by Mike Gill

I am from upstate New York, but I think it's more accurate to say that I grew up at Future Physique; the first hardcore bodybuilding gym in Buffalo, NY. Future Physique was an iron pit: no cardio, never cleaned, the music was always metal, shit was broken, and you always lifted hard and heavy. In other words, it was pure Nirvana for an 18 year old kid who wanted nothing else but to be big and strong.

I did what everyone else there did or secretly aspired to do. I became a competitive bodybuilder. When you do that, you make a conscious decision to step out beyond normal societal boundaries and become a freak. It is also a very tight clique. You cannot get in until you've become huge, and that takes time.

I trained hard. I was a fan of the big heavy movements like squats and bench press, and I loved putting on mass. I pushed hard each and every training session to lift bigger, heavier weights. I got big and thick and was stronger than some of the serious power lifters in the gym. In the bulking season I was 245lbs and in contest shape I was 215.

Me at 21

By 21, I was in all the way. I was a big lean guy with one show under my belt and another one coming up. I had a problem though. I couldn't get lean enough. It was easy for me to pack on the muscle, but my skin never looked paper thin and that was what judges liked.

I tried just dieting, but.when I dieted I shrank. I hated the feeling of starving myself and losing some of my muscle to drop body fat. It went against my love for lifting heavy weights and training hard. Put simply, dieting for competitions sucked.

There was a way to get that look the judges wanted without starvation dieting, but to do it you have to use a lot of very dangerous fat burners and diuretics. The combination of the two has been responsible for most of the deaths associated with bodybuilding and I preferred to play it safe. I chose not to use those drugs and as a consequence, I would never get very far as a bodybuilder.

It was very frustrating. I was stuck in a limbo. I was never going to get very far as a bodybuilder and I didn't want to become a powerlifter because the thought of competing at just three lifts all the time seemed boring to me. Every powerlifter I knew had horrific joint problems from training dedicated to hitting a one repetition maximum. And honestly, it didn't seem like a good way to attract women. As a result, I had no focus.

I decided to give up competitions and just train for the hell of it. I played other sports and worked as a personal trainer for ten years. While I loved being in the gym and working with people, it was difficult to make significant personal gains when I wasn't aiming for anything specific. Needless to say, my training had become static.

Fast forward to New Years Weekend 2006; ten years had passed without much change. I looked good and I was strong, but I was beginning to wonder if it wasn't time to come down in size and take up tennis or some other, more adult, pastime.

During that weekend every year, ESPN likes to air the Worlds Strongest Man (The WSM) sporting event. I've always loved watching it, just like most other weight trainers, and I was always really amazed by what those athletes could do. New Years Weekend '06 was no exception. I was watching it with a bunch of friends when one commented "Too bad you never tried that, I bet you would have been pretty good."

I had always thought that myself. The problem was that, until just a few years ago, there was practically no way to find out. No one had the equipment and the only contests were for professionals

The sport had caught on in Europe and men there began to train for it exclusively. Powerlifters and Olympic lifters from the US would get invited to compete, but no one else here was taking the sport seriously. It took awhile but finally, a couple Americans began doing well in competitions. Don Pope and Mark Phillipi became regulars on the WSM. Karl Gillingham began to train local guys and coach them to success. What gave the sport immediate attention was an MTV True Life episode that featured then-amateur Kevin Nee on his journey to become a professional. It introduced the sport to a new young generation and gave the sport a recognizable face.

Guys started picking up tractor tires wherever they could and storing them in the back of the gym. Recipes sprang up across the internet that showed how to make three hundred fifty pound atlas stones from concrete and an excise ball mold. The sport began to spread as lifters across America wanted to test how strong their entire bodies were, not just single muscle groups on single lifts. Because more people were training, more competitions were offered, and more people had the opportunity to really see how strong they were.

In talking with an internet friend, I located a place right here in town.

Posted by Mike Gill at 6:00 AM

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