Episode 60: The great ‘how many meals?’ debate

As a writer for bodybuilding magazines for over twenty years now (don’t ask me where the time went), I’ve had the privilege of being able to speak to all the great champions and learn their personal opinions about training and nutrition. Not long ago, something 4-time Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler told me got me thinking. Jay feels the need to eat a minimum of four solid meals before he will work out, which has him hitting the gym anywhere from six PM to as late as 10 PM at times. If he can’t get that minimum number in, Jay won’t even train that day as he feels it would be a waste. The quality of the workout would suffer due to insufficient ‘gas in the tank.’ But Ronnie Coleman, 8-Time Mr. O, used to eat just one big breakfast of eggs and cheese and grits before blasting the iron. Arnold Classic Champion Branch Warren eats twice before training. All three of these men have incredible physiques and attacked the weights like ferocious beasts, so which one of them is ‘right’ about how many meals a bodybuilder requires prior to a workout? I think the answer to that depends on various factors.

When do you train?

Some of you may have the luxury of being able to train any time of day or night that you please. In that case, you could theoretically always eat and digest multiple meals before working out. Most of you probably don’t have a very flexible schedule. Unless you are self-employed, chances are your options are limited to training before or after roughly an eight-hour workday that may also involve a sizeable commute. Many parents need to get back home after work to care for their offspring, so it’s either train first thing in the morning or not at all. This means one meal before working out, and I do feel strongly that you do need that one good meal of a lean protein and complex carbs. One thing I am certain of is that weight training on an empty stomach is not only futile, but you will end up eating up more of your own body’s muscle by forcing it to perform without fuel. Don’t even think about it! You may need to wake up a bit earlier to get that breakfast in, but it’s a must. Personally, I have been training after just one meal most of the time for over a decade now, and I do fine.

You also have to consider if putting off the workout until later in the day makes sense logistically for you. Are you a morning person and start fading in the afternoon? If so, it seems to make sense to train when you will perform at your physical and mental peak rather than later on, just so you can be more fully carbed up.

What bodypart are you training?

Some bodyparts are more demanding to train than others. Specifically, they involve such large amounts of muscle and such heavy weight and volume to train properly that they make far greater demands on your muscle glycogen reserves. Legs and back are easily the two areas that require more ‘fuel’ than others. For example, a workout featuring multiple sets of squats, leg presses, hack squats, and walking lunges will take a lot more out of you than barbell curls and dumbbell kickbacks. I’ve always felt it just made sense to eat more, particularly more complex carbohydrates, before and after training legs or back. Therefore you could also argue that if indeed eating several meals before training would offer any advantage, it would also be on the days you train those. Then again, if you have a certain stubborn bodypart and you do find you have better workouts with multiple meals beforehand, those might be the best days for you to eat more prior to training.

Is your training high-volume or not?

Most bodybuilders train with ‘high volume,’ but that term has a lot of room for interpretation. Technically, volume refers to the total amount of sets performed for each bodypart. On average, most of us probably do around 12-20 ‘work sets’ for larger muscle groups (not counting warm-ups), and 9-12 for smaller muscle groups. I wouldn’t consider these to be ‘high volume’ to the point where you would require extravagant amounts of food to have a decent workout. If you are doing more than those ranges, then sure; I could see why you might feel you run out of steam halfway through the workout. Techniques like drop sets, super sets, and giant sets will also take a bigger bite out of your glycogen stores and would justify multiple meals. But if you’re not doing a ton of volume and you’re sticking to straight sets, chances are you can train just fine after just one good meal.

How fast is your metabolism?

We all have different metabolic rates. This is often evidenced in how much food in general it takes for each of us to maintain our weight, or to make any gains. I know Jay Cutler does have a very fast metabolism, because he claims he will easily lose 5-8 pounds of muscle over the course of any weekend in which he misses a few meals – which happens frequently due to his grueling travel and appearance schedule. Also, the sheer amount of muscle mass he has been carrying most of his adult life – 290 pounds at 5-9 – requires a great deal of food every day. And so it also is for many ‘hard gainers,’ those whose bodies incinerate calories faster than they can take them in (which is why they need to be supplementing their food intake with CapTri®, Parrillo bars, and shakes). For these people, one meal eaten after a night of fasting during sleep may not be nearly enough to fuel an intense workout. Two, three, or more may be much better.

Only you can know

So how many meals should you eat before working out? That’s a question that really only you can answer. If your particular schedule only allows for one meal because your only option is to train early in the morning, you don’t even need to think about it. If you do have more leeway in terms of what time of day you train, carefully weigh the pros and cons. Consider how your workouts seem any better or worse depending on how much food you’ve consumed that day, and weigh that against what time of day you seem to have more productive workouts. And in the end, I don’t think it makes a world of difference as long as you are eating quality meals every two to three waking hours, every day. This constant stream of nutrients is what’s really important as far as making gains from your workouts. If you feel that you can train heavier, harder, and with more intensity with multiple meals in your system and are able to do this, wonderful. Go for it. Otherwise, focus more on making sure you get six quality meals in every day, and that at least one of those is eaten before you train.

Thanksgiving is still exactly a month away as I write this, but here I am counting my blessings anyway. Tomorrow marks four weeks since the surgery to repair my torn right triceps, and it also happens to be the day of my second and hopefully last procedure for many years, on my left shoulder. I’m having what’s called a ‘decompression,’ which involves scooping out some of the acromion, or the underside of the shoulder socket, to free up more room. Thanks to an MRI, I learned that I had worn away nearly all of the ligaments in there over the course of a quarter-century plus of heavy training.

I could feel sorry for myself and call 9-1-1 for the ‘wambulance’ (as in wah, wah, poor me!) if I were so inclined. It’s now been over a month since I could do any type of training with my right triceps, or any pressing movements for the chest or shoulders. Ripping out the stitches anchoring my triceps tendon to my elbow was enough of a deterrent whenever I have been tempted to prematurely do any of those things against the strict advice of my surgeon, the gregarious Dr. Ray. As such, I have lost a certain amount of size from my upper body, though my legs seem to be bigger than ever thanks to receiving the extra time and energy in the gym denied my upper body. And as my shoulder is about to be sliced open tomorrow, tinkered with, then stitched back up, it’s safe to say I will have to continue taking it easy on upper body work for at least a few weeks.

Among the well wishes for successful surgeries and a speedy recovery, there has also been a fair amount of pity. Knowing how passionate I am about training and building my physique, many have expressed their condolences for the ordeal I am forced to endure: missing workouts and losing precious muscle mass. That’s one way to look at it – seeing the glass as half empty. You can also choose to look at the glass as half full, and see all the positives inherent to the situation.

First, these surgeries are both repairing issues that have both caused me extensive pain and have definitely limited my training for many years now. Did I neglect to mention that when Dr. Ray opened up my right elbow, he found various strips of tendon that were not only detached, but the edges had healed to blunt ends? That means I was walking around with a partially torn right triceps for some period of years, perhaps well over a decade. That explains why that triceps sucked ever worse than the left, and was perfectly flat in the side triceps pose while the left arm at least had a little outer sweep to the tri. So if I hadn’t gone and torn it nearly off the bone, I never would have had the surgery to put the whole muscle and tendon complex back where it’s supposed to be.

As for my left shoulder, that’s been a pain in my ass for well over a decade too. The actual pain would vary in severity. On ‘good days,’ I could still do some very decent presses: 120’s for shoulders, 130’s for incline dumbbells, and up to 315 on the barbell military press. On really bad days, I had to stick to machines. At various times during preparations for contests over the past couple years, my left shoulder would be in such agony that I couldn’t even hit the side triceps pose or the rear lat spread. This would be inconsequential for those of you who do not choose to diet down and get onstage oiled up in little posing trunks, but for a competitive bodybuilder this is like a porn star being limited to only a couple different positions. So if this procedure goes well and has the result my surgeon hopes for, I will have less pain in that shoulder than I have since Seinfeld was the top-rated sitcom on TV.

