlydarkdragon: In terms of pain tolerance, you certainly may have a point. Think about it, Kryptonite is no longer as immediately a stopper to Superman as it used to be in earlier ages of comics. Nowadays he can still strike Metallo with hard blows, and he could also do it in the later days of post crisis as well. If they ever do a "Lost Years" comic series for Superman for stories of what happened for him over his years' time gap like they did with Marvel for X-Men to explain the X-Men's continuity gaps, that would be an interesting concept to throw out there to explain why Superman isn't starting off so weak against Kryptonite in the DCYou. Although I am not so confident in the writers at DC right now to pull off "Lost Years" type stories with Superman right now.

@suemorphplus209:

I didn't mentioned this before but in both cases you referred, All Star and Superman, he used other people tech.

In All Star he wasn't even training, after his overexposure to sunlight, by being too long close to the surface of the sun, his powers immediately grew and even two new powers manifested. The control of energy and his bio-aura manipulation like a force shield. When testing the results of being so close to the sun it was determined that his power levels had at least tripled. That's why we see him with one hand pressing and overpowering something that was in the quintillion tons range, if I'm not mistaken.

In New 52 Superman, after his fight with Helspont and how easily he had been overpowered, he went to Dr Shay Veritas lab, The Block, to determine what were his power limits. And it was using her equipment that he trained for 5 days straight moving the equivalent mass of the Earth. But even so after the 5 days he wasn't even that tired. He even asked Shay if she could make the machine stronger, to which see used a little science humor to say that she actually could. But because he had already spent too many days testing himself, that he needed to return to his life obligations.

Now this is one of the things I firmly believe we should see Superman do more often. Actually train himself to become better. Not just physically but mentally as well.

For the physical part he could use any of the 3 examples I gave in my previous post, as for the mental part... Because DC never bothered to explain what happened to his space fortress and how the Artic fortress came to be, I simply assume from the bit and pieces of information DC has given over the years since the New 52 reboot, that his Artic fortress is nothing more than his ship transformed into the fortress. And as such seeing that the ship had a on-board brainiac AI, he could use that to create mental forms of training to not only learn and hone fighting skills but also learn more about what he can do powerwise and hone in on that also.

That way if Superman lets say grew practically invulnerable to raw kryptonite and could only be harmed if said kryptonite was used to power a weapon of some sorts it would also work quite well for me.

Because let's face it. To me one of Superman greatest flaws is his weaknesses. He simply has too many of them. Kryptonite affects him no matter the size of the piece (which is ridiculous by the way), red sunlight, magic and psionics. It's simply too much. If I was in control of Superman comic's I'd reduce his weaknesses to one major and the others would be inconveniences but nothing life-threatening.

First of all editorial at DC is a $&@; especially now.

"He simply has too many of them. Kryptonite affects him no matter the size of the piece (which is ridiculous by the way), red sunlight, magic and psionics. It's simply too much. If I was in control of Superman comic's I'd reduce his weaknesses to one major and the others would be inconveniences but nothing life-threatening."

Well, to be honest, all his weaknesses effect him differently. Kryptonite if exposed long enough, can potentially kill him, it makes him feel pain and/or depowers him. Writers aren't consistent on how much it effects him either, so there's kind of a reason why I like some Elseworlds versions of Superman, they show him in All-Star, Kingdom Come and others as developing an immunity to Kryptonite in an event or over time as an acclamation. I like the acclamation part, because it would involve a progression of the character, but then that's why I enjoyed Earth-22, it was a big what if as to what would happen when Superman aged.

Red Sun, takes away his powers, which is interesting for a plot device if you were going to depower him for a story arc or something, but I don't agree with the part that he would be reduced to base human attributes, I don't see why he couldn't have some base toughness like be a one ton lifter under red sun, or maybe just be like he was in 1938, strong, but not Eath shattering strong.

As for Kryptonite, well, physics isn't my own strong suit, maybe it's yours, but I would say it's a question of how much radiation from the actual Kryptonite he gets to cause which effect, but then again, I don't think the writers are going to do exact physics either.

I tend to think of magic as an extension of the fact that very powerful beings like Doomsday can beat him to death. So magic sword is essentially DC Comics equivalent of a light saber, or something to that effect.

But yeah, you've got a good idea, but that's why there's Elseworlds stories about Superman, where he develops certain immunities to substances such as Kryptonite.

@suemorphplus209:

But that's just it. And I'll go point by point.

