I'm going to let the video do the talking.
The fabulous Susanna Tirpak, a female bodybuilder from Budapest, Hungary!
Monday, August 12, 2013
Friday, August 9, 2013
Bodybuilding Addiction
As a rival addiction to drinking, bodybuilding makes an excellent choice because, when done right, it cannot coexist with even a moderate amount of alcohol intake. It is one or the other, at least for me.
In his book, Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice, Kent Dunnington explains how addictions are "totalizing" entities in the addict's life. One plans the events of one's day around the "next cigarette" or the "next drink". Or, in my case, the next cardio workout, the next weight workout, or the next 50 grams of protein. As with any addiction, healthy or unhealthy, rival pursuits get shoved aside to support the addictive behavior.
How did I become addicted to bodybuilding? It would be a long story to tell in its entirety, but I can trace it back at least as far as a Captain America coloring book which I owned in elementary school.
But, as I say, the thing was in a long dormancy, until I happened to notice a photograph of Kay Baxter, around 1983 or 1984. Her shoulders looked inhumanly large; I loved them!
So, in 1984, I joined a gym and began my own bodybuilding journey. I muddled along, probably spending more time reading the various bodybuilding magazines than I spent actually in the gym.
In 1988, my wife and I moved to Southern California, where I joined a Gold's Gym. It was a much more serious gym than I'd belonged to before. And I met my first training partner, Steve. I credit Steve with demonstrating to me the intensity necessary to actually make muscles grow. It was a lot more than I thought!
In 1993, at the age of 35, I entered my first bodybuilding contest. It was sanctioned by NGA, a natural bodybuilding federation. I placed 5th out of 6 competitors in the lightweight class. My contest prep was completely misguided! I starved myself, did no cardio, and lost a lot of muscle along with the fat to get down under 152 pounds.
Then, the addiction went dormant (or semi-dormant) again for a while. I worked out lackadaisically, never making progress or building muscle, simply "managing the decline" in the same way I see so many in the gym still doing it.
But then, about seven months before my 50th birthday, I suddenly got the inspiration to compete again. This time, I did it right! I hired a coach for training, and then coaches for the contest prep. I figured out how to get spray tanned correctly, so that my skin did not have a sickly, pale green tint as it did in my first contest. That was in July, 2008.
After two more contests, in 2009 and 2010, I again tried to forget about the addiction. But my life took some directions I did not like, including occasional binge drinking. So, I have thrown that drinking addiction over for the bodybuilding addiction once again.
I'm currently 7 weeks out from the first of three contests I plan to do this fall. Watch this space for further details!
Friday, July 26, 2013
Extreme Word Makeover: Naughty
If I had to nominate a word in the English language to receive the "Extreme Word Makeover" award, that word would be naughty.
How its fortunes have changed!
Originally, it stemmed from the word "naught", meaning "nothing". As in, having nothing, worth nothing, needy.
I still consider the mainstream meaning of the word naughty to be "wicked, evil, or morally wrong". But it seems that the word has rehabilitated itself quite nicely in recent years.
Now it seems to be a largely positive adjective. Which seems more exciting or interesting to a modern hearer: "librarian" or "naughty librarian"? "Vicar" or "naughty vicar"? The word now seems to be used to jack up the noun which it modifies. And, far from rendering that noun as "naught" as it once would have done, it now seems to enhance the thing.
I suppose that there are two reasons for this. One is the increasing popularity of moral wickedness itself. Or if not of the actual wickedness, then an openness to be honest about loving moral wickedness. The term "wicked" itself is now one of approbation, we must realize.
The second reason, I think, falls squarely in God's lap. The old idea was that God would eventually bring workers of naughtiness and the naughty deeds themselves ... to naught. But He is patient (not to say "slow") about this work, and so we sometimes forget that, indeed, there is nothingness and void which eventually awaits the naughty person, the naughty deed.
How its fortunes have changed!