Generally speaking, the secret to being happy or being miserable lies entirely in your attitude and your perceptions of the world around you. Anyone can be happy in even the most dire circumstances if they choose to be. I’ve read about people in such horrific situations as concentration camps, lands blighted by famine and pestilence, and inner cities rife with poverty and violence who still kept their chins up, and never stopped believing they could rise above it all with the right outlook and a fair amount of hope and faith.

Conversely, we have all at least heard of if not personally known people who seemingly had no reason to complain or feel sorry for themselves, yet insisted on being miserable regardless. This could be a person blessed with good looks, social status, fame, and fortune, yet they still managed to bitch and moan. No matter how good they had it, they only focused on someone else who had more of these things than they did.

“I’ve only got a Lamborghini, that guy has a Bugati!”

“I make 100 million dollars a year, but I have to pay so much in taxes!”

“People magazine didn’t have me in their Top 50 Most Beautiful People issue this year! I was only on the list four times! Oh, I must be hideous!”

Those of us who train hard on a regular basis and who have crafted bodies that stand apart from the average human’s have a lot to be thankful for. For one thing, just having access to a gym and even more so, to quality food and supplements and clean water to nourish our bodies, is something a couple billion people on this planet will never know. Being healthy enough to work out is also not to be taken for granted. Many have illnesses and disabilities that make hard weight training merely a fantasy. Thousands of veterans, most of them 10-20 years younger than myself, returned home from the Middle East missing parts of limbs, entire limbs, or in some cases more than one limb. I am sure many of them were avid weight trainers. What I bet they wouldn’t give to just have one operation and then be able to go back to ‘normal’ in a month or two! As the years have gone by and I’ve gained a tiny amount of wisdom, I’ve learned that being happy is a state of mind that’s easy to find if you stay focused on one key point: being thankful for what you do have instead of worrying or complaining about what you don’t. I had the ‘hater’ mentality for much of my life. I chose to focus on what everyone else had that I envied, whether it was income, women, a better body, etc. That negative thought pattern did nothing but keep me mired in bitterness, jealousy, and self-pity. It was no coincidence that I was struggling all those years in various areas – my career, my marriage, and even in my efforts to improve my physique.

Only when I shifted the focus to myself and what I had control over, and understood that I needed to take full responsibility for my own happiness and success, did the tide begin to turn. I am forever a work in progress and every day I must remind myself to avoid negative thought patterns and attitudes, but suffice to say I am doing a lot better in every way these days than I was not so long ago.

You don’t have to wait for Thanksgiving every year to stop and think about all the things you should be grateful for. When you wake up every day thankful to be alive and to have the chance to be a better person each time the sun comes up again, you will be surprised at how much better your life and the world around you seem to be.

Will bad things happen to you and those you love sometimes? Of course they will. We all have our obstacles, setbacks, and challenges in this life. And we will have absolutely no control over some of those things. But you will always have absolute power in how you look at the world around you, and how you react to anything that occurs. Once you truly understand and integrate this concept, I guarantee you that you will never feel like a persecuted, powerless victim of cruel fate again.

Yes, I am having my second surgery in two weeks tomorrow, and I will not be training at 100% for probably at least a few months to come. For that I am thankful, because I know that I will be back doing what I love in the gym someday soon. Life is good – if you want it to be.

A BODYBUILDER IS BORN: Generations

What Would Branch Do?

The Branch in this case is Branch Warren. Six months ago I wrote ‘In Praise of the Underdog’ in this space after witnessing Branch win the prestigious Arnold Classic title. I found it exceedingly inspirational to see a man who was told again and again he would never be a good pro persevere until he won the same title held previously by the likes of Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler, Flex Wheeler, Kevin Levrone, Shawn Ray, and Dexter Jackson. Now I find myself being inspired by Branch’s example once again as I face the first surgery of my life – which will be followed up less than a month later by my second.

The first surgery, just two days away as I write this, is to re-attach my right triceps after the tendon holding it to my elbow became over 50% detached while breaking a backward fall in my first MMA sparring match in over three months. That elbow had been sore for many years, and I am fairly certain the tendon was already weak and damaged. The second surgery is what is called a ‘decompression’ for my left shoulder. Long story short, I’ve worn out nearly all the ligaments inside the socket and it’s close to bone grinding on bone. The orthopedic surgeon will hollow out more room inside the acromion and clean out any shredded tendons he may come across while the socket is opened up. Good times! I might just have to start going by the nickname ‘Frankenstein.’ Obviously I will be missing a couple workouts in all of this, and a substantial amount of my upper body size and strength will be going away while I heal up and then eventually begin the rehab and rebuilding process.

The whole situation could incite panic and lead to depression if one were so inclined. Being a worrywart at heart, my thoughts do tend to lean toward thinking I will shrink from 220 to 105 pounds, and that I will never be able to regain an ounce of that muscle. Also, I fear that the most intense thing I may ever be able to do in the gym again is a Zumba class. Not that this would be so horrible really – have you ever seen some of those Zumba hotties shaking their rears and grinding their hips?

But before I allow my mind to continue in that nonsensical pattern, I just have to think of Branch Warren. This is a man who has had more than his fair share of injuries, yet has come back better every time. Care to hear some crazy examples?

2000 – Branch tears his biceps doing cheat curls with 225 pounds. The next year he wins the Heavyweight class at the NPC Nationals and turns pro.

2004 – Branch tears his triceps doing incline barbell presses with 405 pounds. The next year he wins his first pro show – and his second pro show!

2008 – Six weeks out from the Mr. Olympia he is preparing for, Branch slips on his stairs at home and tears his other triceps. The following year, he takes second place at the Mr. Olympia, beating out pre-contest favorites like Dexter Jackson (who was at the time the reigning Mr. O champ), Kai Greene, and Phil Heath.

Just four weeks before the 2011 Mr. Olympia, Branch proved that “Oops I did it again” is more than just a Britney Spears song. While exiting a TGI Friday’s restaurant, he slipped on a wet handicapped ramp and sheared his right quadriceps off the patella. When I heard about it that day, I thought it was some sick joke. Seriously? Branch tore another muscle? But it was true.

When I spoke with him about it a couple weeks later, he was of course not thrilled to have to miss the Mr. Olympia he had been training so hard for, but Branch had an excellent, positive attitude. “Everything happens for a reason, and I know I’ll come back even better like I always do,” he said. Moreover, he stated that the untimely accident further reinforced to him how much he loves doing what he does, namely competing as an elite-level pro bodybuilder, and that he does not take one moment of it for granted. “I know better than all those other guys how it can be taken away from you just like that,” he told me.

This obviously resonated with me. Sure, I will miss some training time and lose some size and strength. But on the upside, that triceps tendon and that shoulder will be repaired and should function better than they have in many years. Branch looks at all of his injuries as blessings in disguise, because he did come back better after each one. My surgeries are going to give my joints some well-needed downtime to heal up that they never would have received due to my obsessive-compulsive nature when it comes to training. Like Branch, I will be better than before when I come out the other side. And having to lay off the weights all that time is going to do nothing but take my motivation sky-high and imbue me with a deep sense of gratitude that I can even return to the gym. Others obviously do suffer injuries and illnesses so severe that working out, something that gave them so much satisfaction and joy, becomes only a wistful memory. I will train again, and I appreciate that even more now.

