Bodybuilding will always be there
We were into August in Massa-chusetts, always a sad month as its arrival signaled that the end of our all-too-brief summer was nigh. If you didn’t squeeze in a couple nice beach days soon, you were out of luck until next year. I had more or less given up my sum-mer to prepare for what was to be my final bodybuilding com-petition. Of course, I had made this proclamation so many times that friends and family took it about as seriously as the boy who cried wolf. On one hand, dieting for an August contest meant I
Ron Harris
was in great shape and had a physique anybody would be proud to display at the beach or an amusement park. On the other hand, since I was on such a strict diet and ate only food I prepared myself for the most part, it also meant I could for-get about going to the beach or to the closest Six Flags. Amuse-ment parks these days have this dumb policy about bringing out-side food in. All park visitors and their bags and backpacks are now searched thoroughly by security officers upon entry. Os-tensibly, this is supposed to protect us all against terrorism or even the standard form of violence from any type of weapon some shady charac-ter might be attempting to smuggle in. The real threat the park is pro-tecting itself against is that you won’t be forced to buy their over-priced crap food. Twelve bucks for a greasy, undersized cheeseburger and soggy fries that have been sit-ting under a heat lamp for ten hours - who’s the real terrorist here? You can try to find something remotely healthy. I made that mistake last summer and was rewarded for my choice of a ‘chicken salad,’ and I use the term loosely, with a case of food poisoning. Things had been flying out of me from both ends for almost two days. So my wife and kids have been having a grand old time going to the beach and various amusement parks without me. At least I am there in spirit - that spirit being my cash and credit cards.
But it wasn’t all bad. I hadn’t been in contest condition in over two years, and I had missed see-ing things like deep cuts and striations and veins that were normally buried under a thin layer of bodyfat. My client Jared was quite amazed at my trans-formation; just as Randy had been a couple years ago when he watched me diet down. Football training camp had started up, so I had cut our sessions back from three times a week to two in order to let his body recover from the nearly non-stop beat-ing it was taking. I reduced the training volume as well in light of the brutal three-hour-long practices out in 95 degrees with stifling humidity he was endur-ing every weekday afternoon. The kid was in truly amazing physical condition, but he was still a human being and not a machine. There was no doubt in my mind that he was going to have a spot on the varsity team once tryouts were over. He had managed to add close to fifteen pounds of pure, functional muscle mass over the course of less then three months, simply by training his young butt off and eating enough food in ten weeks to feed Nicole Richie for the next ten years. John Parrillo always stresses food first, but Jared had bolstered his nutrient intake with an av-erage of three 50/50 PlusTM shakes a day on top of an-other three or four Energy barsTM. This was in addi-tion to four very large solid meals.
I wondered if I would have made better gains at fourteen when I was starting out if I had eaten like a rav-enous beast - doubtful, as I was barely starting puberty and had about as much tes-tosterone coursing through my veins as the 100-pound Vietnamese woman that does my wife’s nails.My contest was actually coming up in a week, and Jared and his dad Jeff were both planning to cheer me on. I was feeling really good about this one and thought I had an excellent chance of winning. Jared was con-stantly commenting on how ripped or ‘yoked’ I was getting. So it wasn’t a huge surprise when he made the following announcement after catching his breath after a heavy set of deadlifts.”I think I want to do a bodybuilding show, like maybe next spring.” “Not a good idea at this time,” was my curt reply.”Why? Football season will be long over, so it won’t interfere.”"Correct, but once you get a taste of the bodybuilding bug, you might catch the fever and forget all about football. That would be a shame because you really do have enough talent and drive to make it at least to an NCAA school, if not the NFL.” Jared, normally the most polite kid I knew and not one to argue; made a face that said I was talking com-plete nonsense.”That’s ridiculous.”"Is it really? What’s really ridicu-lous is that I bet your dad would blame me for poisoning your mind with ideas of getting on stage in little trunks, and have the hounds released on me.” “Snickers and Snookums? Our Pe-kingese and our poodle? Those little rats couldn’t hurt a fly,” he said.”Just a figure of speech, Jar-ed.” He looked perturbed.”Why can’t I do both? Foot-ball and bodybuilding? I mean, if I promise not to quit playing, which I would never do anyway.” I sighed.”The weight training for the two sports is completely dif-ferent,” I began. “For foot-ball, you are training to in-crease your size and power. It’s got nothing to do with how good you look. You’re using multi-joint resistance training exercises to im-prove your performance on the field, plain and simple. Everything we do in here is geared toward that.”"Yeah, I get that, so?”"Well,” I continued. “Body-building training has noth-ing to do with athletic performance. It’s entirely geared toward improving the way your physique looks. We do a lot of iso-lation movements like lateral raises, cable crossovers, and concentration curls that would be totally pointless for a football player.”
