What’s that sound? No, it’s not Snooki from Jersey Shore – it’s something I call the wambulance. Whenever someone around me starts whining and bitching about something trivial, and it almost always is, I announce that someone needs to call the wambulance.

Human nature dictates that we all easily fall into patterns of complaining, feeling sorry for ourselves, and making excuses.

When it comes to bodybuilders, we have practically made it into an art form. Ask any meathead why he hasn’t achieved either the physique he desires, brought up this or that weak bodypart, or won the contest he’s been talking about with plans to dominate for years, and you’d better have some snacks and a cold beverage handy. Once you get them started, they will gladly pour out their litany of justifications for their under-achievement.

“If my genetics were better. . .”

“If I used drugs. . .”

“If I had a sponsor and didn’t have to work. . .”

“If I didn’t have a family to take care

of. . .”

“If I didn’t live in this crappy city/state. . .”

“If I had someone to do all my

cooking. . .”

“If I had — for a coach/trainer/nutritionist. . .”

“If my back didn’t ache. . .”

“If I didn’t love junk food/fast food/booze so much. . .”

“If the stupid judges knew what a really great physique was. . . “

“If I had more supportive people around me to help keep me

motivated. . .”

Yes, these guys love to blame any number of reasons for why they can’t look the way they want to or win. Nowhere in there do you ever hear them take any personal responsibility for not training hard enough and consistently, eating quality meals and using quality supplements like the entire Parrillo Performance line of products, and not being sure to get plenty of sleep. To do so would be an admission of culpability, God forbid. These days more than ever, nothing is ever your fault. I find it all sickening, and a complete load of crap.

I have been fortunate enough to meet some bodybuilders over the years who have demonstrated incredible determination to succeed against all odds. One is Greg Rando, who despite being legally blind, earned his IFBB Pro card by winning the Team Universe, and more recently became one of the top natural pro bodybuilders in the world in the WNBF organization. You think training is tough for you? Try going just one workout with your eyes shut sometime! (On second thought, don’t – I don’t want to be held responsible for you walking head-on into the end of an Olympic bar.)

More recently I met another bodybuilder also from my native Boston area, named Mark Pereira. Mark was born with just a thumb on his left hand, with no fingers. Teased cruelly by the other kids growing up, he had plenty of challenges simply mastering everyday tasks that we all take for granted. Introduced by his uncles to weight training on a Universal machine, Mark graduated to free weights and made his own adaptations with the use of straps so that he could do any exercise in the gym, after having been told many times that he would never be able to train like a ‘true bodybuilder’ due to his disability. At age 30, Mark finally got the courage to compete, but failed to place in his first contest. Undaunted, he continued training hard and eating right and steadily worked his way up the ranks. In 2010 he won the Light-heavyweight and Overall titles at the NPC New England, our largest regional event, in a strong field with the best turnout the contest had in years.

Yeah, but he’s probably on disability or something and doesn’t have to do anything but eat, sleep, and train. I’m sure some of you may have jumped to that erroneous assumption. The fact is, Mark works full-time as a substance abuse counselor and he’s soon opening his own nutrition store too. Okay, then he must be a single guy with no one else to worry about, right? Try again. He’s married and has four kids. And Pereira is far from finished going after his competitive goals. After testing the waters at the Nationals this year and not placing, he is hell-bent on returning next year bigger and better and being a real contender in the always viciously competitive light-heavies.

So I dare you to look yourself in the mirror and tell me exactly why you don’t have the physique you want. And before you start to rattle off all your reasons and excuses, I want you to think about how much more difficult it would be for you to live your everyday life, much less try to build the best body possible, if you couldn’t see, or hear, or walk, or if you were missing fingers, a hand, a foot, an entire limb. Because guess what? There are people like that out there doing it, and they aren’t whining or complaining. They, who actually have a legitimate reason to feel sorry for themselves, don’t. They bravely grit their teeth and train their butts off, grateful for the clang of the iron and the pump of the muscles that reminds them that no matter what physical limitation they may have, they are still alive, and this is something they can do. In fact, they know they can do anything they set their minds to as long as they believe they can do it. It won’t be easy and there will be setbacks at times, but that’s part of the process.

Now look me in the eye and be completely honest as I ask you one last time.

What was your excuse again?

I was in the gym training legs, which is the only workout I no longer do with my wife. I would blame her new obsession with CrossFit, but the truth is that we became incompatible on leg days long before that. When one person is forever trying to get quads and hams like Tom Platz and the other doesn’t want to add so much as one more ounce of muscle to her legs, it makes for a mismatched training duo. We would usually end up arguing. I would get upset that she only needed a minute to recover from squatting 135, while it took me a good two or three before I could hit another set with 315-405. Having an aversion to making anyone wait around, it killed me to see her standing around looking like I was holding her back from continuing on with her workout and I usually accused her of impatience. That was all in my head of course, which further got on her nerves. After a while it was clear we needed to do legs on our own.

My companion now was my iPod, feeding me the soothing strains of Slipknot, Godsmack, Metallica, Pantera, and Marilyn Manson. I worked at my own pace, did the exercises I needed to, and all was well again. But occasionally if the timing was right, I would train legs with one of a handful of guys at the gym if they happened to be starting when I was. On this unseasonably hot day in late September, my client’s dad was walking toward the corner of the gym where all of our leg training equipment, save for the pieces in a machine circuit at the other end, were.

“Got legs today, Jeff?” I queried. Indeed he did, and he was happy for both the company and the motivation. All you had to do was look at Jeff to know leg day was not his favorite. It hadn’t even been a month since our frank conversation in which I let him know that unless he put in some seriously hard work building up his back and especially his legs, he shouldn’t even dream about stepping on a bodybuilding stage again after thirty years as he planned.

So we got down to it, doing leg extensions, the leg press, lying leg curls, and seated leg curls, before I picked up my stuff and headed over to the squat rack.

“Whoa, what, we’re doing squats?” Jeff asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, I like doing them last now because I don’t need to go as heavy to get the same feel in my quads, and it’s a lot safer on my back,” I explained. “I actually got the idea from Jay Cutler, who I think you would agree has some decent wheels on him.”

“Yeah, but I’m 52 years old,” he stammered, “I shouldn’t be squatting.” I looked him up and down.

“Really?” I asked. “So if I’m 41 now, when do I need to stop?” That threw him for a loop, and it took him a minute to formulate a comeback.

“It’s not like my legs are going to get much bigger anyway,” he explained. “You can’t really build your legs once you’re past 40.” Jeff stated this like it was a fact, not the decades-old myth that

it was.

“If your legs were already huge, I might agree with you,” I began. “But you’ve never worked them very hard.” He was about to dispute that, but instead shrugged his shoulders. He knew that

was true.

“Let me tell you a story told to me by two-time Arnold Classic champion Kai Greene,” I began. “When Kai was a teenager back in Brooklyn, a female personal trainer noticed his potential and decided to help him out by showing him how to do all the basic bodybuilding exercises,” I said. “One day he asked her why it was they never trained calves. She said oh, well you’re African-American, so you’ll never have good calves anyway.”

“Wow,” Jeff commented. “What a bitch.”

“Indeed,” I concurred. “But Kai decided that was a bunch of crap, and started working his calves that very day just to spite her and prove her wrong. Today, Kai does not have the best calves in the sport, but they sure ain’t bad. If he had believed that bull that working them was a complete waste of time and that he had no chance of ever building them, they would still be the sticks they were when he was younger. Kai was also told he would never amount to anything in life and later that his dream of being a top pro bodybuilder was impossible. Guess he showed them, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Jeff agreed.