I’m not the only person inspired by the example of Branch. My good friend, IFBB Pro Jose Raymond, had a bitch of a time getting down to 202 pounds for the final 202 show in 2011 before that division changed to a 212-pound limit. Someone wrote to him wanting to know where he found the energy and drive to get up and do his cardio and weight training when his calories were down to the amounts you’d expect a 10-year-old Vietnamese girl to be eating, not a massively muscled pro bodybuilder. Here’s what he had to say:

“I have been thinking a lot lately about Branch Warren and how awful he must feel to not be able to compete. I think to myself anytime I start feeling sorry for myself, ‘What would Branch do?’ Branch would say man the f*** up and get it done, you have a chance to do something that not many people do, now quit being a p***y and rock and roll baby!!!! That’s what inspires me!”

I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Whenever we have an obstacle or a setback, it’s critical to focus on the positive. Instead of worrying or complaining, get tough and remember that you are only defeated when you concede defeat. Life will knock you down and shit will happen to you, but how you react to it is entirely up to you. Will you stay down on the ground, sobbing and feeling sorry for yourself as your tears and snot mix with the dirt and turn to mud? Or will you stand up, brush yourself off, and look life in the face and say, “Is that all you got?”

That’s what Branch would do.

especially women who crave the thin look they see on their favorite celebrities, some of whom are anorexic and/or addicted to drugs, rejoice at the lower number they see when they step on the scale. This diet rocks! And they tell all their friends, which nowadays means they can disseminate this unhealthy diet all over Twitter and Facebook, so more and more women fall victim.

Who's the Really Fat Guy!

But we bodybuilders are so much more savvy and sophisticated! Thanks to great minds like John Parrillo, we know so much more about how the body works. He’s told us for decades that eating plenty of food and at frequent intervals is the key to stoking the metabolic furnace and ensuring that our bodies are in the best possible position to gain muscle mass and lose fat stores. John has also stressed the importance of monitoring body composition rather than scale weight, even going so far as to sell a BodyStat kit that includes bodyfat calipers. Of course we know enough to understand that bodyweight itself means jack. But somehow we still give that damned scale far more power than we should. You don’t think so? Allow me to illustrate exactly how we bodybuilders can often be just as foolish as the average slob.

Scenario # 1: The Off-Season Fatso

The name of the game in bodybuilding, unless your name happens to be Jay Cutler or Kai Greene and you already have more muscle mass than any human being could ever want or need, is to make gains. We’re never quite as big as we would like to be, and most of us devote a substantial portion of the training year to the ‘off-season.’ We eat a surplus of

calories and train as heavy and hard as possible. Though experts like John Parrillo advise us to keep a steady amount of cardiovascular training in our program for general health as well as to improve the quality of our weight training and circulation, the fact is that many bodybuilders don’t do a lick of cardio in the off-season. Why burn calories, they reason, when those calories could be better used to grow new muscle tissue? Goals tend to be set in terms of bodyweight. “This off-season I want to get up to 250,” is the type of thing you often hear. The success or failure of the off-season training and nutrition program is typically measured completely in terms of bodyweight. If the person has the discipline to avoid weighing himself 4-5 times every day, they will weigh in at least once a week. And the higher that number creeps, the happier that guy feels about how his off-season is going. Meanwhile, an equal or greater amount of fat is being gained along with any new muscle mass. And because it’s accumulating gradually, it’s so easy to miss the fact that you are turning into a fat sack of crap. If you think I am being harsh, I’ve done this many times in my own past. Denial is a powerful psychological tactic that I have employed over probably a dozen fall and winter seasons. Reality comes crashing down every time, of course. When I can’t button a pair of size 34 jeans no matter how much I try to suck my gut in, I know I’ve gone too far in ‘bulking up’ and have crossed the line to Fatso Land. And the real wake-up call is seeing photos of myself. It’s somehow possible to look in the mirror and not see how chunky I have become, but when some guy that resembles you except he has a round face and the beginnings of a double chin is hugging your lovely wife in a picture, even I know it’s time to start cutting back on the bad foods and get back to more regular cardio. I now refuse to set arbitrary weight goals of 230 or 240 as I have in the past. From now on I am adopting the motto of the great eight-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney, who said: “If you can’t flex it, don’t carry it!” But as long as you let the numbers on the scale dictate your progress without regard to where that increase in bodyweight is coming from, you too run the risk of being a chubby off-season mess.

Scenario # 2: The Over-dieted Stringy Man

Let’s go to the opposite extreme, which is appropriate since bodybuilding is all about extremes. Amateur bodybuilding competitions feature weight classes. As in any sport with weight classes, it’s often considered an advantage to be ‘at the top of your class.’ So even though for example, the light-heavyweight division encompasses anything over 176 1/4 up to 198 1/4, nobody ever wants to be near the lower limit. If they can’t be in shape at the upper end of that class, you often see guys ‘suck down’ under 176 1/4 to make the middleweights. Now they are at the top of that class, oh boy! Surely they will fare better than they would have as a 185-pound light-heavy up against guys who were right at 198, right? Not always, and more often than not this strategy backfires. In this theoretical example, the athlete intentionally lost a full ten pounds of muscle mass to make a lower weight class. He will probably now be up against shorter, thicker men and now that he’s lost a fair amount of lean mass, he will look stringy and lanky in comparison. He should have stopped worrying so much about how much he weighed and simply focused on coming in at his best. Instead, he let the scale mess with his mind and will probably pay the price with a lower placing. My attitude has always been that I work much too hard to put the muscle on in the first place, so why would I ever lose it on purpose? The only people who this actually makes sense for are pro bodybuilders in the 202 division. If they don’t get down to 202 (soon changing to 212), their only option is to compete in the Open class with men as heavy as 270-280 pounds.

Scenario # 3: Mr. Smooth aka Mr. Last place

Then there is the opposite to that situation, and one I have actually witnessed just as often. When a bodybuilder has accumulated a great deal of bodyfat over the off-season, it’s often the case that they assume much more of the weight they gained was muscle than it actually was. So let’s say Joe Meathead competed last year at 190 pounds, then over the course of eight months managed to get his bodyweight up to 240 pounds. Without really knowing his body composition, he will guess that he has added enough muscle to compete at the top of the Heavyweights, or 225 1/4 pounds. He proudly announces to everyone that he is moving up a weight class. He starts dieting, and what do you know – at eight weeks out from the show he is down to 225 but is clearly still not close to being in shape. Frustrated and confused, he continues dieting. At four weeks out he is now 215 pounds but again, far from being ripped. In reality, he probably gained enough muscle to compete at 195-198, but he has his heart set on being a Heavyweight and nothing is going to stop him. In those final four weeks, he refuses to do more cardio or to cut his carbs much, and at the show he is a smooth 212. With only blurry definition and a few veins here and there, he stands on the side of the stage while the judges call out the Heavies who showed up with superior condition. In his mind, he still believes he is a legitimate Heavyweight. He will probably repeat the entire cycle over again, getting up to a chunky 255 this time and dieting down to a smooth 220. I have spoken to several bodybuilders who had a set weight in mind that they intended to compete at, and refused to allow themselves to get much lighter in spite of the fact that definition is a critical factor in the judging of any physique competition. They somehow find satisfaction at being able to say they competed at X weight, ignoring the fact that they should have been X minus anywhere from 5-20 pounds to be in contest condition. The scale rules their world!

The scale is a tool – don’t let it rule!

