Episode 38: Where the mind goes, the body follows

I hadn’t seen much of my client Jared’s father, Jeff, in a long time. Aside from passing him driving around town and waving hello, we hadn’t had a conversation since he witnessed in horror as I inhaled several large cups of ice cream smothered in sugary toppings following my last contest over six months ago. Jeff was 53 years old and had competed a couple times in 1978 and 1979, right around the time the movie Pumping Iron had inspired a whole generation of Arnold wannabes to take up bodybuilding. Until that landmark movie, the sport was literally so underground that men were about as ashamed to buy a bodybuilding magazine as they were a porno mag.

Actually, they were probably even more likely to have the clerk put it in a paper bag – what would people think if they saw a dude walking out of the store carrying a magazine with another dude all oiled up in little posing trunks on the cover? He would be judged less harshly by most had he been seen purchasing Hustler’s ‘Golden Shower Special Issue.’ And no, I don’t have that one. Lost it in a move.

I actually envied Jeff for having the opportunity to be part of the sport and compete back when it was so much smaller and more exclusive. At some of the bigger amateur shows these days where a pro card was at stake, there were often well over three hundred bodybuilders competing. Certainly there are far more men these days with physiques good enough to compete who merely train to look good walking around. Go to a night club, a beach, or any place where masses are gathered and you will be sure to spot at least a couple bodybuilders. When Jeff was competing, bodybuilders were almost as rare as unicorns. We all like to feel special, unique, and appreciated. Now, a guy with muscles is about as special as a woman with fake boobs. Which I personally have nothing against, of course.

We now happened to be doing cardio together on the only two StepMills our gym had, surveying the landscape of the new facility before us and catching up on recent events. Jeff had talked a couple times about making a return to the stage, and had even picked out a show last year until I bluntly informed him he was carrying too much bodyfat to be in shape in the amount of time he would have had left. There were no hard feelings, and from what he was telling me he wasn’t in any rush anyway. “Once you’re over fifty,” he explained, “you tend to have a little more patience.” But he was curious as to what my plans might be. Jeff and Jared had been there to see me take ninth place in the light-heavies at the Team Universe, the worst I had placed in a contest since my first show just over twenty years prior. Don’t quote me, but I am pretty sure that on the score sheet for it, rather than a numerical placing in the box to the far right, the judge had scribbled, “Who cares?”

“I’m doing the show again next year, but as a Heavyweight,” I began, noting the single arched eyebrow that gave away Jeff’s initial reaction and allowed me to read his mind: ‘Ron must be high on crack.’

“Looking at the photos from my class, I came to realize that the other light-heavies may have mostly been the same height and weight as me, but all the ones that beat me had much better shape – that round look to the muscles and tiny joints. They also had better arms, all of them.” Jeff nodded. He wasn’t going to blow smoke up my butt by arguing that factual point. “So with that in mind, I believe I need to come in next time at about 210, twelve pounds heavier, with most of that in my arms, back, and shoulders. If I do that and show up a bit sharper than last time, I can at least make the top five and get to do my posing routine.”

Jeff nodded and was quiet for a minute before asking what any guy with a ring on his finger would be curious about.

“What’s your wife think about this?”

I explained that Janet thought I was totally delusional and stupid. Before making her come across as negative and unsupportive of my goals, I had to explain where she was coming from. My wife has been with me just over twenty years now – twenty long years of training, dieting, and competing. More importantly, she has been with me while I have suffered many serious injuries from training and had to live with me while I dealt – not always nobly – with the painful and frustrating consequences. Most of the injuries were to my lower back, but I have also hurt my shoulders badly, torn a hamstring one time and the soleus muscle of my calf on another occasion, plus have chronically inflamed elbows. You can imagine the frustration of being this ‘big strong guy’ who can’t even use the empty bar for skull-crushers, or at times even put on his own socks, without excruciating pain.

So Janet has been along for the ride as I have bitched, moaned, complained, and wallowed in self-pity in the wake of these countless injuries over two decades. I can completely understand why she would not be overly supportive when I announce that I am planning to add twelve pounds of lean muscle mass. At age forty, and with now over a quarter-century invested in consistent heavy training, it does seem like a fool’s quest. Add in the history of injuries, the current bone spur and arthritis in the shoulders plus the bum elbows, and a strong case could be made that I am living in fantasy land with dragons and magical fairies.

“But you know you can do it, don’t you?” Jeff asked once I had laid it all out. “There’s no doubt in your mind.”

“That’s right,” I agreed. “I know that if I can see it in my mind as already being done, all I need to do over the next year is follow the steps to make it happen. I’m changing my training up to include more warming up, less stupid-heavy weight, and better pumps. Granted, if I changed nothing about my workouts, my wife’s injury prophecy would be a foregone conclusion, I recognize that my body, more specifically my joints and tendons,  can’t take the constant pounding of heavy weights all the time anymore. Besides which, my muscles seem to have adapted so well to that type of training that they don’t see any reason to grow. But I know that my new strategy will succeed.”

Jeff smirked. “It’s funny. A few years before Jared was born, I had been working as a general contractor for years. The money was okay, but my wife and I weren’t living too large and I felt like I wasn’t doing as much as I could in life. One night I had a dream that I had built a ton of houses, whole developments, and we were wealthy – very nice home, cars, exotic vacations, all that good stuff. I woke up the next morning and told my wife I was going to put everything into a new business building houses.”

“She freaked?” I inquired.

“Of course she did. She thought we would be on welfare within a year. But in my head I kept seeing that dream, and to me it was more like a premonition. As long as I put the work in, I knew it would come true. It was tough at first. I was in debt to my eyeballs and I was working a hundred hours a week. But not long after that, the real estate market went through the roof, especially around here. You know the rest of the story.”

I did. I had no idea how much Jeff was worth in total, but it was substantial. I thanked him for the story, because it had reinforced what I already knew to be true. As the Adidas ad slogan used to say “Impossible is nothing.” Our minds are what dictate what we can and can’t achieve, and only we control our minds. If you convince yourself that you’ll always be fat, weak and skinny, or poor, or never have a loving relationship, guess what? You’ll get just what your mind told you you’ll get. But if you decide instead to master your thoughts and emotions and harness them toward doing and being what it is you really want, the opposite happens – you attract that reality.

When it comes to the body, it won’t go anywhere the mind hasn’t been before. You don’t run the fastest race of your life or build the physique you crave without seeing it first in your mind. People ask me all the time what the most important part of bodybuilding is, and they are usually puzzled when I reply that it’s the mind. Unless you believe in what you are doing and that it will pay off for you with the results you desire, you’ll never consistently train and eat the way you need to. So the next time you doubt yourself or what you are capable of, realize that you are writing a script for your future. You can choose to write an ending that stinks, or you can write an ending that would make any audience stand up and cheer for.