“On the way to making your fortune, I bet a lot of people tried to discourage you and tell you to settle for more mediocre goals, didn’t they?” He nodded.

“They sure did. And when the real estate market crashed, all I heard was how I was going to lose everything I had.”

“Good thing you didn’t listen, huh?” I asked. “So why would you pay any more attention to those morons who say there is some magical age cut-off where you can’t squat and you can’t build an ounce of muscle on your legs? Can’t you see how ridiculous it is? We all do have some level of genetic limitation, but the fact is that very few people ever actually reach it. They never put in the time and effort because they’ve set limits on what they can achieve, or they believed in limitations others told them existed. So Jeff, are you gonna do some freaking squats with me now or what?”

He did them, and his form had a lot of room for improvement. That’s because he had probably only done three or four sets of squats in the past twenty years. But I was patient and would not let him give up. By the end of the workout, he was starting to get the hang of the proper movement and I could see he was encouraged.

“I never went down deep like that, it’s a lot harder,” he noted.

“Ass to the grass, because nothing will build your quads and hams like full squats,” I replied. “Just don’t plan on going up or down any stairs for a couple days, that’s all.” He looked alarmed at that, but I did feel it was my duty to warn him about the intense soreness that would be settling into his entire lower body by this evening.

Setting limits on what you can and can’t do is the worst form of self-sabotage. Once you are able to overcome those negative perceptions, you are well on your way to being all that you can be. What will you ultimately achieve? I can’t tell you for sure, but I can promise you that you are capable of more than you think you are, and you will never know until you break free from the shackles of limiting beliefs and give it all you can.

Ron Harris

And not just any automobile would do for my princess. Over the last year and a half she had shifted from wanting a Cadillac Escalade (ha ha!), to a Dodge Charger (again, ha ha!), to a Ford Mustang GT (smoke another one, junior), to what she currently coveted, a Chrysler 300. And just to show that she wasn’t completely unreasonable, it didn’t have to be brand-new off the lot. She would settle for one that was two years old, possibly three. Depending on which trim line you were looking to buy, the price on such a used vehicle could range from 13,000 to 23,000 bucks. In accordance with the rather generous offer I had made to match whatever she had saved, which at last bank statement was just over one thousand dollars, my delusional teen was nowhere remotely close to having the cash for that particular car. Once she was in school, I would be free most of the day from having to drive her around as well as her constant badgering to simply be a great dad and just buy her the car.

My sole personal training client Jared was about to start his Senior year, and his father Jeff was excited. Jared would be starting quarterback for our town’s high school team, so this would be his final season and the one where he would be scouted by more than a few NCAA Division 1 schools. Incidentally, Jeff, whose net worth was something like 100 times that of my own, had bought his son a car last year – a 2002 Toyota Camry that Jared paid his own insurance and gas for. I happened to be doing some cardio next to Jeff, who I hadn’t seen in a while, when I asked him about his plans to return to the bodybuilding stage after three decades away. Jeff had entertained a couple different shows over the past year for a possible ‘comeback,’ but there didn’t seem to be any real urgency. Based on my own experience, I knew that lacking a deadline and the sense of urgency that came with it could be a bad thing.

“So Jeff,” I asked. “Do you have any idea when you want to compete?”

“Not really, I guess,” he replied. “But don’t worry, I remember from that talk we had a couple years back about how long it would take me to diet down. I’ll be sure to allow plenty of time for that.”

“That’s all well and good, but the dieting part isn’t what I’m concerned about.”

“Really?” For a moment Jeff thought that may have been a roundabout compliment. “Well, I have been eating a little better and staying leaner than I was,” he said. “You can tell?”

Sensing he had mistaken what I was getting at, I wisely made sure to validate his efforts. “Yeah, you’re definitely not holding anywhere near as much bodyfat as you were for a while there, so the diet won’t be as long and rough once the time comes,” I noted. “But I’m afraid that without knowing when you will compete and having no real timeline to adhere to, you’re not making the most of your off-season. And one thing I always try to emphasize is that contests are really won or lost in the off-season. Assuming you diet strictly and do your cardio, anybody can get in shape. But the physique you see on stage when the fat is gone is the product of how hard you worked in the gym and how well you ate in the off-season before the diet.”

“Well, once I start getting ready for the show, I would be a lot more focused on all that,” Jared said.

“That’s too late,” I bluntly stated.

“Too late? Why?”

“Once you start dieting and cutting back on calories and carbs and adding in more cardio, you won’t be in the position to make much in the way of muscle gains. At that point your goal really becomes holding on to your existing muscle mass while you strip away all the bodyfat.” Jeff shrugged. He didn’t get it. I sighed. This man paid me very well to train his son and I liked him a lot. The Tag Heur watch I loved and wore every day had been a gift from this guy. Hurting his feelings was the last thing I wanted to do. But he was a straight shooter, so I knew he would appreciate my honesty.

“Jeff, your back has definitely come up since I pointed out your lack of development, but it’s a long way from being as good as your chest, shoulders, and arms,” I began.

“Okay,” he said, suddenly looking serious. I hoped he wasn’t about to jump into defensive mode here.

“And your legs – they still have a long way to go to match your upper body. I do give you credit, because they are bigger than they used to be, but I have to be real with you. They’re still a liability.” He nodded and was quiet for a minute. Jeff knew I was right.

“Honestly, I hate the term off-season,” I remarked. “When you hear it, what do you immediately think?” I asked.

“Well, like in other sports, I guess,” he replied. “Maybe they do conditioning work, but there are no practices and it’s definitely not as demanding as the playing season.”

“Right,” I agreed. “But the thing is, bodybuilding isn’t like that. We’re always either training to make improvements in lean body mass and eating lots of good food and quality supplements like the ones Parrillo makes, or else we are dieting to get shredded for a contest. You can separate the phases as distinct, but there is no break in the action. We work hard year-round – or at least we are supposed to. Assuming everyone shows up in shape, which never happens at the regional level but let’s just say it does, the physiques that stand out belong to the guys and girls who were really putting in the effort in the off-season.”

“Okay, so I admit I’ve been slacking,” he conceded. “What do you suggest?”

“Pick a show, right now. I think next year’s New England would be perfect. The show is held in October, so that gives you just over a year – thirteen months.” Jeff was taken aback.

“That’s a long time away, Ron!” I shook my head.

“Not really,” I countered. “If we figure you are going to need a solid sixteen weeks to gradually diet down, which is about right given the fact that your metabolism at over the age of 50 ain’t what it used to be, that realistically gives you nine more months to bring up your back and legs as much as possible. Again, at your age, and being over 40 now I’m not so far behind you, we don’t add lean muscle mass very quickly, just as we don’t lose bodyfat as fast as we did in our younger years. Nine months sounds like a long time – enough time to go from zygote to newborn baby – but trust me, it’s not a lot of time when you’re talking about adding muscle and brining up bodyparts. I will work with you and come up with some good routines for you to follow for back and legs, but you need to commit to working very hard for the next nine months. Every workout has to be intense, and every meal counts. How well you do in your comeback show, how good you look, depends on it. You’ll be in shape regardless, but that’s not enough. If you bring a ripped version of the physique I’m looking at now, it might not be good enough. Do you want to be the old guy with a big chest and arms with no back or legs?”

Jeff laughed. “No, not really. It’s a deal, I’ll do what you say.”