Knowing whether your bodyweight is going up, down, or staying the same is definitely an important piece of information. But always keep in mind that your bodyweight alone never tells the whole story. Weight gained can be either muscle or fat, and the same goes for weight lost. Even when your bodyweight doesn’t change, it’s entirely possible that you have gained muscle and/or lost fat. In fact, I have seen many cases where a person’s bodyweight hardly changes, but because they have changed their body composition drastically (for the better), they can look like an entirely different person. The bottom line is that you can use the scale as one tool to gauge the progress of your efforts towards a physique goal, but never assume it’s the only tool you should use. The mirror, photographs, and of course some type of reliable bodyfat measurement are always recommended to supplement the scale and provide a complete and accurate report of the changes you have made through your training and diet.

You can get the Parrillo BodyStat Kit for $39.95.

In the case of a mother and a baby, once that little sucker is squeezed out, the great mission has been accomplished and the mom is left pretty much on her own to take care of her new bundle of joy. Regardless of how successful the delivery is and how perfectly cute and healthy the child may be, many new mothers often slide into a very specific psychological state called postpartum depression. It doesn’t make any logical sense to the outside observer. Why the heck is this woman sad? She’s been pregnant for nine months and dealing with morning sickness, fatigue, swollen ankles, weight gain, and so on and now the baby is finally out. Shouldn’t she be jumping for joy, between changing stinky diapers and giving Junior his or her bottle?

Likewise, preparing for a bodybuilding contest is grueling. For months, you diet strictly and must deprive yourself of many of your favorite foods. Overall food intake, at least in the form of carbohydrates, needs to be lowered to get shredded, and this will wreak havoc on energy levels (the main reason John Parrillo has bodybuilders add more CapTri® to their diets at this stage). An expectant mom watches her body swell as life blossoms inside her womb. A dieting bodybuilder sees his muscles appear to swell as fat melts away, revealing razor sharp separation and striations. It’s all part of an amazing process that those close to them marvel at. To watch a woman gradually grow a new human being inside her body (especially when it’s your own son or daughter in there) is a wonderful thing. Not nearly as significant of course, but equally fascinating to some, is watching someone’s physique transform from soft and bulky to chiseled and hard.

Then the big day comes. The baby is born! There is celebration all around. Mom takes her new baby home and begins an entirely new chapter in her life. Friends and family visit and remark on how cute the moppet is and congratulate the parents on their adorable new addition to the family. “You must be so happy!” they exclaim. Mom nods and forces a smile, but inside she isn’t feeling so spectacular. She knows she is supposed to be overjoyed at her blessing, but somehow an overwhelming sadness continues to creep into her very soul. What the heck is wrong with her?

I trained nearly two years for the 2011 NPC Team Universe. I did it for the first time in September of 2009, and the outcome was dismal – ninth out of thirteen light-heavyweights. At the judging, I stood wilting on the side of the stage while the better physiques were called out for the initial comparisons. 99 times out of 100 if you are not in the first group of competitors called out, you are not going to be in the top five. Knowing you put in all that time and effort just to hardly get a look and not get the chance to do your posing routine at the finals is a dismal feeling. So I vowed to come back two years later, move up a weight class, and be in the top five.

Long story short, that’s exactly what I did. Up from 197 to 208, I was solidly in the Heavyweight class along with eight others. The muscle had been hard-fought, as I had turned 40 two days after the 2009 Team U. Anyone my age who has been training over a quarter-century knows that gaining any additional muscle mass is a monumental challenge. But I did, and put most of the new muscle exactly in the areas I needed it: my arms and mid-back. I stayed leaner than ever before in my off-season and took 20 weeks to come down very gradually from 232 to 208 in great shape. Looking at the other Heavies, I saw that some definitely had me on this or that bodypart (okay, it was always arms), but competitive bodybuilding is a physique contest in which the best overall package wins.

The first two names head judge Jim Manion called out were mine and the man who had won the class the year before and would go on to win it again. I was pleasantly shocked and in the video of the judging (found on my YouTube channel RonHarrisMuscle), I actually appear slightly dazed with a goofy grin on my face as I strode over to center stage. My goal had been top five, and I finished second to a very deserving winner who would go on to do a much better job representing the USA at the IFBB World Championships in India a couple months later than I would have. I had done exactly what I had set out to accomplish nearly two years before. And in the course of the many congratulations I received both in person, posted online, and via email or text, tacked on was the statement, “You must be so happy!”

The weird thing was, I was kind of sad if I am completely honest. You know how they say it’s all about the journey, not the destination? Wow, is that true! Once the show was over and I didn’t have to worry about eating exactly the right foods at the right times in the right amounts, I found myself missing what I had started to think of as a pain in the ass! There was something about the structure and discipline of the contest diet that I have always relished. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed my pizza and cheesecake once it was over, but part of me felt incredibly down about it too.

Another thing you can compare the post-contest experience to that of a post-partum woman is the change in your body. When a woman is pregnant, even though she gains weight and typically feels fat and far from attractive, everyone around her swoons over how she ‘glows.’ After the baby is born, she is left with stretch marks, excess weight to lose, and quite possibly a big C-section scar to deal with. After a contest, unless the bodybuilder has tremendous willpower and discipline, he watches all those magnificent cuts become blurrier by the week. Nobody is coming up to him asking about the contest he’s getting ready for, or about the details of his diet and cardio regimen. They might inquire about his next contest, but in my case that’s going to be at least another couple years away. That one glorious moment on stage that months and years were focused on in preparation is all over.

Of course, a new mom turns her focus on caring for her child. Me, I have plenty of work and my family to look after to take my thoughts off the fact that the event that I eagerly looked forward to all that time and put so much energy and concentration into is now in the past. I’m not complaining – how could I? But for those of you who compete, or those of you who aspire to one day, you should know that there is a bit of a rough patch you will go through when the show is over and (hopefully) the new trophy is up on your mantel. In the final weeks of your diet when you’re tired and grouchy, you can’t wait until the contest is over. But when it does come and go, you’ll oddly wish it hadn’t yet.

This has become a standard question posed to any bodybuilder preparing for a competition over the last few years. The assumption is that most now enlist the services of a nutrition coach, also known in our little world as a ‘guru,’ which may give some of these people a bit more credence than they warrant.

In the old days, bodybuilders never thought to get help with their contest diets, as dieting was not looked at as rocket science. Decades before The Atkins Diet or the Keto craze, denizens of Muscle Beach were subsisting largely on tuna fish, steak, and salads in the final weeks leading up to contests like the Mr. America, Mr. Universe, and Mr. Olympia, with only moderate amounts of carbohydrates like potatoes or rice. They instinctively knew that beyond cutting out junk, reducing carbohydrate intake was key in leaning out. And you know what? They did get into great shape. Did they have striated glutes? No, because nobody did yet and that wasn’t the standard. Nobody was competing at 5-9 and 270 pounds ripped either, or walking around with 23-inch arms and 33-inch thighs.

As the standards evolved and bodybuilders were expected to be more and more ripped every passing contest season, the athletes began to doubt themselves and their ability to reach that extreme condition of 3-4% bodyfat with the water sucked out for the total ‘shrink-wrapped’ look. We saw the rise of the guru in the 90’s with Chris Aceto, Joe McNeil, and Chad Nicholls, and it continues to this day. Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler and his friend and Olympia runner-up Phil Heath, as well as dozens of other pro’s and top amateurs, hire Hany ‘The Pro Creator’ Rambod, while Arnold Classic winners Branch Warren, Kai Greene and many others rely on George ‘The Pro Maker’ Farah. There are about a half-dozen other ‘big name’ gurus now as well, and I would estimate that this small group of coaches works with well over half the men in pro bodybuilding and the top amateurs close to turning pro.

It’s easy to assume these athletes are lazy, dumb, or insecure if they can’t handle contest prep on their own and have to hire someone to hold their hand throughout the process; that is unless you have ever tried getting shredded for a contest yourself. The mind can be assaulted with doubt. Am I eating too much, or not enough? Should I add carbs, drop them, change the sources? Should I be eating more healthy fats, or increase my protein?  Am I doing enough cardio, too much, or should I be using a different machine?

