Bodybuilders Never Die: They Simple Lose Their Pump

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Bodybuilders never die –they simply lose their pump

INEVER started out to write a story, but when you are going stir crazy at home and the doctors are telling you non-stop to rest, I thought that I would risk exercising the only two digits that I can type with. If you’re looking for an exercise or drug manual, then this isn’t for you. This is a personal account of a journey, and if you’re not an Iron Warrior, then I think it will give you a unique, no bullshit insight into what it takes to create a world-class physique and if you are one of the brethren, then maybe you will know someone like me or perhaps you’ll see yourself in my words.

Apart from the celebrated years of Arnold and films like Pumping Iron, bodybuilding is a much marginalised sport. In fact, when it is shown in the mainstream media, it is often in derogatory terms as some kind of homoerotica or they get some poor twat and poke fun at him. The only time bodybuilding is ever taken seriously is when it is demonised as in the case of people like Greg Valentino who used a drug called Synthol to make his arms look freaky, or Beryl Beef It Fox who murdered his wife.

I have spent most of my life trying to defend my sport and I have realised that the bodybuilding magazines only ever highlight a handful of top bodybuilders with their glamorous lifestyles and people have very little insight into the bread and butter competitors like me. People have even asked me how much money I have made in winning my five titles. I think they are shocked when I tell them that I had won very little money and apart from some sponsorship, competing for nearly 20 years had cost me a small fortune.

My story is far from glamorous, but it isn’t ugly either. It is full of true-life events that I hope will tell you just how dedicated all the guys and girls who compete are. I will tell you how from my humble beginning of training in a makeshift gym at home, I ended up on stage competing against the best athletes in the world.

Hopefully people will see that bodybuilding is a lot more that just drugs; it takes dedication and guts and a lot of knowledge, with a little bit of insanity thrown in for good measure! Go past any gym in the morning or late at night – and I am not talking about leisure clubs here, where many of the so-called beautiful people go through the motions of training because they fear if they grimaced, they would need to take another visit to the local Botox clinic. No, I am talking about real gyms, where the screams of pain can be heard and the smell of sweat and Ralgex greets you on arrival. No matter what time of year, rain, snow or sunshine, you’ll see them, the dedicated either smashing out reps or torturing themselves on the bike or stepper machines.

I have collapsed many times in the gym, had nosebleeds, thrown up during workouts. To me and, as the world would describe them, the other fanatics, this was accepted as an everyday occurrence as we drove ourselves through session after session of masochistic intensity in pursuit of our dreams. I will take you into a world where the word average is spat out with distaste; I will speak of the drugs, the crazy and often humorous situations that I found myself in. I will introduce you to the people who shared my life, some dodgy as hell, some sadly no longer with us, but what we had in common was our love of the iron.

This is the journey I took to turn a wiry, long distance runner’s body of eight stone into a ripped up championship frame of over 15 stone. I will talk of victory, overcoming adversity and the drive and passion that made me into a world-class physique, but ultimately nearly killed me.

My introduction to the iron

THE PHYSIQUE is created for many reasons; some to keep the outside world at bay, some in the vain pursuit of attracting women, some in the hope of feeling loved. For others like me it was a mixture of all three and the ultimate stage to display it on: The Bodybuilding Competition. A place where one is judged not on strength but on the look of the physique. Its ideals are to show maximum muscularity with minimum body fat.

I never set out to be a bodybuilder. I certainly never thought that I would compete, let alone be fairly successful, in fact I think you could call me a bodybuilder by accident, but let’s get on with the story.

I am a competitive bastard. It wouldn’t matter if it was Monopoly or Tiddlywinks, I would do anything to win, but it wasn’t always that way. In fact as a kid, I was darn right lazy. My first introduction to weights was when after much prompting and the bribe of buying me some sweets after, I got on the bus one night with my bro to an old terraced house in Manchester. The guy’s name was Harry and he had turned the main bedroom of his house into a small gym. I often wonder nowadays how he managed to convince his poor long-suffering wife that utilising their best bedroom and no doubt demoting her to one of the smaller rooms was a good idea. He seemed quite old but at the age of ten, I guess anyone over 30 was ancient.