Meanwhile, my Blackberry showed three new text messages from my daughter, who was at the mall with her eighteen-year-old cousin. They were three photos from different angles of the same car in the parking lot – a Chrysler 300. The only text accompanying these was a series of question marks.

“If you’re asking me if you should break in & hot-wire it, I think that’s a terrible idea,” I replied. “That’s grand theft auto – and not the video game, the felony charge.” At the rate she was saving money, that may have been the only way she would be driving her current dream car – but I wasn’t raising a thief. The saga of her yearning for a dope set of wheels would just have to continue.

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.

Even recently at my gym as summer had pushed the mercury into the 90’s and kept it there for a few weeks straight, I’d only learned the ‘shameful secret’ of a few guys after seeing them in shorts for the first time. In all cases, these were men who did not compete in bodybuilding and to the best of my knowledge, had no aspirations to. As far as I knew, they were perfectly happy with possessing exceptional muscular development in the chest, shoulders, arms, and in some cases, back (a lot of these guys typically don’t have very good backs, either, which is not a coincidence). Unless they went to the beach, they could continue to cover up those chicken legs and stick calves in jeans, slacks, long baggy shorts, or whatever. This is, of course, their prerogative and really none of my damn business. I do find it interesting to note that my wife is attracted to muscular men, but those without big legs to match the buffness upstairs never get a second look. I don’t know how many other women feel the same way, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them do.

When it comes to competitive bodybuilding, occasionally legs can be a deciding factor. I recently attended the first annual IFBB Battle of Champions in Hartford, Connecticut. Though there were also Open men, female bodybuilding, Figure, and pro bikini events being held, the toughest and most closely-watched battle of the weekend was in the pro 202 division. This is somewhat ironic, because when the 202 class was introduced three years ago a lot of people considered it a joke. They had assumed it would be nothing more than a pseudo ‘handicapped’ division for the shorter and lighter pro bodybuilders who had no prayer of hanging with the bigger men, and that this provided them with an opportunity to compete against other shrimps. As time went by, we saw that the 202’s carried plenty of size, were typically in much sharper condition on a whole than the open men, and often had better overall balance and symmetry to boot.

At the Hartford show, the 202 title came down to two men. One was the heavy favorite going into the contest, David ‘The Giant Killer’ Henry, who had done quite well as a pro even before this lighter weight division was created. Henry’s back has been called a miniature version of Ronnie Coleman’s, and his chest, shoulders, and arms are equally freaky. He has that round ‘bubbly’ look to those muscles that makes you wonder if they are somehow inflated with air, as they look ready to burst. Dave’s legs aren’t bad, but compared to his upper body they are nothing special. They certainly don’t match the freakiness going on from his waist up.

His main opposition came in the form of my friend Jose ‘The Boston Mass’ Raymond. At 5-3 and 195 shredded pounds, Jose is built like a tank. Though Henry clearly edged him out on chest and back, Jose had everything else, including amazing wheels with killer sweep to the quads. He was also sharper in the glutes and hams. In the end, the judges decided to give Jose first place over David with a perfect score, leaving no room for arguments that it could have gone either way on that particular day. I’ve seen Jose train legs a few times and I’ve even been lucky enough to join him on a couple occasions. The man is as strong as he looks. On squats he has done 500 pounds for 15 deep reps (he always squats below parallel), 405 for 31, and front squats with 405 for 12. Though he’s only 35, he’s been training just as long as me because he started ridiculously young. Even as a teenager he was squatting 315 for sets of 25-30 reps. What I’m getting at is that regardless of his genetic gifts, Jose has worked damn long and hard for those insane legs of his.

And when you get down to it, that’s the reason most guys in the gym and even a lot of those who consider themselves bodybuilders don’t have leg development on par with their upper bodies. Let’s face it – areas like the chest and arms are a blast to train. Have you ever once heard someone complain, “ah crap, it’s arm day today.” Chest training is so popular that a large percentage of young men (and some not so young) will often train it two or three times a week, or hit chest and arms two or three times before getting around to legs – if they ever get around to them at all. Of those who do train legs, only a few really push themselves. Instead of gut-busting squats, they opt for the easier and more comfortable leg press. Laying down with back support is a whole lot less demanding than bending down and standing back up over and over again with a heavy bar across your back! A few sets there doing little half reps, a couple light sets of leg extensions and leg curls, and see ya next time, all done!

This pales in comparison to how the men who built the greatest legs ever trained and continue to train theirs. Tom Platz, ‘The Golden Eagle,’ was legendary for his intensity and for going miles beyond standard failure. Some of his feats in the gym have acheived mythic status, such as squatting with 225 for a full ten minutes non-stop, and 350 pounds for a mind-boggling 52 reps. If any of you have watched training videos of men like Dorian Yates, Ronnie Coleman, or Branch Warren, you know that leg workouts for them were almost inhuman displays of strength, willpower, endurance, and a willingness to endure levels of pain that would probably kill some men. There was nothing ‘fun’ about those workouts, just brutal intensity and hard work. Few people are willing to generate that amount of intensity, work that hard, or tolerate so much discomfort. And so, you don’t see a lot of great wheels out there.

But rather than be discouraged by these facts, we should all see the golden opportunity that presents itself to us.  If you decide that you will refuse to let your physique be unbalanced and that you will put just as much time and effort into training legs as you do your upper body muscle groups, I guarantee you that you’ll stand out from the crowd. I’m not promising you that you will ever have wheels like Tom Platz or Branch Warren or Jose Raymond or that your legs will ever be the deciding factor in winning a pro bodybuilding contest, but I can assure you that having impressive quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves will put you in very rare company and imbue your physique with a look of overall power that few others will ever display. And if you’re a little bit scared and filled with dread as leg day approaches every week – good! That just means you’re training them right.

Ron Harris and Jay Cutler

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.

For the uninitiated, most online bodybuilding forums are infested to one extent or another with haters or ‘trolls,’ guys who never have anything nice to say and constantly insult, mock, belittle, and disparage everyone from raw novice bodybuilders to Mr. Olympia and Arnold Classic winners. They do so while hiding behind keyboards, never posting any photos of themselves yet going by names like “HugeMonsterFreak69,” or “24inchArmscold.” On the rare occasions that one of these idiots is exposed with a photo, usually by a fellow hater (not a lot of camaraderie among this group), they typically fit one of two types. Either they are skinny, acne-riddled teenagers who have never kissed a girl, or they are fat, hairy slobs in their 20’s or early 30’s living in mom’s basement who have never kissed a girl (no, sisters don’t count).

I happen to be a friend of IFBB Pro Jose Raymond, who is currently one of the most massively built men in the relatively new 202 division. At 5-3, the guy is built like a tank with thickness even most pro’s can only dream of. I go up to his gym to train a couple times a month, and always take plenty of photos to share with his fans. After posting up photos of a shoulder workout, the haters ignored the 30 great shots of Jose and chose to focus on the fact that I had the nerve to stand next to him for a photo. Here are some of the brilliant comments from the peanut gallery, exactly as they appeared:

“Wow, Jose is beasty beast, with all due respect Ron I assume you are about 10-15 lbs heavier then Jose ,but he makes you look like fitness model.”

“Haha what a freak he makes that guy with 14inch arms look like a kid.”

(Note: my arms do suck, but they are in fact 17 1/2 inches)

“The problem with Ron is that he doesn’t make things easy on himself by posing next to IFBB pros in a skin tight string tank top and little fitness girl booty shorts, Ron does have a good build but he should cover up around the pros.”