In the case of a beginner or someone who hasn’t ever really figured out how to get lean enough in a given time frame, hiring a coach or guru to handle your preparation can be a very wise investment. But even for those of us who have been at this game a very long time (my first contest was in March of 1989, back when the first George Bush was President, Roseanne was the highest-rated show on TV, and gasoline was $1.20 a gallon), there is also a huge benefit: you don’t have to think about what you’re doing!

The nutritionist/coach/guru or whatever you choose to refer to this person as handles your diet down to every meal, and should tell you exactly what to eat, when, and in exactly what quantities. They tell you how much cardio to do. You either see them in person on a regular basis or as is much more common now in the Internet age, you email them photos. Based on what they see, they make adjustments to your nutrition, supplementation, or cardio regimen.

There is no guesswork on your part, and really no thinking; unless you question something they are telling you to do. This should eliminate most of the stress and doubts that the plan you are following is the correct one. In the end, if you don’t look as good as you thought you would or expected to, it’s not your fault – it’s theirs!

In an interview I did with Evan Centopani as he was about to begin his preparations for the 2011 Flex Pro show and the Arnold Classic, I asked him why he was handling his own preparation this time around after having worked previously with two very well-known coaches.  Evan explained that as a professional bodybuilder, he felt that he should have attained a certain level of mastery that would enable him to reach peak condition on his own without outside guidance. As I said before, prior to the modern age, champions of the past such as Arnold, Lee Haney, Rich Gaspari, Lee Labrada, Shawn Ray, Dorian Yates, Vince Taylor, and Kevin Levrone all handled their own diets. None of them had anyone telling them what to eat or how much, how much cardio to do, etc, yet they all looked phenomenal and won many contests.

So Evan did his own prep, and won the Flex Pro before taking fourth at his first Arnold Classic. After several disappointing showings having worked with various coaches, top pro Dennis Wolf made the now-famous pronouncement, “No more gurus!” After that, he went from placing out of the top 15 at the 2009 Mr. Olympia to fifth at the 2010 Mr. O, took second at his first Arnold Classic, and scored the second win of his pro career in Australia a week later. Of course, other bodybuilders have done extremely well with the help of coaches – I am not saying that option is a bad idea. What I am saying is that you don’t necessarily need any outside help.

When choosing to do it on your own, you do have to trust your instincts, and you do need to have at least one objective ‘second set of eyes.’ This is a person who knows physiques, and will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Unfortunately, many competitive bodybuilders rely only on wives, girlfriends, gym buddies, and other assorted ‘yes men’ who merely shower them with praise and gush over how incredible they look. They have no one who can or will tell them they are behind and still need to be leaner, or that they are flattening out and losing muscle. They may also have terribly lagging bodyparts that they and their flunkies completely ignore or gloss over, even in the off-season when improvements could have been made. These are usually the people who, when they fail to place as highly as expected, become enraged and sure they were ‘screwed over’ and ‘robbed’ by the judges, who in their idiocy failed to recognize their magnificence.

I have competed so many times and have been to so many contests over the past couple decades that I have developed a very good eye. I can look in the mirror and see where I still need to be leaner. And I also have a few good friends that also compete, who will look at me in the weeks leading up to a contest and honestly tell me where I stand. It’s tough to hear that you still have a lot of work left to do when you think you’re already dieting as hard as you can or should, but like I said, it’s priceless to have friends like this who both know what they are looking at and are not afraid to be brutally honest with you. If you know you need to step things up, you can and will. If all you hear is how perfect you look, which is what the typical person in the gym will often tell you since they don’t know the standards you will be judged by, you could be set up for a major shock and disappointment on contest day. I have been that guy, and I have seen that guy (or girl) dozens of times.

To make your odds of success even better, it’s wise to invest in a few items from Parrillo Performance: the Nutrition Manual that also includes Diet Trac sheets and a food scale so you can zero your diet down to a science, and the BodyStat Kit that includes the BodyStat Manual and skinfold calipers so you can monitor your body composition as the weeks go by. The scale never tells the whole story and can’t accurately indicate if you are achieving what you want to – which is to maintain your muscle mass while gradually losing fat. Even the mirror and photos can’t do that!

So should you hire a guru, or be your own guru? Either choice is fine. If you hire someone, look for a person with a proven track record who also acts in a professional manner and responds with reasonable promptness to your phone calls, emails, or text messages. And if you opt to take the journey of contest prep on your own, be sure to educate yourself and have access to at least one knowledgeable and honest person who can give you feedback on a regular basis. The bottom line is that you want to be in shape on contest day!

Young Jared had asked me these questions before, and I always replied with the same thing:

“Who the hell knows?”

I know that could easily be interpreted any number of ways: flippant, sarcastic, callous, or uncaring – but it was totally sincere. And today, as Jared joined me on the only other StepMill in our gym after we had both trained back on a rainy day in late May, I decided to finally elaborate and make him understand that his ultimate potential was still so far from being realized that trying to estimate now was futile.

“When I started out as a teenager, nobody thought I was going to develop a physique that was anything special,” I began. “I was skinny, I didn’t have a particularly large structure, and there were already plenty of kids bigger and more muscular than me around – some of whom had never even touched a weight,” I explained. “Throughout my late teens as I would proudly announce my plans to be a champion bodybuilder, the reactions would range from laughter to pity at what they took for my delusions or impossible dreams.”

“How good did you think you could be back then?” Jared asked, talking to me but keeping his eyes glued to a young female kickboxer, heavily tattooed, doing squats at the other end of the gym. Man did this kid have amazing vision. Even with my glasses I could hardly make out who it was from this distance.

“I hoped to look like the guys in the magazines, but deep down I never really believed I could ever do it. I just wasn’t putting on size very quickly and it seemed like at the rate I was going, I never would.”

“So when did you finally start growing?” he asked.

“See, that’s the thing – I was growing all along, just very slowly,” I told him. “The gains were so gradual that it was impossible to really notice them since I saw myself every day. But every ounce of muscle that I fought and scraped for was adding up over time, month after month and year after year. If I had let discouragement get to me and quit at any point along the way, I would never have known how good I would eventually be.”

Jared turned his attention back to me. “Well,” he hesitated, “you never really did get to look exactly like the guys in the magazines, the pro’s, right?” I could see he was worried he had offended me with his observation.

“I’m definitely not a pro but technically, I am in the magazines,” I said, correcting him. “I’ve shot with Mike Neveaux for Ironman magazine five different times and have appeared in there dozens of times, and I’ve had a monthly column in Parrillo Performance Press for over eighteen years now.”
“Dang, that’s as long as I’ve been alive,” he marveled.

“Indeed, I am ancient,” I agreed. “I’ll tell you this, though. If you had shown the teenage me photos of me today at over forty, I would have been very happy with this end result as it’s more than what I ever truly expected or hoped for. I never did have the genetics to be a pro bodybuilder. Most people don’t. But if I hadn’t put the work in, training hard and heavy all those years, consuming enough food and Parrillo supplements to feed an army, and most of all continued to keep striving to improve long after people assured me I had taken my physique as far as it could go, I never would have built the physique that I have today.”

The kickboxer was now closer to us on the Butt Blaster machine, kicking one leg back and upward, and flexing her ample glute, the bottom of which was peeking out from the shorts she was wearing. Jared’s mouth was open but to his credit, he somehow continued our conversation.

“But really, how good do you think I can be, Ron?” I sighed.