Originally, it stemmed from the word "naught", meaning "nothing". As in, having nothing, worth nothing, needy.
I still consider the mainstream meaning of the word naughty to be "wicked, evil, or morally wrong". But it seems that the word has rehabilitated itself quite nicely in recent years.
Now it seems to be a largely positive adjective. Which seems more exciting or interesting to a modern hearer: "librarian" or "naughty librarian"? "Vicar" or "naughty vicar"? The word now seems to be used to jack up the noun which it modifies. And, far from rendering that noun as "naught" as it once would have done, it now seems to enhance the thing.
I suppose that there are two reasons for this. One is the increasing popularity of moral wickedness itself. Or if not of the actual wickedness, then an openness to be honest about loving moral wickedness. The term "wicked" itself is now one of approbation, we must realize.
The second reason, I think, falls squarely in God's lap. The old idea was that God would eventually bring workers of naughtiness and the naughty deeds themselves ... to naught. But He is patient (not to say "slow") about this work, and so we sometimes forget that, indeed, there is nothingness and void which eventually awaits the naughty person, the naughty deed.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Knowledge vs Loudmouth Factor
I developed this graph to capture my observation of how people behave in bodybuilding gyms. As expected, my data shows that the biggest loudmouths in the gym are those who know the least about bodybuilding.
When I posted this on facebook, someone rightly observed that this has application well beyond the confines of the bodybuilding gym. It is probably true at your work, your church, your car club, your neighborhood pub, and in many other places!
When I posted this on facebook, someone rightly observed that this has application well beyond the confines of the bodybuilding gym. It is probably true at your work, your church, your car club, your neighborhood pub, and in many other places!
Monday, July 1, 2013
Bodybuilding Contest Dieting and the Separation of Powers
I believe that the concept of the Separation of Powers finds its greatest sanction in the Biblical verse Isaiah 33:22, where the three branches of government are listed explicitly:
Just how necessary the Separation of Powers is was brought home to me by considering my current attempt to create my own pre-contest bodybuilding diet and to enforce that same diet on myself.
Creating the diet is a Legislative function: I "lay down the law" concerning what must and must not be eaten each day. Enforcing (following) the diet is an Executive function. When, for previous contests, I had hired contest prep coaches, those coaches were the Legislative Branch for me. Their word was law; I merely had to execute. However, now that I am making my own dietary law, it is not so easy. Because the same one who is charged with executing the law (me) is able to re-write the law at will. This is not so good.
This morning, I yearned for some tasty waffles, with butter and syrup. They were not to be found within the dietary law I had laid down for myself yesterday. Had I still been operating under a Separation of Powers situation, I would not have thought of failing my coaches by eating waffles; my only job would have been to execute the plan. But, because I now hold both powers, I had a strange lack of zeal to execute the non-waffle-eating law, and a forceful temptation to re-write the law. I did not do so, but the danger was present.
In any case, the Judicial Branch will be seated behind a table in the front row of the bodybuilding venue when I compete on September 28, and they shall most surely pass judgment on my efforts between now and then.
(For the Lord is our Judge,Here, of course, we find the powers unseparated, since God can be trusted to wield all three types of power simultaneously. It is not so when men attempt to govern themselves, which is why we need the "checks and balances" which the Separation of Powers ideally provides.
The Lord is our Lawgiver,
The Lord is our King;
He will save us);
Just how necessary the Separation of Powers is was brought home to me by considering my current attempt to create my own pre-contest bodybuilding diet and to enforce that same diet on myself.
Creating the diet is a Legislative function: I "lay down the law" concerning what must and must not be eaten each day. Enforcing (following) the diet is an Executive function. When, for previous contests, I had hired contest prep coaches, those coaches were the Legislative Branch for me. Their word was law; I merely had to execute. However, now that I am making my own dietary law, it is not so easy. Because the same one who is charged with executing the law (me) is able to re-write the law at will. This is not so good.