(Note: I do not even own any fitness girl booty shorts, but I definitely do appreciate seeing them on girls who have put their time in on squats and lunges)

“You should be overwhelmed by the pros because you look skinny next to them, oh well man knock yourself out, do what you want to do, we’ll all get a big laugh out of you posting these pics.”

Needless to say, even though I know better by now than to get riled up by these jokers, I still felt my blood beginning to boil. Various people jumped to my defense, among them my old buddy Randy, who had relocated to Florida a while back and was doing well as a personal trainer to older retired women, and 17-year-old Jared, my sole client and budding bodybuilder. I happened to run into him at the local grocery store while waiting to return my rented DVD to the Redbox machine. These automated vending machines had pretty much made video stores obsolete, along with Netflix. Proof of this lay in the fact that our town’s Blockbuster franchise and two Movie Gallery stores had disappeared. A woman and her three bratty little kids were pushing buttons on the screen, browsing through all the titles and arguing about which one to rent. This was going to take a while.

“So Ron,” Jared inquired. “Seriously, those pro’s are so huge. I know you’re not a small guy, but don’t you feel small next to them?”

“Honestly, I don’t. I realize how much more muscle they carry than I do. I’ve taken photos with three-time Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler, who is barely any taller than me but weighs a good seventy pounds more. And obviously my buddy Jose is much bigger than me. But honestly, I don’t feel embarrassed to stand next to them at all.”

“Why not?”

“Why should I? I’ve worked just as long and hard as they have to look the way I do. In some cases, I’ve actually been training a lot longer than some of the pro’s and top amateurs. They happen to have better genetics and often have more time to train than I do, so their results are much more impressive. Let me ask you something, do you feel ashamed standing next to me? I mean, I’m so much bigger than you are – for now, at least.” He shrugged.

“No, at first maybe, but not anymore. Not once I got to know you.”

“Right, and I never want anyone to feel bad about themselves. You should be proud of what you’ve accomplished so far, and excited about the improvements you still have ahead of you. It doesn’t matter whether someone else is a lot bigger or stronger than you. All that matters is that you are getting better as the months and years go by. If it takes you ten years to build a 17-inch arm, you don’t need to feel bad because some other guy has  20-inch arms. Your physique is the result of a ton of effort, dedication, discipline, persistence, and sacrifice. Nobody can take that away from you and you should never let

anyone make you feel like you’re inferior because you don’t look like a pro. Do you know how many guys who start training ever look like a pro?”

“I dunno, one in a hundred, five hundred?”

“Try more like one in a few thousand,” I deadpanned, and his jaw dropped. “Few will put the time and effort in to have a physique that exceptional, and of that group only a very small percentage has the genetic gifts to actually have that type of development. It’s almost like taking the whole group of kids who play little league baseball and narrowing it down to how many of them will actually ever play in the major leagues. It’s a very small percentage, which is why millions of people tune in to watch the playoffs and World Series. The players and teams that make it to that level are truly exceptional in many ways. Pro bodybuilders are amazing specimens in many ways, too. Therefore there is absolutely no reason to compare yourself with them and feel like a failure. And if others try to do that for you, screw ‘em. They are clearly miserable with their own bodies and lives and doing whatever they can to try to make you miserable too. Why?”

Jared looked at me blankly, then figured out the response I was looking for. “Because misery loves company?”

“Exactly!”

After many minutes of deliberation, it turned out the mother of the brat troop didn’t even have a credit card with which to rent a movie. Jared kindly let me cut him in line as I only needed approximately ten seconds to return my selection. Meanwhile, every once in a while I caught a fellow shopper or a checkout girl glancing over at me in my tank top. My knee-jerk reaction to any type of attention for my physique is usually “Imagine if they ever saw a real pro like Cutler, they would probably have a heart attack!” But I don’t think that way anymore. I’ve been training longer than Jay has, and I am proud to have built a solid 225 pounds from what was once a 90-pound frame. I’m not as large as a pro bodybuilder and never will be. But you know what? I worked my ass off to look the way I do, and for that reason I will never feel skinny or pathetic. If the haters want to wallow in their cesspool of negativity spawned by their own self-loathing, that’s their problem. The rest of us will just keep working hard, make improvements, and hold our heads high knowing that we are all walking success stories.

Ron Harris

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.

The snow itself had indeed been light and fluffy. While I still had to spend a total of around five hours

shoveling out my driveway, at least I hadn’t wrecked my lower back tossing hundreds of shovel’s worth of it over the six-foot fence into my neighbor’s yard (hey, more snow for your little brats to cavort in, buddy!). When I have done the same with heavy, wet snow, I often woke up the next day with my back feeling like I had participated in some marathon deadlift workout of 50 sets of 20 reps.

It was only Christmas Eve, but I already knew what my present was – a 55-inch flat-screen which would be the star of my new home theater, which was taking the place of the old ordinary TV room. I figured since usually I have to wait about six months for a movie to come out on DVD/Blu-Ray to see it unless it’s something I can take my 10-year-old son to, I might as well watch it in style and in the best quality possible. Oh, I earned this – do you know how many stupid kid’s movies I have sat through in the theater?  My man cave wasn’t done yet. The new leather sectional sofa was going to be delivered after the walls and ceiling were completely remodeled – that would be my wife’s idea. But I can’t complain. I get my ridiculous TV, and the value of our house goes up every time we remodel something like the bathroom or kitchen. Why, in the current real estate market, my house is now almost worth as much as we paid for it over eight years ago! The market has to come back eventually. Hell, even bell-bottoms did that.

My sole client Jared had just started his school Christmas vacation less than two hours before, but here he was in the gym with me. Our high school football team had finished with a dismal record of 1-10 for the season on Thanksgiving Day. There was occasion to give thanks – at least that humiliating season had ended and they could all look forward to doing better next year. In the interest of time, it being Christmas Eve and the gym closing early, Jared was simply training with me as I did my own chest and triceps workout. In just a few hours, I would be at my sister-in-law’s house for her annual party. In addition to a house packed with Cubans and Puerto Ricans and salsa music loud enough to make your ears bleed, there would be an abundance of food and drink. I planned on doing some real damage there in both departments, but first I needed to make sure Jared got a great workout. He had his heart set on competing next summer in a local show, and my job was to make sure he looked the best he possibly could.

As for me, I had not taken any time off from the weights since the Team Universe contest, and I certainly hadn’t taken a break in the six months preceding it – which meant the whole year I had been mercilessly blasting away with heavy iron. A couple weeks ago I had finally recognized that I needed to back off for a week or two. My arthritic shoulders were starting to ache again and the tendonitis in my perpetually inflamed right elbow was the worst it had been in a very long time. At first I considered a week off from lifting and only doing cardio. That was pondered all of ten seconds and rejected. I love training too much to stop even for a week. So I reached a compromise with my stubborn self. I would use lighter weights, higher reps, stop all sets shy of failure, and reduce the overall volume. I would do that for two weeks in lieu of not lifting at all. That would give my joints and tendons a chance to heal up a little, and provide me time to do a bit more cardio. I had bulked up to 235 pounds in less than three months after competing at 198, and the extra weight had me snoring so bad it sounded like some insane lumberjack was sawing logs in my bedroom all night. The wife wasn’t too pleased with this.

But a funny thing happened during that first week. I actually enjoyed the higher reps and taking shorter rests between sets. The pumps were outrageous, and I was connecting perfectly with the muscles even though I wasn’t even attempting to emphasize the contraction point of the rep as I normally do. The one thing that made me decide that this style of training would be something I would have to include in the future was when my biceps got sore from four sets of fifteen on incline dumbbell curls. I had abandoned the exercise a couple years ago because it killed my wrists and pulled on my shoulders in a weird way. That had been with 45’s or 50’s for sets of 6-8 reps. Staying with 25’s for four sets, my wrists and shoulders felt fine – but my biceps were on fire! They even got sore the next day, a rarity for them. I was sold.