Kryptonite: We can assume that all isotopes of green (red, blue, silver and black) are nothing more than more unstable elements than the green stuff. Otherwise kryptonians would not use only green to power their tech, has shown in the beginning of the New 52. And it makes sense. It's like Uranium. We got Uranium-232/233/234/235/236/237/238. Now of all of these only the 232 and 235 are optimal for nuclear reactions. The 232 being used to create the dirty bombs and 235 to create the normal nuclear bombs. Has the Uranium shifts to 238 it starts to become more and more into led. And as such non-radioactive.

But it has also been shown that radioactive particles of Uranium 235 and even 232 can be used to create controlled mutations in some plants and microorganisms, if the radiation is somehow filtered first. The element that they've been using to filter it, incredible as it might seem is water. Or more specific, ice. Blue ice. Blue ice is formed basically like normal ice only at higher pressures. And some tests have shown that it can be used to turn radiation that's otherwise very deadly or harmful in terms of radiation and mutations, to create radioactive particles that actually produce in limit cases positive mutations. Like accelerated growth and regeneration, higher capacity to adapt to not favorable conditions, even gain new traits. Now this is all very new. And it's still decades if not centuries from praticle application, but the basis is there.

Red sunlight: I never believed that kryptonians didn't get some form of enhancement from red stars. Not just kryptonians but all lifeforms from Krypton. How would otherwise a planet with higher gravity than ours but with only 1/100 of our sun energy output develop such massive lifeforms, like the one's we've seen both in the N52 and previously, like the thought beasts. Even kryptonians themselves. Where would they get the bioenergy to become humanoid beings like us, but much more advanced genetically than us.

It's a little like if you were raised most of your life indoors. Getting no sunlight, just artificial light. Has an adult if you got out and caught some sunlight the chances of you getting skin cancer would be above normal.

Psychics: Superman in the past had the kryptonian Torquasm arts. And that's something that could be brought back once again, only better and more useful. If one or more of those arts taught Superman how to use his powers in a much better and efficient way, that would be a good thing. I personally liked how the cloned Superman from Earth-2 was able to use his heat vision much like Darkseid uses his Omega beams. That or teach him to do the things Wraith was able to do. Ultrasonic scream, matter manipulation, manipulation of the EM field, all good additions to Superman in my opinion.

Magic: Well, there's not much to do about it. Unless Superman developed psionic defenses, magic pretty much affects everyone. It's the bypass of the very laws of reality itsef. And has such quite a challenge. But still if Supes could at least block weak and medium spells, and only had to deal with those of the most powerful magicians, that would also prove valuable.

I'm not saying. Make him unstoppable. They basically did that to Martian Manhunter and ended up ruining the character. What I'm saying is, let Superman grow and learn to be better. Things don't need to fall from the sky like this Flare power, that was pretty much useless. Even Supergirl Flare power at least didn't left her depowered. But seeing him train to become better, now that would be in itself a positive message even to readers.

I personally don't see why Superman cannot ultimately come up with his own gravity simulation technology to do some crazy weightlifting. It's kind of a moment in PIS about Superman to be honest. I look in numerous issues at all the technology shown off in Superman's fortress, and am left wondering why none of it includes his own gravity/antigravity simulator, if in various storylines, he has come up with a Red-Sun filter suit, a massive Battle Armor mech suit, phantom zone technology, and numerous other tech toys, why he would never build a powerful gravity simulator but keep relying on Shay Veritas, Professor Hamilton, Leo Quintum, etc. to do heavy weight simulation.

Some simulator for heat vision skeet shooting would be nice as well.

@suemorphplus209 and @heavenlydarkdragon

Kryptonite to my understanding emits both invisible and visible radiation. The visible radiation is the color glow which indicates the variant, and the invisible portion of the radiation is likely a specific X-ray frequency, as lead is highly absorbent of X-rays, and in Superman stories, it doesn't take a really thick coating of lead to offer significant protection to Superman, as it would for say gamma rays. As for radiation doses, a standard measure of how poisoned with radiation someone is can be measured in rads, roentogens, or sieverts. I will keep it simple and stick to rads. The higher the dose in rads, the more serious the effects to one's health. The more rads Superman gets from the invisible Kryptonite radiation, the more pained, weakened, and sick he is. I also say invisible portion of Kryptonite radiation because in numerous instances, Superman is already feeling the effects before the glow of Kryptonite is visible. However, it is also comic book logic, so this is just my best speculation. I do agree with the idea that he should acclamate, gradually, to Kryptonite, after feeling the pain repeatedly, I think he should be less burdensome to deal with.

I agree with you @heavenlydarkdragon, the solar flare turning Superman down to either 1938 or Golden Age powers was stupid, even worse was him whining about it when he still has enough strength to literally knock people around easily or jump great heights and distances, it's not even the first time he has been at this power level in the DCYou either.