Episode 42: A leg to stand on

By Ron Harris

Having been training now for over a quarter-century and in a lot of different gyms, there is still one common sight that never ceases to disappoint me. So many times I will see a guy with an upper body that’s anywhere from better than average to highly impressive, but below the waist it seems he’s hardly trained his legs at all. The old joke used to be that in cases like these, there was always the legal danger of the upper body suing the legs for lack of support.

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Episode 41: Take pride in what you’ve built

By Ron Harris

The Internet haters were at it again. Actually, they seemed worse than ever and I chalked it up to the summer heat wave much of the USA was experiencing. When it’s 98 degrees and oppressively humid, they were all probably going through a gallon of Haterade a day. This provided them with all the carbs, electrolytes, and bitter, spiteful negativity a hard-working hater posting anonymously online craves.

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Episode 35: High reps have a purpose

The holidays were upon us at last. Spirits were high all around. A monster of a blizzard had dumped a foot and a half of the light, fluffy stuff on my town on December 20^th, ensuring that all-important White Christmas Big Crosby sang about. As for the Blue Christmas in the Elvis song, we even had that covered with the release of the blockbuster film Avatar, with blue aliens in 3-D.

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Episode 33: The absolute best time to grow

Those of us who have been bodybuilding for much of our lives – well over half, in my case – recognize that our earliest years of pumping iron were very much like the “Honeymoon Phase” in a marriage. In those thrilling days, it’s all fresh and new. You are getting bigger and stronger all the time.

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Episode 32: The True Meaning of Victory

From the expressions on the faces of Jeff and his son Jared as they greeted me in the lobby of the theater as I was leaving, you would think I had just lost a loved one. They both looked like they wanted to shake my hand and softly murmur, “Sorry for your loss.”

And technically, I had lost. At the Team Universe in New York City, the contest I had trained and dieted so long and hard for, I had only managed to place ninth out of thirteen light-heavyweights.

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A Bodybuilder Is Born: Generations Episode 31: You must find your own path

Summer was rapidly coming to an end, and so was my contest diet. As Labor Day was just around the corner, I had three weeks left before I got up on stage again all oiled up in little posing trunks – truly a manly sport! This was the ‘home stretch’ of the diet process, but it was by no means a time to coast. Carbohydrates had been lowered and replaced with CapTri® to keep up energy levels, but that didn’t stop the inevitable fatigue that became my constant companion.

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Contest Dieting, The Ups and Downs

Bitching about the weather is as much of a sport in New England as the Red Sox or the Patriots. But this summer so far was giving us all good reason to complain. Somehow, we were experiencing the soggy, rainy weather normally associated with Seattle. This was bad news not only because it set us up for an infestation of brooding teenage vampires with stylish hair like in the movie Twilight, but it was also limiting our already sparse amount of possible ‘beach days.’ On a recent Sunday when my wife had the day off, we decided to head to the shore for some fun in the sun. This turned out to be a terrible idea, as several million other people also had the same idea.

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So You Think You Train Hard?

School was out for the summer. This meant that my nine-year-old son’s first question each morning was no longer, “Why do I have to go to school today?” but instead “What am I going to do today?” When I was his age, that question was only an interior thought. I never expected my put-upon parental units to worry about my daily activity schedule or making sure I was constantly entertained and amused. Each morning I would set off on my bike and often didn’t return until dusk. I probably put a couple hundred miles on that Huffy between June and September every year.

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A Bodybuilder Is Born: Generations

The town I live in isn’t exactly a ‘small town’ in the classic sense. When I think of a small town, my mind conjures up a place with one stop light, a single general store complete with crusty old guys holding court in rocking chairs on the porch out front, and the same guy serving as town sheriff, minister, and small-appliance repairman. Also, there are only three different last names for a couple hundred people and they all share some dark, horrible secret that involves ritual human sacrifice, or worse – multilevel marketing.

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A Bodybuilder Is Born: Generations

Jared was going to hurt himself badly soon if he didn’t stop his slow but steady descent into the Land of Crappy Form. It’s true that he was young enough to bounce right back from all but the most serious catastrophes like full muscle tears or a herniated disk, but tempting fate is never a bright idea. Fate has a sick sense of humor. If you don’t believe that, turn on your TV or check today’s news online. You’ll see that a church roof caved in during Easter service killing 300 parishioners who had just finished raising the money to fix it, or that a whole school full of kids contracted meningitis from sharing the same drinking fountain during Dehydration Awareness Week.

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