“You’ve only been training seriously now for a couple years,” I began. “In the grand scheme of things, that’s not very long at all. Granted, most of the top pro’s put on outrageous amounts of muscle in their first couple years,” I said.

“Like how much?”

“Let’s see, Jay Cutler was 180 pounds when he started training, and four months later he was up to 230 pounds,” I said.

“Wait, did you say months or years?” Jared asked, incredulous.

“It was indeed only four months, and he added fifty pounds.  A year later and he was up another thirty pounds to 260.”

“What the firetruck!” Jared exclaimed, using the same version of the F word that my 11-year-old son does. “That’s ridiculous!” I nodded, pausing to grab my towel and wipe down my face, which by now was streaming sweat. I hated the StepMill with a passion, but it was so effective at burning fat.

“I know it is. But Jay is a genuine genetic freak, someone who was meant to be enormous. Even looking at photos of him from before he started lifting, he was a big, husky kid. It would take a lot of guys years of dedicated lifting and eating just to get to where he was then. And the way his body responded to the training, eating, and supplements was nothing short of miraculous. Guys like that are very, very rare.”

“I sure haven’t made progress like that,” Jared noted, sounding crestfallen but perking up dramatically when the kickboxer girl put her phone and water bottle on the treadmill directly in front of him to begin her cardio.

“No, but in the four years I’ve known you now you have added a lot of good size and strength. I’ve talked you out of competing only because I know it would have interfered with your school and your football, but you could do very well at a local show in the teenage class now.”
“Really? Which one?” His excitement was impossible to miss. He had been looking for me to give him the green light for a very long time.

“I’ll look into it and get back to you soon,” I assured him. “But what you need to get through your head now is that if you commit to bodybuilding for the rest of your years and take the attitude that you can and will keep improving, you will be very pleasantly surprised one day at how far you’ve come and the physique you built. You’ll look at old pictures of yourself and be amazed at the progress you’ve made. But none of it will happen without having faith and a whole lot of patience. You’ve got very decent genetics, but like most guys it’s going to take years and years of hard work to make the most of them. Nobody knows how good you can be – not you, me, or anybody. And the only way to find out is to try your hardest.”

I was done, and I stepped down and approached the paper towel dispenser with the bottle of disinfectant hanging next to it. I tore off a sheet and sprayed it, gesturing to Jared to take it.

“No, I’m gonna do a few more minutes,” he informed me, never taking his eyes off the rear view of the girl in front of him. She looked back over her shoulder. There was no way she had heard him, as the music blasting from her iPod was so loud I could hear it from several feet away (meaning she would probably need a hearing aid someday), but we humans do have the uncanny ability to sense when someone is staring at us.

“Okay, kid,” I said, smiling back at him and grateful my own hormones were no longer raging like that. It certainly made focusing on things a lot easier. Jared was far from reaching his ultimate potential, and would probably keep improving noticeably for at least the next 12-15 years if he kept with it. As for me, I was well over 27 years into consistently working out, and my gains were indeed agonizingly slow and hard to come by at this point. But I refuse to give up because I still have that voice in the back of my head that asks, if you quit now, how will you know how good you could have been?

“Never,” had been his reply. Considering he had started training a couple years before the first Star Wars movie came out, I had to pat myself on the back on that one.

Jeff happened to be doing cardio on an elliptical runner with one available to his right, which was ideal for me. I have about 50% loss of hearing in my right ear but don’t care enough to get a hearing aid, so in any conversations I rely on either having the person to my left, or tilting my left ear slightly toward them. I had my stupid iPod nano with me, but like I said last time I hate it. I spend more time trying to get back to the main screen to select another song and cursing at the gadget than I do using it for my workout soundtrack. As my wife will tell you, I lack the patience and common sense to simply read the directions, so in ignorance and frustration shall I remain. But talking distracts me from the tedium of cardio much better than music for the most part anyway, so I welcomed this opportunity to catch up with Jeff.

“How’d the workout go?” I asked.

“Just cardio today,” he answered. “Not feeling up to weights, and had too much crap yesterday at the house watching the game.” By ‘the game’ he meant the Boston Red Sox versus their eternal rivals the New York Yankees. I should also explain that rarely was any viewing of sports at Jeff’s home a private affair. I had dropped in once during a playoffs game with the New England Patriots over a year ago, and well over two dozen people were in his living room for the experience.

His was no ordinary living room. Cathedral ceilings also featured massive skylights. Two sectional sofas and four loungers wrapped around the expansive room (the square footage of which easily exceeded that of my entire house), enough to comfortably seat a platoon. Glass cases on the walls showcased his memorabilia: signed jerseys from past stars of the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins, as well as signed baseballs, foot-balls, and hockey sticks. You almost felt like you were in a museum devoted to Boston sports. And the TV – holy moley. It had to be a good hundred inch flat screen mounted up on the wall facing the viewing audience. There was also a fully stocked bar, complete with neon beer signs, that was often put to good use.

Yesterday’s little get-together had probably been a little more crowded than usual. There was renewed inter-est in the Red Sox now that they were winning again. The season had started with their worst record since the year World War II had ended, 1945, shaking the faith of fans who were no doubt having flashbacks of the long wait from 1918-2004 for a World Series win. The Sox had done it again in ‘07, but what if we were in for an-other 86-year drought?

I knew the type of food that was served up in Jeff’s ‘living room,’ which if it only had servers and busboys would more accurately be called a sports bar: pizza, buffalo wings, chips, dip, nachos and cheese, soda, and enough beer to float a speedboat – and incidentally, Jeff had one of those docked near his condo in Miami Beach. Though Jeff was wearing a fairly loose-fitting T-shirt, my trained eye is very tough to fool. He had been looking a little leaner for a while there, but now it was clear he had packed the flab back on again. And my Spidey sense told me it was all linked to that wonderful living room and the indulgence in all the wrong foods and beverages that took place there on weekend game days.

“You eat pretty good all week, don’t you Jeff?” He didn’t hesitate.

“Oh yeah. Healthy breakfast; egg whites and oatmeal, usually grilled chicken breast with some rice and a salad for lunch, something like salmon and another big salad for dinner, and I have Parrillo Hi-Protein™ shakes or Protein Chew Bars™ in between – those bars are addicting.”

“I know,” I agreed. “But on weekends, you eat a bunch of garbage and put down a ton of beer.”

“Not every weekend,” he clarified, and I gave him a sidelong glance. I pointed to his belly, which was clearly starting to protrude again.

“Do you remember how you could almost see your abs a few months ago? I mean, in the right light, I think you said you actually could see the outlines of a six-pack.” He nodded. “Now, forget a six-pack – you have a case going on there.” Jeff sighed and picked up the pace a little on his elliptical machine. Just to give him a bit of friendly rivalry, I went faster too.

“You realize that this pattern is nothing more than taking two steps forward and one back, over and over again,” I stated. “You give your body exactly the type of fuel it needs to look and perform at its peak for five days, and then you basically poison it with nutritionally bankrupt fried foods, processed food, saturated fat, salt, and sugar. No wonder you don’t feel like training today, your poor body is trying to recover from the crap you put into it all weekend!”

He threw his hands up in the air for a second. “What am I supposed to do? All my friends are eating that stuff and I’m going to sit there with a freaking chicken breast and green beans?”

“Yes,” I deadpanned. “That’s exactly what you need to do. Listen, there was a time in both our lives when we could eat whatever we wanted and still looked pretty good. That ship has sailed. Our metabolisms are a lot less forgiving after age forty, but as long as you keep working out hard and consistently and put the same ef-fort into eating right, you can still be just as lean and mean as the younger guys.”

“Yeah, but I’m going to feel like a jackass eating clean food in front of them while they’re putting down wings, nachos, and Budweisers.”