Rumour had it that he was an accomplished strongman until his left arm was run over by a steam engine. I remember trying to get a glimpse of his arm to see if it was actually flat like something out of a cartoon, but much to my disappointment, his arm seemed relatively normal. His chest on the other hand seemed huge; much exacerbated no doubt by his habit of inflating his chest muscles whenever he talked to you.

The room was stark and cold, filled with a bench press, squat stands and various plates and bars. I can remember our kid gasping with the effort as he worked his socks off, while I watched and wondered what all the commotion was about, no doubt dreaming of the treat that I would get for going.

If I wasn’t there, I would be swimming. My dad loved the baths and I on the other hand didn’t. I could cope with the swimming, but having to walk three miles home shivering against the cold rain was a total bitch. In fact Dad was into anything sporty, he was a decent boxer and a very good swimmer, even at a height of 5ft 4in. He had once held the combined Forces all-comers backstroke record. Our back yard was used for everything; shot put, long jump, high jump and he even made some old wooden stakes to represent hurdles to practise with.

Football was what I loved though. If you asked kids of my age what they wanted to be, most would have replied: Georgie Best! He was my first and many of the other kids’ idol. We all wanted to be able to dribble like George, therefore most games were full of strikers. No one wanted to be a full-back or midfielder so if someone had a football we would either play out in the street until the neighbours moved us on or spend hours in the local park, sometimes until it was so dark you could hardly make out where the ball was.

Running was what I did most. Back then, in an avenue with over 100 houses, there was only one family with a car. I think they were called Jones, proper posh they were or so we thought. It wasn’t just at the athletic club, I ran everywhere – to school, back for dinner, back to school, well until I was 14 and then I seemed to develop some kind of amnesia and although I set out for school, I often ended up in the centre of Manchester where most of the other truants congregated.

I don’t know where the laid-back personality that I had went but I guess it got thrown out with puberty. Suddenly everything I did was a competition; it didn’t matter if it was chess, I wanted to win. I was a decathlete long before it became trendy, not in the sense of Daley Thompson, but I immersed myself into all sports – long and high jump, shot put, javelin and discus: sprinting, long distance and even swimming which I was crap at.

What I lacked in skill I tried to make up with sheer determination. If someone could do 50 press-ups I had to do 60 or die trying and I am not just saying that as a throwaway word, I literally would drive myself through pain to win. I had some success in other sports, but now I realise that my obsessive, driven nature was like a sculpture awaiting form and that the sport of bodybuilding was there to feed my need for self-determination.

So you can see, even though my family were into sport, I wasn’t brought up with the media images of Stallone, Van Damme or Schwarzenegger that young people are exposed to today. Our ideas of what a muscular physique should look like were from advertisements in magazines and comics displaying Charles Atlas, who was probably the most famous strongman back in those days, flexing his muscles and stating how the latest home gadget had transformed his body overnight.

One of the fads at the time was the Bullworker, it was highly marketed and the hype behind it promised much success. We, like many homes had one. In fact I think it was my brother Chris who bought it. Like most other people who used them, for the first few weeks we would all try to out-do each other, taking turns in front of the mirror, trying to copy the exercises. I used to take my top off in my bedroom and attack the Bullworker with all the aggression and determination I could muster but the damn thing refused to budge even an inch and I would always end up on the bed sweaty, gasping for breath and defeated.

I don’t think it was any surprise that eventually, after becoming a dust-stopper for many months, ours ended up in the dustbin like most of the others that had been bought on the back of good intentions.

So any thoughts of bodybuilding were light years from my mind after my earlier exposure to the sport. My memories of training at Harry’s coupled with the non- movement of the Bullworker hadn’t really inspired me. In fact I thought it was downright boring and I never had an inkling that one day it would be such a huge part of my life.