This morning, I yearned for some tasty waffles, with butter and syrup. They were not to be found within the dietary law I had laid down for myself yesterday. Had I still been operating under a Separation of Powers situation, I would not have thought of failing my coaches by eating waffles; my only job would have been to execute the plan. But, because I now hold both powers, I had a strange lack of zeal to execute the non-waffle-eating law, and a forceful temptation to re-write the law. I did not do so, but the danger was present.
In any case, the Judicial Branch will be seated behind a table in the front row of the bodybuilding venue when I compete on September 28, and they shall most surely pass judgment on my efforts between now and then.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Fitness Motivation - You're Doing It Wrong!
I was recently floored by a facebook comment written by a male fan on the photograph of a female physique competitor. It was meant as a compliment, I'm sure, but it reveals so much about the writer beyond his adoration of said competitor:
Wait, what?!?!
Increasing the length of your life is not an inspiration to keep fit and healthy? Improving the quality of your life (including your capacity to do work and to deal with stress) is not an inspiration to keep fit and healthy?
Then, this: "I have no positive influence behind me." Nonsense. God gives you life every day sir, and it is not His fault if you have squandered it, hanging out at Golden Corral rather than the local gym!
I went to his facebook page to see what he looked like and, sure enough, he is a very out-of-shape guy with dozens (or hundreds) of pictures of very in-shape bikini girls on his Timeline. His facebook Timeline is, in fact, a mere chronicle of the photos of women he has lusted after over the years, conveniently arranged in chronological order.
Dear fawning admirer of fit women: YOU'RE DOING IT BACKWARDS! First, man up and get yourself in shape ... not so bikini girls will look at you, but because it is the right thing to do! AFTER you get in shape, or during the process, some of these "inspirational" women may enter your life.
I speak from experience. I was always out of shape as a kid, as a teen, and in my early twenties. At the age of 26, I started lifting weights seriously, and began to run more seriously for fitness. A year later, I was engaged to a very fit and beautiful girl who has now been my wife for over 27 years, and who is now a Personal Trainer, helping others to become physically fit.
Had I waited for the appropriately inspiring, fit, and beautiful woman to come into my life before beginning to change myself through exercise, I'd still be a bitter, single, out-of-shape guy, waiting around for some external force to inspire me.
I would love to have someone like you in my life...Out going and in shape..That way I would have inspiration to keep fit and healthy...I have no positive influence behind me.
Wait, what?!?!
Increasing the length of your life is not an inspiration to keep fit and healthy? Improving the quality of your life (including your capacity to do work and to deal with stress) is not an inspiration to keep fit and healthy?
Then, this: "I have no positive influence behind me." Nonsense. God gives you life every day sir, and it is not His fault if you have squandered it, hanging out at Golden Corral rather than the local gym!
I went to his facebook page to see what he looked like and, sure enough, he is a very out-of-shape guy with dozens (or hundreds) of pictures of very in-shape bikini girls on his Timeline. His facebook Timeline is, in fact, a mere chronicle of the photos of women he has lusted after over the years, conveniently arranged in chronological order.
Dear fawning admirer of fit women: YOU'RE DOING IT BACKWARDS! First, man up and get yourself in shape ... not so bikini girls will look at you, but because it is the right thing to do! AFTER you get in shape, or during the process, some of these "inspirational" women may enter your life.
I speak from experience. I was always out of shape as a kid, as a teen, and in my early twenties. At the age of 26, I started lifting weights seriously, and began to run more seriously for fitness. A year later, I was engaged to a very fit and beautiful girl who has now been my wife for over 27 years, and who is now a Personal Trainer, helping others to become physically fit.
Had I waited for the appropriately inspiring, fit, and beautiful woman to come into my life before beginning to change myself through exercise, I'd still be a bitter, single, out-of-shape guy, waiting around for some external force to inspire me.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Some Men's Sins Precede Them - Gluttony at Church Social Hour
I cannot remember in what translation I first learned 1 Timothy 5:24, but the paraphrase that sticks in my mind from childhood goes something like this:
Of course, after comparing several translations, it becomes evident that the sense of this verse is that some men's sins are so heinous and/or well-known, that they precede those men's arrival at the place of judgment. Other men have sins that were hidden from view in this lifetime, and only come to light after this life is over, at the time of judgment.