I was now in my second week of that, and of course Jared just had to know why I was doing weights that he himself could almost handle. And why was I doing sets of 15 reps today, when I had instilled in him that 8-12 was the optimal range for growth? After explaining that I was taking a break from my normal heavy training for a couple weeks, I also informed him that this was something I would probably do every couple months from now on, and not as a way of easing up. Instead, I would start incorporating higher-rep weeks every so often, but taking the sets to failure. This would shock the muscles in a different way than what they were accustomed to.

“Should I do that too?” Jared asked.

“I don’t think it makes sense for you to at this point to do entire workouts that way, but certainly we can have you finish off a bodypart with a few high-rep sets.”

“That training system I was reading about has you do that, and supposedly it helps break up the muscle fascia.” I smiled.

“That John Parrillo in Ohio I mention all the time was talking about breaking up muscle fascia to permit greater muscle growth almost ten years before you were born, kid. He advocated aggressive stretching during the workout while the muscles were fully pumped for best results. He also talked a lot about high-rep sets as a tool to increase the capillary density inside the muscles.” Jared clearly had no idea what I was talking about. My expertise in the area was admittedly limited, but I did my best.

“Capillaries are tiny blood vessels, smaller in diameter than veins and obviously arteries, but they are critical for transporting nutrients into the muscles and shuttling out waste products. If you can create more of those, which high-rep training does, you increase the amount of blood available to your muscles during a workout. You’ll get bigger and better pumps.”

“So that’s what high reps are good for?” he asked.

“Parrillo also believed that by engaging in very high-rep sets, you would increase the number of mitochondria in the muscle, allowing for more work, as well as open up more high-threshold nerve pathways so a higher percentage of muscle fibers are able to fire. One of his infamous tools for this was 100-rep sets of belt squats, done on a device he invented and sold. Anyone who ever tried those will tell you it was just about the most brutal experience of their lives.”

“Did you ever do them, Ron?” I looked away and flashed back to that baking-hot August day in 1997 in Pasadena, California. A whole group of spotters had gathered around the belt squat on the outdoor workout deck of World Gym, both to assist and to prevent my escape before all 100 reps were complete. I vaguely recalled begging, whining, pleading, and being on the verge of tears. But the burning agony in my legs, lower back, and lungs is something I will never forget.

“Yeah, I think I did them once,” I replied. “When you come back to your normal type of sets and reps, you are able to perform at a higher level. And lately, I have also started to believe that without doing higher reps for the muscle groups and getting that extra degree of pump is critical for growth, especially in stubborn bodyparts.”

“Like your arms?” Jared grinned.

“Wow, what a zinger,” I retorted. “Why don’t you go down to the local meeting of Little People and make fun of how short they are, too?” His smile disappeared. “So we’ll start adding those in. In fact, we’ve done your heavy work on triceps already. Let’s have you finish off with rope pushdowns. We’ll trade off for sets of 15-20 reps, I go you go.” He nodded. A few minutes later, both our tri’s were swollen and tight with nutrient-rich blood.

I left the gym feeling good. Jared was bursting with excitement to be training like a bodybuilder again and couldn’t wait to compete, and that type of enthusiasm is always infectious. I had just picked up on a technique I had ignored and/or forgotten about after many years, and it could help me make new gains past age forty. There was a punch bowl of Mojitos and a feast of roast pork waiting for me in a few hours, and in a week or two the kick-ass home theater I had always wanted would be finished. As I got into my car, even the snowflakes that had just started to drift out of the slate-gray sky couldn’t bring my mood down. I turned on the radio. My wife had been messing with my pre-sets again because it was tuned to an Oldies station. And what was playing? I kid you not – “Let it snow.”

Ron Harris

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.

People around you begin making comments about your new muscles, and those who haven’t seen you in

months are typically shocked at the progress you’ve made. You may not even know exactly what you’re doing in terms of training and especially proper nutrition and supplementation, but it doesn’t really matter. Because the stress of weight training is so new to your body, it struggles to adapt. That adaptation comes in the form of ever greater muscle mass and strength. Good times, my friends, those are good times.

There is a cynical saying related to the frequency of sexual relations as it pertains to marriage. Supposedly if you put a penny in a jar every time you have sex during the first year of being married and then take out a penny every time thereafter, the jar will never be emptied. This may be true in most cases, but when the day comes that humans are able to maintain youthful bodies and live for spans of several centuries, I am confident that at least a few couples may finally empty that jar. The analogy I am trying to make here is that bodybuilders will always make their best gains in their first few years of training. The longer you train, the harder it becomes to coax any further muscle growth out of a body that’s been there and done that many times. When you get to the point I am at, being forty years old and having been pushing and pulling weights since I hit puberty (no, not at age 22 as some have erroneously reported – it was 14 thank you very much), putting on a few ounces of new muscle mass every year is cause for celebration, like winning the fricking lottery. I try not to get annoyed when young bodybuilders quiz me regularly about my weight, as if I should be gaining 10-20 pounds or more of new muscle in the course of a few months of off-season training and eating like they do. If I gain twenty pounds in a few months, it will be in the form of an extra chin, some wonderful chunky love handles, and an ass that doesn’t leave a room until several minutes after the rest of me.

There is, however, one exception to all of this. There is one magical time, when even those amongst us who have been training since Michael Jackson had his original nose and skin tone, can make great gains: right after a long, strict diet. I didn’t say contest diet, because plenty of bodybuilders that don’t compete will still get in really lean condition once a year, typically for the summer, and the same principle holds true. When you restrict calories and carbohydrates for extended periods of 10-16 weeks or more, eating totally clean and doing a much higher volume of cardio than normal, you create an environment where your body literally becomes like a sponge to absorb and utilize nutrients. It is primed for growth, as the return to heavier training, less cardio, and larger quantities of protein, complex and fibrous carbs, and healthy fats will produce a temporary state where even grizzled veterans often experience gains that can range from satisfactory to shocking. It’s known among competitive bodybuilders as ‘the rebound,’ and champions like the great six-time Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates always took full advantage of it by getting right back into the gym following a contest and making stellar gains while his rivals were taking a few weeks off from the gym and stuffing their faces with empty junk-food calories. Meanwhile, Dorian looked bigger and better every year of his reign, while most of his peers hardly improved.

Taking my cue from Dorian, in the month following my participation in the NPC Team Universe I had been hard at work in the gym and at the dinner table, moving plenty of heavy iron and putting away vast amounts of nutrients. Parrillo bars and shakes were taking on a critical supporting role. I woke up twice during the night to have a mix of Hi-Protein^™ and Optimized Whey^™, which kept me in an anabolic state while I slept. I kept Protein Chew bars^™ stashed in my car, my gym bag, and up in my home office in case I was ever stuck without something to eat. And after workouts, I had one hell of a monster post-workout shake that included two scoops of Optimized Whey^™, two scoops of 50/50 Plus^™, two scoops of Pro-Carb^™, and 5 grams of creatine. The concoction was so thick I could almost eat it with a spoon, but I would add more water to it once I had managed to throw down a few big slugs. Otherwise I could probably use it to patch up a hole in some drywall.