Jared smiled, clearly thinking he just heard what he could use against my argument.”Right, so I would train like a foot-ball player right before and during the football season, then train like a bodybuilder after.” I shook my head.”You say that, and you probably really mean it, but it wouldn’t hap-pen. Like at this point next year, you would be training with me on power cleans, squats, bench presses and deadlifts, and bugging me to include some arm work because you really want bigger guns. Or you would be doing all that on your own, and screwing up the whole program of training and recovery I have put together for you. Not to mention that if you spend most of the year away from these exercises that make you a better football player, you will never get as strong on them as you could have.”The kid looked bummed, and I understood why. He was actu-ally getting a fairly decent phy-sique for someone his age, and I had no doubt that if I trained him more like a bodybuilder, he could be winning a teenage di-vision at a local show in a year or two. But for him to do that, he would have to basically throw away a very promising career as a football player. Not on my watch, he wouldn’t. I had to give him some hope.”Look, the thing is, bodybuild-ing and bodybuilding contests will always be there,” I said. “You are still so young and have so many great years as an athlete still ahead of you, but realistical-ly; if you want to be a pro foot-ball player, the clock is already ticking. Not many guys past the age of 25 get drafted, and your odds are better at 21 or 22 when you gradu-ate college. In bodybuilding, you can compete at pretty much any age and continue to improve into your thirties and forties, not something you can say about NFL players too often. They are usually all done by thirty or thirty-five, but not body-builders. I mean look at me - I’m a dinosaur and I’m still doing it!”
I paused a beat, giving him the chance to respond that I wasn’t so old - seeing as his dad had over a dozen years on me. Silence. Appar-ently anything over thirty was old to this kid, whether it was 37 or 53. I went on. “You should also know that many bodybuilders are former football standouts. Shawn Ray set high school records in Southern Califor-nia; Marcus Haley played college ball, and new USA Super Heavy-weight champion Deshaun Grimez played pro ball for both the Seattle Seahawks and the San Francisco 49′ers. And a guy from the movie Pumping Iron that your dad would remember named Mike Katz was with the New York Jets for a while, playing with some guy named Joe Namath that you are probably familiar with.”Jared still looked disappointed, but somewhat less so. He was a very bright kid and understood that he had an opportunity and a talent that not too many are gifted with. Maybe he would parlay his skills and pas-sion for the gridiron into a lucrative career, and maybe he wouldn’t. But Jared knew that he had to give it his absolute best effort if there were any chance of that happening. There were a couple hundred thousand other kids out there just like him that all wanted that same dream to come true. They wanted mil-lions to watch them on Monday Night Football, they wanted to play in the Superbowl, they wanted the endorsements with Nike, Reebok, Coca Cola, and the other corporate giants. Jared also wanted to taste the glory of standing on a bodybuild-ing stage, which seems modest in comparison. But despite his family’s wealth, he knew mon-ey wasn’t everything, and that some things are priceless. I had no doubt he would compete one day, when the time was right.As I left the gym, I called my wife, who was at yet another amusement park along with her sister and their collective brats. I was calling to check in, but also to warn her. Inspired by my condition and wanting to lean out a bit more herself, Janet had really cleaned up her diet over the past few weeks. That’s why it was critical I reach her before she made a grievous error in judgment. Her cell reception must have sucked out there, because the call went to her voice mail. I left a brief, cryptic message in my scari-est voice, and prayed that I wasn’t too late.”Beware the chicken salad!”
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