I was a runner, not a great one though. My idols were Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe, two of the greatest middle- distance runners Britain ever produced. What I lacked in ability I doggedly made up for in guts, but I was far from having the beautiful silky gliding style of the top stars. Every week I was doing over 80 miles of running. It was the time before jogging became cool and my training runs would often be accompanied by shouts of abuse from people or the odd stray dog trying to bite my arse.

But it’s strange how things happen though isn’t it? There I was – this young guy minding his own business, fairly happy with life, although I must admit at times, I resented the fact that I looked so skinny, but runners, unless they are sprinters, seldom look muscular. Anyway, my own love affair with bodybuilding started while I was nursing an injury to my right knee caused by too much running on roads. I had to rest up and to relieve the monotony, I happened to wander into the local library on a fairly dull and uninspiring afternoon.

I was looking for a book by the aforementioned Mr Ovett and began browsing through the autobiographies when fate intervened and changed my life completely. I came across this rather insignificant book that blended into the lines of other literature. It was the name that attracted me. I had heard it before from the film Pumping Iron which I think was the only film about bodybuilding that had been circulated to the general public. The first thing I noticed was the cover; it displayed this handsome muscular tanned guy, looking the epitome of health. The book was called Education Of A Bodybuilder. It was the story of one of the greats of the sport: Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I ended up taking it home among several other books that I had chosen but that night, I decided to read it first. It drew me into its story. I could identify with its author, I was engrossed by how he had once been a slim young man and how through training with weights, he had built his body to become the world champion. He stated how bodybuilding had made him more confident and how it had opened the doors to fortune, fame and girls. The book endorsed this by depicting photos of him surrounded by beautiful women. By the end of the book, I was a disciple!

But unfortunately I was a disciple without the means, I didn’t have any weights at home at the time and I certainly hadn’t got the confidence to show my scrawny body in a gym but my birthday was coming up and after I had harangued my family about the virtues of bodybuilding to the point that I think they started to avoid me. More in an attempt to stop me going on about it all the time than anything, my brother finally gave in and bought me a Weider weight training kit. It had dumbbells and a barbell and the weight was 100lb. It wasn’t made of iron though, it was garish blue and plastic. I had no benches, no squat stands and to be honest not much idea either. All I knew was that Arnold had used weights to fashion his massive muscular frame and this was admired by women and that was good enough for me.

I set everything up in the spare room and religiously studied the exercise diagrams and started a three-day weekly programme that split the physique up into three body parts. I contorted my skinny body, trying to emulate the poses of the guys on the charts, my ribs sticking out where muscles should have been, but my eight-stone wet through body had taken its first faltering steps on the road to muscle madness.

Three days a week I would seclude myself away pumping the iron. My weedy frame would scream out the exercises as though my life depended on it. I now detested the image that represented me, and used the self hate to drive me on. I never missed a work-out and those few weights that lay in the spare room became beacons of hope that would help me escape from how I felt about myself.

What I didn’t know at the time was that no matter what size I was, I would still experience the same loathing. My idea of a diet those days was fish fingers and chips, bacon and tinned tomatoes with loads of white bread and anything else that was being cooked for dinner, but my metabolism was so fast that at the end of two years of training I might have hardly looked a stereotypical bodybuilder. In fact I still looked like the proverbial guy who has sand kicked in his face, but now the scales read 10st 7lbs and to me that was all that mattered.

I began to understand that the guys with the really big physiques used equipment and machines like leg presses and the home-made bench that I had now made and the few vinyl blue weights were not going to give me the body I wanted. According to the bodybuilding bibles of which I was now a staunch follower, if I wanted to fulfil my physique to its maximum potential, I would have to go to a gym.

There were only a few gyms in Warrington. I first thought of using the fitness suite at the baths, but the predicates of iron stated with derisive undertones that these places were not for true iron brethren. It was around this time that my father had met a man called Walter O’Malley in the local bookmakers, who unbeknown to either of us was a former Mr Universe. He told my father that I should come down to his gym as training at home would only take me so far.