But in my mind's eye as a child, I pictured always the sin of gluttony, and the attendant symptom of obesity. So that, "the sins of some men go before them" meant a large belly, and "the sins of other men follow after them" meant fat buttocks. More than one Bible teacher probably saw me staring into nothingness while contemplating the profile of an obese man, and thought I was in spiritual contemplation. But I was just thinking about fat.
Sometimes, though, these two meanings (the pot belly and the open sin, the overly large butt and the hidden sin) converge, and that is when I contemplate the open gluttony of some person at what many parishes like to call the Social Hour. Granted, there is some socializing that goes on, but mostly there is the eating of delicacies: cake, cookies, pastries, etc. Usually, my wife is the only one standing by the vegetable tray, daintily choosing a celery stalk here, a midget tomato there.
Over the years, at various parishes, I have seen one or two extremely obese persons pile 3 or 4 desserts onto a plate and grin happily while consuming them. I always, for a moment at least, get the not-very-Christian thought that I am glad I am not like those people, with my sins (i.e., my gut) extending out in such a manner as to arrive before me wherever I go, and my sins being practiced in the open. In those moments of imagined self-superiority, I seem glad that my sins were all concluded by Friday night or earlier in the week (with perhaps some cursing at inanimate objects while working on old cars on Saturday). Glad that no obvious trace of my sins clung to me bodily either at worship or at the Social Hour following.
But that is very wrong-headed, isn't it? It may well be that my better-hidden, deeper, and more devious sins are already being shuddered at in the place of judgment, while the gastronomic and gustatory offenses of my fat fellow men are completely unknown and unmentioned there. It certainly gives me pause, anyhow.
"The sins of some men go before them, but the sins of others follow after."
Of course, after comparing several translations, it becomes evident that the sense of this verse is that some men's sins are so heinous and/or well-known, that they precede those men's arrival at the place of judgment. Other men have sins that were hidden from view in this lifetime, and only come to light after this life is over, at the time of judgment.
But in my mind's eye as a child, I pictured always the sin of gluttony, and the attendant symptom of obesity. So that, "the sins of some men go before them" meant a large belly, and "the sins of other men follow after them" meant fat buttocks. More than one Bible teacher probably saw me staring into nothingness while contemplating the profile of an obese man, and thought I was in spiritual contemplation. But I was just thinking about fat.
Sometimes, though, these two meanings (the pot belly and the open sin, the overly large butt and the hidden sin) converge, and that is when I contemplate the open gluttony of some person at what many parishes like to call the Social Hour. Granted, there is some socializing that goes on, but mostly there is the eating of delicacies: cake, cookies, pastries, etc. Usually, my wife is the only one standing by the vegetable tray, daintily choosing a celery stalk here, a midget tomato there.
Over the years, at various parishes, I have seen one or two extremely obese persons pile 3 or 4 desserts onto a plate and grin happily while consuming them. I always, for a moment at least, get the not-very-Christian thought that I am glad I am not like those people, with my sins (i.e., my gut) extending out in such a manner as to arrive before me wherever I go, and my sins being practiced in the open. In those moments of imagined self-superiority, I seem glad that my sins were all concluded by Friday night or earlier in the week (with perhaps some cursing at inanimate objects while working on old cars on Saturday). Glad that no obvious trace of my sins clung to me bodily either at worship or at the Social Hour following.
But that is very wrong-headed, isn't it? It may well be that my better-hidden, deeper, and more devious sins are already being shuddered at in the place of judgment, while the gastronomic and gustatory offenses of my fat fellow men are completely unknown and unmentioned there. It certainly gives me pause, anyhow.
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