“Listen,” I told him, “I went with my family to watch some crappy animated 3-D movie about birds in Rio yes-terday. While my son was munching on popcorn and slurping on a blue raspberry Icee, I was eating a cold chicken breast and green beans out of a plastic zip-lock bag I’d smuggled in my cargo pocket. People around me thought I was out of my mind, I’m sure, but I could give a rat’s ass. In your case, aren’t all these people en-joying your very generous hospitality in the first place? I’m assuming you and your wife typically provide most if not all of the food and drinks?”

He shrugged. “They usually call up for the pizzas, but yeah, I have everything else.”

“Alright then. You could be eating live baby pythons and they really shouldn’t be saying crap to you about it. You can’t keep screwing up your diet like this or else not only can you forget about ever competing again, but I’m afraid sooner or later you’ll really have a big old potbelly and nice mushy love handles. How’s that sound?” Knowing Jeff still took pride in working out and being in shape, his scowl was all the answer I needed.

“Okay, from now on I stick to my diet no matter who comes over and what they want to eat in front of me,” he announced.

“Hallelujah,” I said. “And if they don’t like it, they can watch the game in my living room – it’s probably the size of your master bathroom.” Jeff didn’t answer. He wasn’t one to brag.

“And just to give you a little incentive to stick to your new vow, let’s train legs bright and early next Monday morning. I won’t tell you what we’ll be doing in the workout, but suffice to say that you’ll need a lot of good food Saturday and Sunday to make it through. Deal?” I stuck out my hand and he shook it, though I could al-ready sense the dread he was beginning to experience a full week before this workout would happen.

“Deal,” he said.

Branch was not born with the best genetics for bodybuilding. Allow me to qualify that statement. Whenever we talk about pro bodybuilders, it must be assumed that they all have fantastic and gifted genetics compared to the average guy or girl in the gym. Just as you don’t play major league baseball or pro football without having an extraordinary natural athletic talent, neither will you ever build a physique resembling a pro bodybuilder unless like Lady Gaga sings, ‘baby you were born this way.’ Among those genetic elite though, there are varying degrees of gifts. All pro bodybuilders have the DNA to build extreme amounts of muscle mass, but they don’t all have the same genes for ideal bone structure and muscle shape. Those who fall at the extreme end of that spectrum look more like Marvel Comics superheroes than human beings: with tiny joints and round, swelling, balloon-like muscles. Google images for men like Dexter Jackson, Phil Heath, Victor Martinez, Kai Greene, and Roelly Winklaar for examples of this cartoonish appearance.

Branch Warren began competing at the age of 16, and the older guys at his gym told him he would never win a contest. By 18 he had won the Teen Nationals, beating out reigning and 4-time Mr. Olympia for the Overall in the process. Then he was assured this was as far as he would go in the sport. His genetics all seemed to be in his lower body at the time. After college he decided it was time to go for his pro card. Again he was met with ridicule, discouraging remarks, and doubters. It didn’t help that he trained at the same gym as one of the most genetically gifted men the world has ever known, Ronnie Coleman, who had already started his eight-year rule as Mr. Olympia. Branch even tore his biceps the year before he was to try to turn pro. Since his arms were often the target of insult as they paled in comparison to his monstrous quads, hams, and calves, this gave the doubters even more fuel to be sure he was destined to fail. Believing in himself and that he could do anything he set his mind to if he only worked hard enough, Branch persevered and won his pro card at the 2001 NPC Nationals.

Yet again, few predicted much from Branch as a pro. Unless he was somehow able to get his upper body to match his legs, he would never be anything more than a second-rate Tom Platz, known for freakish wheels and not much else (Platz was enormously popular, yet never won a pro show in his eight-year career in the IFBB). Knowing his work was cut out for him, Branch bided his time and toiled away for nearly three more years before entering his first pro show, where he hardly set the world on fire with eighth place. But by the end of his second pro season, he had won two shows. “Branch might be able to do well at the smaller shows,” his critics conceded, “but he can never win the Arnold Classic or the Mr. Olympia. His arms still need work and his back sucks.” Over the next few years, Branch blasted his arms and his back. At the 2009 Mr. Olympia, he shocked the entire industry by taking second place to Jay Cutler, beating out all those genetically ‘superior’ men like Heath, Dexter, Kai, and Victor.

A fluke! That’s what the doubters said this time. He had been second at the Arnold Classic and now second at the O, and these would be his crowning moments. Branch should be grateful he at least came close enough to taste winning one of the two big shows, and go back to his grimy hardcore dungeon outside of Dallas. But as you have probably figured out by this point, Branch is anything but a quitter and refused to accept that he had hit the ceiling.

At the recent Arnold Classic, I was fortunate enough to be there to watch Branch totally dominate the contest from start to finish. His back, once a liability, was now his ace in the hole when the lineup turned around. Because he persevered and never listened to all who told him he would never do it, Branch was the man at the end of that night with his hand raised in victory by Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, as well as taking home 130 grand in cash and a 20-thousand-dollar watch. Not a bad haul for a day’s work!

Most of us were not blessed with phenomenal genetics. For us to sculpt our bodies into the image we have dreamed of in our minds takes years and years of dedication and discipline: thousands of intense workouts, tens of thousands of meals with quality food, untold dollars invested in quality supplements like the Parrillo Performance brand, and attention to rest and recovery. I know when I decided to become a bodybuilder way back when Ronald Reagan was President, I showed only slightly more potential than your average undernourished crackhead. People laughed when I announced I was going to become big and strong, and told me I was setting myself up for crushing failure. Luckily I was so determined to reach my goals that I didn’t listen, no matter how many people let me know they were certain I couldn’t do it – and there were many over the years. Am I a pro? Will I ever stand next to Branch and Jay and battle for the Arnold Classic or the Mr. Olympia titles? Nope. But I have managed to become what I always wanted to be and would never stop working toward becoming.

All of you reading this have your own particular goals and dreams related to your body. And I am willing to bet you have all had to deal with people who told you to give up and forget about those foolish, unrealistic dreams. But you know what? You have the choice to listen to them and accept failure, or to ignore their negativity and go for the physique you want. Know that if you keep working your ass off in the gym, feed your muscle with the best food and supplements, and believe in yourself, you will only get closer and closer to making your dream a reality with every passing day. Underdogs who beat the odds like Branch Warren show us anything is possible if you want it badly enough.

Episode 49: ‘Fun days’ to fry a bodypart

By Ron Harris

Being highly self-motivated, I train just as well on my own as with a partner. Actually, I do a lot better on my own than I do with a partner I don’t ‘click’ with. You’ve all heard the cliché about how you’re better off alone than you are in a bad relationship, right? As far as I’m concerned, that’s just as true in the gym. My workouts are extremely important to me, because each one is a one-time chance to improve my physique that will never come again. Because we are mortals and not like those pasty stylish vampires from the Twilight movies, we will have many workouts in our lives; but the unarguable fact remains that there is a finite amount of them. I don’t like to waste them.

This is why I cringe whenever I am contacted by someone I don’t know who wants to catch a workout with me. Yes, I am flattered that some people feel they know me enough from my writing to want to workout with me, but they don’t understand what they are asking. The truly clueless will invite me to come to their gym, often anywhere from an hour to four hours drive away from where I live. As much as they assure me how fantastic their gym is, I don’t have entire days to spend driving to meet some stranger. Yeah, sure, I will have my wife take a day off work to drive the kids to school and pick them up just so I can meet Joe Random to train shoulders two states away! My writing is a full-time job, even if I do get to work at home and make my own hours; so losing entire days of work is not an option for me except very rarely.