My sixteen-year-old client Jared was in awe of the size I had put on since the contest. I had competed at 198 pounds and was now nearly 220. To be honest, I had not gained anywhere near twenty-two pounds of muscle. At least half of that was fat and water, but because I had been so extremely lean, my condition at this weight was still quite respectable. Jared still had a little over a month before our high school team took our annual Thanksgiving clobbering and the season would end. Based on the poor record the team had clocked halfway through the season, this final game was shaping up to be a real slaughter. But at the moment, Jared didn’t seem to care a whole lot about any of that.

“Man, I can’t wait to start training like a bodybuilder again in a few weeks!” he announced as I was adding water to my shake for the fourth time and re-shaking it up in hopes of turning it into more of an actual liquid. “I am going to get so big this winter!”

“Yes, I am quite sure you will,” I agreed.

“How much more size are you going to put on, how many pounds, you think?” he asked. I shrugged.

“No idea. I’m going to ride this out as long as I can, but pretty soon I have a feeling my body is going to catch on to what’s happening and go back to its usual rate of growth – which is only slightly better than how much taller I get every year.”

“Don’t people usually get shorter as they age?”

“Don’t remind me,” I replied. I am 5-8 on a good day and the prospect of becoming any shorter than that was not an attractive one. Junior here was already taller than me and probably had a few more inches to go before he topped out, the lucky little cuss.

“How long do you think I can keep making the types of gains I have been these last two years?” he queried.

“My best guess is that if you stay consistent with your training and eating, which I don’t doubt you will, you can probably keep your rate of progress fairly steady until you hit twenty or twenty-one. Things will start slowing down then, and you will probably notice another change around your late twenties. By your mid-thirties, you will find yourself fighting tooth and nail for every new gram of muscle mass.”

“Well that sucks,” he noted.

“Not really, if you think about it. If bodybuilders kept growing forever the way they do in the beginning, you would have guys walking around at 600 pounds, ripped, so big they wouldn’t be able to walk anymore. Do you know how many more cows and chickens would have to die every year to feed these behemoths? And I don’t even want to think about how big of a toilet they would need to accommodate the gigantic deposits of waste they would make a few times a day. I don’t know if the pipes we use for plumbing in residential homes would even be able to support it – Roto Rooter stock would go through the roof.” From the dual looks of disgust and confusion on Jared’s face, I could see that I had lost him while off on my tangent.

“The good news is that even when you have been doing this for a very long time like me, there are still ways to jump-start your growth again. One is simply making a radical change to your training program, and another that’s almost miraculous is to return to heavy training and eating after a long diet, like I have been doing.”

Jared nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t overly concerned. I had just told him that he had a good four or five years to go before his gains started to lessen. To a sixteen-year-old, five years might as well be fifty years.

As for me, I didn’t know how much more muscle mass was in the cards. I had started training at the ridiculous weight of ninety pounds, so to have increased that by 250% wasn’t too shabby. But I wasn’t done yet. I consider myself a bodybuilder, not a body-maintainer, so I would not give up fighting the good fight for a bigger and better physique anytime soon. And in a way I was grateful I wasn’t able to pack on the mass like I used to in my late teens and early twenties. Who’d want to weigh 600 pounds anyway?

Ron Harris

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.

Only the top five had been allowed to perform their posing routines, because with well over 300 total competitors in bodybuilding, fitness, figure, and bikini (yes, bikini contests are now an official athletic event), otherwise we would have still been there when Obama was up for re-election. Only the top five finalists were awarded trophies as well, though everyone else did get a nice little medal for participation so we didn’t feel like total losers. But the thing is, I actually felt like a winner. Jared and Jeff seemed puzzled and a bit wary of my ear-to-ear grin (not easy with a tiny mouth like mine). Maybe Harris had finally lost it after going so long low on carbs, and after such a devastating blow with his poor finish? They looked behind me for my wife Janet to rescue them from what they feared could be an awkward conversation with a madman, but she was stuck inside the theater yapping with a couple people she hadn’t seen in ages.

“Uh, you looked great, Ron,” Jeff offered. Jared nodded.

“Legit,” he added for emphasis, in the parlance of my town’s teenagers and which roughly translates to “seriously.”

“Thanks, I actually feel really good right now. I stood up there with the best, and I gave it my all.”

And given it my all I had. In my entire twenty years of competing, I had never dieted so strictly for so long – sixteen weeks without a single cheat meal save for two slices of pizza at eight weeks out when I was well ahead of schedule in terms of leaning out. Just as John Parrillo has been advocating since the early 1980′s, long before the rest of the bodybuilding world caught on, I had done the majority of my cardio first thing in the morning in a fasted state to optimize the use of stored bodyfat for energy. So many mornings at around five I would climb up on that cantankerous old hag, the Stepmill, and take the stairway to nowhere for 45-50 miserable minutes, my stomach growling all the while since all I had to sustain myself and prevent catabolism was a dozen Muscle Aminos and a mug of coffee roughly the size of a bucket.

The Team Universe was the first national-level contest I had ever done, and the only one where the Overall winner earned professional status in the IFBB – the organization that sanctions bodybuilding’s biggest shows like the Mr. Olympia and the Arnold Classic. Not that I had any illusions of ever competing on those stages, mind you. Most of those guys were about my size when they started lifting weights. Still, I knew from the start that the level of competition at a pro qualifier was a whole different level from what I had been used to at all the local, state, and regional shows I had competed in. There would be no chumps. Everybody there would have won at least one contest before, and in some cases literally dozens of contests over the years. It would take everything I had to stand next to them on equal footing. Mainly, my condition had to reach a new degree of sharpness in the lower body. My glutes had to be striated like Pringles potato chips, because I knew there was no way I would be the biggest light-heavy, or have the best shape and symmetry. So I literally dieted my ass off and came to New York City in the shape of my life, weighing in officially the night before the judging at 197.5 pounds, a couple Protein Chew Bars™ away from the class limit of 198 ¼.

After painting on a few coats of fake tan (a process remarkably similar to staining a wood deck, but without the final sealant that makes water bead right off in a rainstorm), I made my way over to the judging the following day and at last got a good look at the other dozen light-heavies as they oiled up and started to pump, using the giant rubber bands provided. Apparently someone finally figured out that oily hands and iron dumbbells were a dangerous mix, probably after some poor sap let one slip and it crashed down onto his bare foot. As for the whole pumping up deal, I never thought much of it. By the time you are backstage and minutes from walking out on the stage, your physique is what it is. A little more or less of a pump in your shoulders or arms ain’t gonna make or break you at that point. Besides which, an extreme pump only means that you are likely to ‘deflate’ like a balloon leaking air while standing in line, since you can’t hold a good pump for very long.

Speaking of balloons, my first thought at seeing the top men in my weight division was that they must have employed some type of helium enema the day before prior to stepping on the official weigh-in scale. It simply boggled my mind that these guys were no heavier than I was. Seeing the way their thick, round muscles flared off their joints, I would have sworn they all had at least fifteen or twenty pounds of mass on me. But this only served to prove what I have been saying for years – numbers like height and weight, even bodyfat percentage, really don’t mean anything in a visual sport like bodybuilding. You can take two guys who are both 5-8 and 198 pounds at 4% bodyfat, and one could look a whole lot bigger than the other. Unfortunately, I was the other!

