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I don't often quote George Bernard Shaw, but for purposes of this blog entry, I will:
“People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”
In late 2007, an Anglican friend (from my parish at the time) stated that people unavoidably lose muscle mass every year after the age of 35, regardless of exercise and diet.
To me, this sounded like the sort of defeatist thing said by the kind of person not willing to work hard enough to make progress.
I set out to prove my friend wrong. I gained 15 pounds of muscle in 5 years.
June, 2008 on the left. August, 2013 on the right.
I realize that not everyone (yes, Mom, I'm talking about you!) would view this as progress. Tastes vary in that regard, of course. But I am still happy about the changes I have been able to make to my physique while in my fifties. I look forward to carrying another 15 pounds of muscle by age 60!
Driving is a major rite of passage in my family, and one of the sub-elements of it is a kid's first time piloting his own car in the Woodward Dream Cruise.
This year, it was my daughter Violet's turn to drive her 1967 Mustang GT in the cruise!
It is with extreme sadness that I note the passing of one of female bodybuilding's finest competitors, Texan Terri Harris. I know I have a LOT of "favorite bodybuilders", but Terri really was one of the great ones.
I almost got the chance to meet her at Masters Nationals in July, 2011. She was in the host hotel, standing in front of the elevators, talking to friends. I truly wanted to meet her and tell her how great she had looked on stage, but I didn't want to interrupt her conversation with her friends.
Later, after finding her on facebook, she told me that I should have interrupted to say "hi", and to be sure to do so the next time. Now, sadly, there will not be a next time, at least not this side of "Jordan's flood".
As I got to know
Terri a bit through her posts on facebook, it became evident what a
sweet, humble, and wonderful person she was. Such a sweet spirit.
Reports
vary as to whether she was 49 or 50 years of age at her death from a
heart attack, but she definitely didn't look it! She had just made her
Pro debut in bodybuilding at the Tampa Pro, two short days before her
death.
R.I.P., Terri Harris. You will be sorely missed!!
I'm going to let the video do the talking.
The fabulous Susanna Tirpak, a female bodybuilder from Budapest, Hungary!
My wife recently asked me whether my bodybuilding addiction is merely a substitute addiction for my (now abandoned) alcohol addiction, or a separate addiction in its own right. I don't know how to answer that question, but I can say for sure that bodybuilding and the lifestyle around it are quite addictive.
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.
I remember being especially impressed by Captain America's quadriceps, and in particular his Vastus Medialis muscles. The looked like some manner of teardrop shaped land speed record car one might have seen on the Bonneville Salt Flats in the 1960s. They blew mind mind entirely.
But my newfound fascination with bodybuilding (I mean, such as it was. I hadn't even heard the term "bodybuilding") went dormant for many years. Sure, I saw Dave Draper on The Beverly Hillbillies. And I will admit that the weightlifting unit in my high school Physical Education class was less loathsome to me than playing sports.
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!
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.
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!