I felt confident that my new beefed up frame would be okay in such surroundings until I approached the black gates of the gym and saw these huge guys coming out wearing shorts and tank tops, their swelling muscles bulging and walking the walk that said don’t mess with me.

I slithered past them, faltering and dithering, before finally summoning the courage to open the door. The smell of Ralgex was the first thing that hit me and then the line of muscular guys sat around the reception area. I could sense the chant of new meat, new meat! I felt like the biblical Christian about to be thrown to the lions.

The girl behind the counter looked up from filing her nails and stared at me too. The distance to the counter had now magnified to at least a mile, my legs felt like they had done a workout already as I felt them wobbling like jelly. I finally got in front of the counter and I heard someone shout: I’ve never seen a lat move before. My paranoia by this point was compounded by the girl on reception asking me if I wanted the fitness centre down the road. I could see her looking me up and down and all I could think was: Do I look that out of place? I sneaked a look at the muscle-heads and thought: Maybe I do, where is this fitness centre? But the words of iron gurus echoed in my head that if I wanted to get bigger, this was the place to be.

I couldn’t look at her as my voice quivered, but I confirmed that I wanted to pay for a casual workout. I quickly paid the money that she asked for and I sought the refuge of the changing room, thinking that would help me escape the glares of the muscular beasts camped in reception. The changing rooms were empty and I breathed a sigh of relief as I donned my medium-sized t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. I could hear the clanging of the weights accompanied by screams as though people were being tortured even before I opened the door of the changing rooms.

The weight room was like another world. It was crowded and the smell of testosterone-fuelled energy with overtones of outright violence seemed to escape from every beast that was either screaming out reps or pacing menacingly up and down psyching themselves up to lift these huge columns of iron.

Seeing them clothed in their baggies and cut-down vests, I felt like I had walked into another world. Even the language was different; wheels I learnt were your legs and guns your arms. I was in awe of the huge racks of dumbbells that had weights that looked more like thick sets of wheels and at the end, a black pair of boulders sagged into the iron structure that held them and etched across each of them was the daunting figure of 160lb. All I could think was that’s much more than I weigh in a single dumbbell and I was suddenly stunned back into reality as this muscular black guy pushed past me and grabbed them and then started to heave them into the air above his chest. All around me were exercise stations with massive brick- shaped weights.

For some people this would have been enough and they would have looked for the nearest escape route. Indeed, I did look at the fire escape and I could hear the theme music from the film The Great Escape being played in my head, but despite feeling nervous, I found myself looking around with a big smile on my face and thinking: I want to look like these guys!

Four days a week I would run the gauntlet of the reception filled with over-sized muscle-heads. By this time I was drawing attention as the skinny guy who fought for every rep. I couldn’t compete with their muscle, but what I lacked in size and strength I made up with sheer determination. I never made much eye contact as the place still resembled a post-apocalyptic world filled with over-sized human beings whose main conversations when they weren’t grunting were of inflicting serious injuries to members of the non-lifting public.

I never missed a workout; I would push my body so hard that I would come off the bench press with my lip bleeding where I had bit into it. I was surrounded by people doing the same and the atmosphere was charged with raw aggression and in my mind when I lifted, I attacked it like my life depended on it. This is how the guys with the huge physiques trained, so this was my approach too.

After a few months, the reception area no longer seemed like the induction wing of a prison. I would get the odd nod or smile as I walked in, and some would even stop and offer advice. I remember once when I was doing wide grip bench presses that worked my pectoral muscles or pecs as they are also known. I was on my own, giving it everything as usual and went for the extra rep, but as it came down, my arms were shaking. I could feel the weight descending and then it happened; my strength went completely and it got stuck across my chest. Now this is an embarrassing situation nearly every bodybuilder has faced and the dilemma is this: Do you shout like hell for help? Do you let it lie across your chest and take a few minutes to rest, then try again? Or do you try to roll the bar down your body, manoeuvre