Trying to stay confident and fight the urge to run far, far away, I took the stage. When you have a fairly large group as this was, you can always get a pretty accurate idea of who the top five will ultimately be based on the first callout, or the first group of competitors from the class that the judges call front and center to compare. My number was not called. When a couple of those guys were sent back into the line and a couple more were brought out to take their place, yet again I was left right where I was, watching the show from the best vantage point in the house. The finals weren’t happening until the next night, but I knew for me the contest was for all intents and purposes, over. Along with my wife and a couple friends, I stopped on the way back to the hotel and enjoyed several large and quite delicious slices of that famous New York City pizza. IFBB Pro Ron Coleman happened to be in the pizza joint. This isn’t the eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman, but the ‘other’ one with the same name, who actually was the first Team Universe champ back in 1993.

The next night, I went out with my class and hit two poses when my name was announced, and that was the last the audience saw of me. Which brings me to the lobby, where Jeff and Jared, who had driven all the way down from Boston to watch me, were currently struggling for the right words. They weren’t sure whether to console me for trying and coming up short, or congratulate me for doing my best. Sensing their confusion, I helped them along.

“Thank you guys for coming, it really does mean a lot to me,” I began. “I’m only sorry you didn’t get to see my posing routine. It didn’t have any breakdancing, but it was pretty solid.”

“It was a tough class,” Jeff noted in the understatement of the year. It had indeed been so competitive that the two-time defending light-heavy winner had to settle for second, and the guy who beat him easily went on to win the Overall and earn IFBB Pro status.

“It’s like I always say about competing,” I told both of them. “All you can do is look the best you can. You never have any control over who else shows up and what they will look like. At my last show, I was the one guy that all the other competitors saw and knew they weren’t going to win that day. This time, I was on the other end of it. It’s like you and Hunter,” I nodded at Jared.

“Huh?”

“You have been assuming that if you and he both compete in a teenage class at a show in our area, it will be between you two. But you really have no idea who else might show up. One of you might dominate, or there could be some teenage kid out there who blows you both away.”

Jared frowned at that possible scenario.

“I didn’t win, and I didn’t even make the top five, but I am still a winner,” I proclaimed. The father and son looked like they wanted to agree with me, they just weren’t sure how that statement made any sense.

“Look, I’ve been competing since I was nineteen and I turn forty in two days. How many forty-year-olds out there can honestly say they look the absolute best now that they ever have in their entire lives?” Jeff shrugged. “I can,” I said. “I can look back at the last few months and know that I could not have trained any harder, dieted any stricter, or done anything else to look better than I do right now. I was just up against guys who were genetic freaks. They almost seem like they belong to some other species!”

“That’s true,” Jared noted. “Those guys were amazing.”

“There is no shame in losing if you have truly given your very best effort, and I did that. You two both want to compete next year, so you should know ahead of time that anything can happen at these shows. If you don’t prepare properly and show up in great shape, then you can blame yourself if you don’t do well. But if you look the best you can possibly look, the rest is out of your hands. Your best may be good enough to beat everyone else who shows up, or not, depending on who else happens to compete and how they look. If you have the discipline and drive to take a contest prep all the way through and reach your best condition ever, I don’t care where you place – you’re a winner.”

“Great attitude, Ron,” Jeff said, clapping me on the shoulder. At last, I saw my wife making her way out of the theater. I looked at them and my smile got even broader as a flash of gluttonous inspiration hit me.

“There’s a Baskin Robbins three blocks that way,” I informed them. “Who’s up for some ice cream?”

Ron and Janet Harris

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.

When my bodyfat is lower and I am doing more cardio, I seem unable to sleep for more than six hours without snapping awake. Since cardio is more effective at burning fat when done on an empty stomach anyway, I usually toss back a dozen caps of Muscle Aminos™, wash it down with a mug of strong Columbian coffee, and head to the gym for 45 or 50 minutes on the Stepmill. If you’re not familiar with it, the Stepmill is a lot like an escalator – except that you have to take the steps instead of going for a nice little ride, and you never actually get to the top.

And of course, I was really starting to crave certain foods: pizza, ice cream, cookies (though the new Parrillo cookies are a blessing from God), sugary cereals like Apple Jacks and Berry Berry Kix, Chinese food, fruit (a no-no when attempting to get down to low single-digit bodyfat levels due to the fructose, or fruit sugar content), KFC, and pizza. Oh wait, I already said pizza – but I freaking love pizza! I suspect that if Biblical scholars really did some digging, they would discover that the manna that fell from the sky to feed the Israelites in the desert was actually – you guessed it – pizza. Possibly with some garlic bread sticks and a large Diet Pepsi.  I doubt God would have neglected a tasty beverage to wash it all down with, right?

So at three weeks out from my contest, I was looking phenomenal and feeling like crap. Being tired and hungry tends to make me an irritable grouch. Little everyday concerns can become overwhelming problems. And though I am normally a gregarious and affable gentleman to all whom I meet, in the final stages of a contest diet I can be an unsociable wretch. The ironic thing is that even though I am definitely a friendlier guy in the off-season (the phrase ‘fat and happy’ is quite appropriate here), I tend to get approached for training and nutrition advice far more often when I am looking lean and mean. How’s that for irony? The one time I really don’t feel like helping people out with their physique goals is when they always ask. But I totally understand. If you want to learn how to be a great fighter, you would ask someone who has just kicked some serious ass in the ring or the cage. You don’t ask the guy with the black eyes, broken nose, and missing teeth. And so it is with bodybuilders. If you want to look like a living muscular sculpture, you ask a guy who’s in shape how it’s done, not the pale, chubby dude who looks like he knows more about donuts than deltoids.

Pretty much everywhere I went, someone would come up and ask me something about training or nutrition. This was to be expected at the gym, but it was happening in such random spots as the post office, the supermarket checkout line, the bank, and family barbecues. A very common request is to “write me up your routine” or “give me your diet.” I was speaking with former NPC Nationals champion and New York Pro winner Evan Centopani, and he was barraged with those same two questions hundreds of times in the weeks before and after his big wins. His answer was the truth, but it’s not remotely what the solicitors wanted or expected to hear: “It’s irrelevant.”

What Evan meant by that was that trying to follow his exact training routine and diet regimen with the expectations of experiencing the same results as him makes about as much sense as me following Lance Armstrong’s bike workout and expecting to win six Tour de France titles. We are all unique individuals with our own bone structures, muscle attachments, metabolisms, and temperaments. An exercise that works spectacularly for one bodybuilder could be ineffective or even dangerous for another. For example, Branch Warren and Ronnie Coleman love deadlifts. They can pull ridiculous amounts of weight off the ground, and years of doing this had given them both tremendous back thickness and density. I have never been a good deadlifter. I was never able to pull much more than 405 for reps, and even with impeccable form I continued to strain my lower back over and over again. Instead of thicker lats, I got horrible back pain and became one of my chiropractor’s most reliable patients.

Diet is an area where there is an even wider range of what works well for various people. My particular metabolism allows me to eat a substantial amount of carbohydrates in the off-season without gaining too much bodyfat. I have a good friend named Jason who needs only to glance at a piece of bread and he gains a pound of fat. People often want to know how many calories they should be eating. I respond with, how the hell should I know? There are various formulas and so on, but they are really nothing but very rough guidelines. The only way to truly determine which exercises and which diets are best for you is through extensive trial and error. In other words, neither I nor any other ‘expert’ out there can show you the exact path you need to follow. The best we can do is to point you in the right directions and let you explore until you find the best particular methods of training and nutrition that deliver the best results for you. And even then, these will not remain the same forever. What works wonderfully for you now will probably not be quite as effective a few years from now. You need to keep learning, trying new things, and noting the effects on your particular body.