But even more than the time commitment, training is a private, intimate thing to me. Meeting a stranger to work out is on the same level as accepting a blind date with someone. Of course, these days nobody even has to deal with blind dates. Luckily I am happily married, but if I were single I would do what all the others who date do these days: a background check more thorough than the FBI’s screening process for would-be agents. Now you can investigate a person via their profile on an online dating service as well as run a credit check and see if they have a criminal record. It’s a lot more high-tech than when I was young and the extent of what you were told was that either the girl is attractive, or that she had a wonderful personality (which typically meant she wouldn’t be winning any beauty pageants). Suffice to say that I was both wary and uncomfortable accepting invitations to train with people I knew only from brief email correspondences. Even if they were willing to come to my gym, I usually found a polite way to decline the offer.

Lately I had been training solo and loving it for the most part. Not having a spotter was not an issue with me. All my pressing for chest and shoulders is done with dumbbells or machines, so there’s no risk of getting stuck under a 500-pound barbell while bench pressing. Actually, there never was a risk of that as my best bench back when I did that exercise was nearly 200 pounds less! My gym has a power rack, and that’s where I squat. One tremendous benefit of training without a spotter is that I never have an ounce of doubt whether or not I did the reps on my own power. Spotters love to yell ‘It’s all you!’ Usually this means they are helping out quite a bit. But I digress.

The only times I would train with someone at my gym were a couple times a month when my only client’s father, Jeff,needed a little kick on leg days. For most of his life he had put very little effort into training his back or legs, and it showed. Today happened to be my leg day, and I had arranged to meet up with him. Jeff had let me know in advance that he wouldn’t be squatting today, having tweaked his lower back doing seated military presses earlier in the week. Squats are the king of leg builders, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hammer your quads and hams without them if need be. After warming up with five minutes on the stationary bike, I gave Jeff the good news.

“We’re going to do something fun today,” I announced. “And the best part is, your legs will get some excellent growth stimulation too.” Jeff appeared skeptical. I had been known to falsely represent torture as enjoyable on previous occasions.

“What exactly did you have in mind?” he queried.

“We’ll do just a couple exercises for hamstrings, and then only one for quads. You’ll see!” My cheery attitude had him on edge. Jeff knew that I was dead-set on helping him bring up his legs, and whatever I had in store was going to involve hard work.

After four sets each of lying and seated leg curls, I gathered up my little bag that contains all my various wraps, straps, iPod nano (which I hate, as the touch screen is about the size of a thumbnail and thus incredibly difficult to maneuver around), etc, and walked over to the leg press.

“The leg press?” Jeff asked in disbelief. “You told me this was too easy and didn’t hold a candle to squats as far as being effective,” he reminded me.

“You said your back was jacked up. You weren’t just telling me that to get out of squats, were you?” Jeff looked offended.

“I don’t lie,” he stated simply, looking me in the eye. I knew he didn’t, and I admired that trait in him.

“Good. Training can be tedious and repetitive, so sometimes it’s a good idea to shake things up with something different. You can take one basic exercise and turn it into a whole workout with a little creativity. We’re going to do something simple today called Centuries on the leg press.”

“Centuries, as in 100?” Jeff asked.

“Very good guess! But you’re getting ahead of yourself.” There was a leg extension a few feet away from the leg press, and I had already decided I would hit a few good sets on it to pre-exhaust my own quads while Jeff did his initial sets. I put a 45 on each side of the leg press and told him to do ten reps while I started my extensions. He was done well before my first set had ended.

“That was really easy,” he commented.

“I know,” and I added a second plate, gesturing for him to do the same on the other side. “Now do twenty reps.” I did my second set on the extensions, using half the stack for 20 reps.

“Still easy,” he reported.

“Three plates for thirty next,” I instructed. He knit his brows and added the plate along with me.

This time I was done before him, having stacked the leg extension for twenty reps. Now I was ready to join him. Jeff got up, now beginning to breathe heavy. A light sheen of sweat had already broken out on his forehead. I added a fourth plate. Jeff did the same, eyeing me suspiciously.

“How many of these am I supposed to do?” he asked.

“Oh, we’ll see,” I told him, unlocking the safety bars and doing my first set, four plates for forty reps. Thanks to the leg extensions I’d done, the four plates didn’t feel as ridiculously light as they normally would have. Getting up, I pointed to the seat. “You’re up, forty reps.”

Gritting his teeth, Jeff did it, though he had to pause at two points to catch his breath. I reminded him not to lock his knees, which would take tension off the quads, where we wanted it, and transfer it directly to the tendons and ligaments around the knees, which we most certainly did not want. This time, he had to grip the top of the platform and pull himself up. His legs were shaking and now the sweat was pouring down his face. I tossed him his gym towel to mop it off. He started walking toward a flat bench to sit down, but I intervened, calling out to him as I added the fifth plate to both sides by myself.

“No, you need to keep blood circulating, just walk around.” He shot me a look that could kill, gasping for air and thus temporarily unable to argue, but did as I said. I got my fifty reps with some effort. The pump and burn in my quads, glutes, and hams was starting to become painful. Now I had to haul myself up out of the seat, too. Wiping a splotch of my sweat from the seat back where my head had been resting, I motioned to Jeff.

“Let’s go, fifty reps.”

That turned out to be the limit for Jeff. After about thirty reps, I had to help him on every one. He sat there with his chin down on his chest and eyes closed when the set was over, sucking air like he’d sprinted up the steps of the Empire State Building. I added the sixth plates with him still there. One eye of his peeked open and he shook his head.

“Don’t worry, it’s not for you, buddy,” I reassured him.

I got the six plates for sixty, needing to pause three or four times along the way. Jeff was pacing in slow motion a few feet away, alternately sipping at his Parrillo 50/50 Plus™ shake in one hand and his water bottle in the other. I stripped two plates off each side and Jeff moved over to help. He thought we were done and was going to help unrack the weights.

“Forty reps,” I told him. Jeff growled something under his breath that I didn’t quite catch, though I was able to identify two distinct F bombs. Again I had to help him, this time for about the last half of the reps. I showed him I wasn’t asking him to suffer alone by slapping on three more plates for myself and attempting seven for seventy reps. I wasn’t sure if I made it or not because after about forty I lost count and just kept going, pausing after every two or three reps. I probably got all seventy. I rolled off the machine and lay on my back, making a sweat imprint on the black rubber mat floor.

“What about your blood circulation?” he demanded.

“Don’t. . .worry. . . about. . .me,” I croaked.

The last set I asked of Jeff was three plates for thirty, after which it was clear he was all done for the day. Sitting over by the juice bar a little later and knocking back our shakes despite both of us still feeling a bit nauseated from the extreme demands we’d placed on our nervous systems, I confirmed for Jeff that we had in fact not completed the Centuries.

“Theoretically, you work up to ten plates for a hundred reps, and then all the way back down in reverse order,” I explained. “As far as I know, nobody has ever actually done it. But it was a nice change of pace, wasn’t it?” Jeff nodded.

“My legs are already getting sore, and that usually doesn’t happen until a good three or four hours after the workout,” he said. “I don’t know if that was exactly fun like you said, but it kicked my ass.”

“You could do this with back too,” I suggested. “Next time you hit back, do a few sets of barbell rows and then try to get to 100 reps of chin-ups, no matter how many sets it takes you. For shoulders, you could take a moderate weight and see how many sets of lateral raises you can do with it and still keep your reps over eight. Just be creative and come up with anything that you can get enthusiastic about trying. It’s perfect for giving your mind and body something totally different from what they’re used to. You’ll stimulate new gains, and you can make a game out of it.” Jeff struggled up to his feet with a grimace.

“And you call this fun?”

“Yes I do – but we don’t all have the same definition of fun, do we?”