I don’t mean to make it sound like I hate providing sound training and nutrition advice. It is how I make my living, when you get down to it. But to really change your physique, you have to become a
master all on your own.

As for me, I wasn’t especially looking forward to Labor Day. We were hosting a pool party and cookout full of things I couldn’t even touch: burgers, fried chicken wings, big juicy slabs of watermelon, ice cream sundaes, and my wife’s renowned chocolate chip cookies. I would be doing an hour on the Stepmill sometime around five in the morning, then heading back to the gym four hours later to train chest and triceps. Not long after that, I’d be playing the role of the smiling, gracious host at my party. Inside, I would be feeling miserable – but boy would I be looking great!

Ron Harris

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.

Just finding a parking space, even taking it up the wazoo at thirty bucks for the day, took us over an hour. This allowed my wife ample time to remind me several dozen times how this headache was all my fault. Because I am dieting for a contest, we couldn’t leave until I had popped a dozen Parrillo Muscle Aminos™ with a mug of coffee and headed off to the gym for 45 minutes of cardio. Then I had to come home to cook and eat breakfast, which is easily my largest and most complex meal of the day. Along with oatmeal, I have scrambled eggs in which I have sliced up asparagus, tomatoes, and strips of chicken breast. Sometimes there are so many ingredients in the pan I have to check twice to make sure I haven’t chopped up my Shih Tzu and tossed her in there too.

We had a nice relaxing time once we staked out our tiny piece of sand amidst the legions of other beachgoers. I had all my meals packed up inside a cooler, and stayed right on schedule of eating every two hours on the dot. Behind me from the boardwalk wafted the tempting aromas of fried dough, pizza, and fried clams. It was nice to imagine I was eating those instead of cold chicken breast, salmon, and green beans.

Leaving the beach turned out not to be so easy or relaxing. I hesitate to use the term ‘traffic jam,’ because at least jam moves. This was more like traffic glue. Rarely have I been in the situation where I could have walked faster, even on crutches, than we were driving. The five miles from the beach parking lot to the highway took nearly three hours to traverse. At one point, both my son and I had to make use of empty water bottles in the SUV to relieve ourselves. Thank God my wife was driving – and we have tinted windows. The cars coming in the other direction were dumb, horny teenagers just arriving at the beach to walk around being drunk and obnoxious and hollering inappropriate exclamations to attractive female passersby. A couple of these cars crept past us with bass so jarring from their speakers that I thought our windows would shatter. When the driver of one of these idiot teen-mobiles tried striking up a conversation with my lovely MILF wife inviting her to turn around and follow them, I had half a mind to beat the crap out of him. Luckily for the little punk I don’t have a whole mind anymore.

This was the first contest diet I had been on in two years. Last summer I had leaned out for a ‘guest posing’ appearance at the show I had won the summer before, but that’s not quite the same. You don’t diet anywhere near as long or as strictly when you know ahead of time you’re going to be the only one on the stage and won’t be in competition with anything except your own pride. No sir, the diet I was on this summer was for the first pro qualifier I had ever competed in after exactly two decades of getting up on stage in little trunks. Talk about a late bloomer, huh? I would actually be turning forty years old a couple days after this contest, though I am told I look much younger in a dark nightclub, if you’ve got a pretty good buzz going and forgot to put your contact lenses in before going out.

Contest dieting has its ups and downs, like anything else. The absolute best part, obviously, is getting ripped and seeing all that wonderful definition. Most of the time, muscles are obscured, submerged under a layer of fat. Once the fat is dieted off, you see shape, separations, striations, and veins that were previously hidden. And you can show it off with tank tops and shorts in the appropriate climate. If you’ve got it, flaunt it – that’s what I say. Why hide a ripped, muscular physique, especially since it’s not evident very often? This also garners far more attention, which can be good and bad. It’s great to know people appreciate your dedication and hard work, but after a while you grow weary of being asked for diet tips several times during every workout, as well as filling in the details to the question, “You got any contests comin’ up?”

The leaner you get, the more enthusiasm you often have for training. It makes sense – you can see the fruits of your labors so much more clearly. At the same time, you’re eating less and doing more cardio, so your actual energy levels for the workout aren’t too high. The real Catch-22 here is that you aren’t taking in the caloric surplus needed to grow, so the very best these amazing workouts can hope to accomplish is maintaining your existing muscle mass. You find yourself thinking, “Damn, if only I could eat a lot more food and do less cardio, I would be growing like a mother-loving weed right now!”

Did I mention cardio? Women have a certain ‘c’ word that makes them cringe and inspires anger, and for bodybuilders, that ‘c’ word is cardio. John Parrillo has said many times over the years that the benefits of cardio go far beyond melting bodyfat and strengthening the heart and lungs. It also builds your capillary density, so you can train harder and longer with weights. But even knowing that doesn’t make it any more enjoyable for your typical meathead like me. If it weren’t for my iPod providing a good soundtrack and the combination of the little plasma TV in front of me plus the drama on the gym floor, I would literally be bored to tears every time I had to climb up on that frigging Stepmill or the elliptical trainer.

Last but certainly not least in this circus of contest prep is the diet itself. On a contest diet, you have to eat the right meals at the right times, all the time. It’s not like the off-season, where you never worry too much about food. “Eh, I’ll find something,” is what I say then, and I usually do. But good luck finding a plain grilled chicken breast and a green salad in an amusement park. All you have to choose from in places like that are various deep-fried monstrosities laden with salt and grease, for the privilege of eating you will pay out the wazoo for. Since such places often don’t allow outside food, they are
off-limits.

Your best bet when dieting is to stay close to your own kitchen and refrigerator. Any time you venture away, you had better bring your own meals or risk either blowing your diet with the wrong food and re-gaining fat, or losing muscle mass because you went too long between meals. Thank God I have my wife to cook plenty of chicken, turkey, and the occasional steak, or else my meals would be limited to what I can make in the frying pan and the toaster oven – eggs and fish. Recently she threatened to let me do just that if I didn’t do a better job of limiting my portions of the big batches of meat she was cooking up. You best believe I was on my knees apologizing and promising I would – eating nothing but eggs and fish would have me down to looking like a toothpick pretty fast.

And of course, getting lean by today’s standards, which means deep, clear separations in all the muscle groups including the glutes and hams, demands that certain items not be consumed at all. The obvious no-no’s are things like fast food, candy, and pastries, but a bodybuilder trying to get into his or her best condition must also refrain from eating any breads, dairy, or fruit. Walking through the produce section of the supermarket when you’re dieting in the summer totally sucks. All you can see and smell are the big, ripe, juicy grapes, peaches, pears, nectarines, and watermelon.

But in the end, it’s all worth it. The final product is a ripped, muscular physique that most people, even those who work out regularly, could only dream of. It takes enormous discipline and sacrifice, plus untold hours of grueling weight training and cardio sessions, to strip away as much bodyfat as humanly possible to reveal the sculpted masterpiece of rock-hard muscle and sinew below. If it were easy, everyone would have this look all the time. It’s anything but easy though, and few gym rats will ever have what it takes to follow a contest diet all the way through. If you’ve never done it, I urge you to do it at least once. The actual contest is great, but it pales in comparison to the journey of self-discovery and the reward of seeing the muscles you work so hard for in such spectacular detail. And really, you don’t even have to diet down for a contest. You can do it for photos, or just to look great at the beach. Just don’t go on the first sunny day of a rainy summer, or else you too might find yourself mired in horrendous traffic and being forced to pee into an empty water bottle. It’s bad enough for us guys, but I shudder to think at the mess you ladies would make!