A Bodybuilder is Born: Generations
Episode 20: Never turn your back on – your back!
Just as there had been no joy in Mudville one summer day long ago, spirits were down in New England in our final days of summer. Football fans had grown accustomed to winning lately, since the Patriots had nabbed the Superbowl three times in the past few years. Much of this was due to having one of the greatest quarterbacks the NFL had ever seen, a handsome All-American chap named Tom Brady. What no one
expected was that he would injure his knee so severely in the very first game of the season that he would be out of commission until next year. Some bitter fans blamed his Brazilian Supermodel girlfriend Gisele
Bündchen for making him soft and weak. To that I say, who wouldn’t give up just a bit of their indestructibility to snuggle up to a woman lusted after by roughly half the male population on the planet? Oh well, the locals still had their Red Sox and Celtics to cheer them up and offer hope.
I, on the other hand, was trying to stay positive about turning 39 in a few days. This meant that I only had a year left before I hit the big four-oh, and the inevitable midlife crisis that comes with it. As it stood, I had not a single Superbowl ring, had not started up even one billion-dollar corporation, had never directed a Hollywood blockbuster, or even founded a cult based on duping suckers into believing that a spaceship hidden inside a comet was on its way to pick up the faithful, assuming they had liquidated all their assets first and deposited them into my checking account for a ticket on the ship. Of course, first class would cost more because the seats are bigger and the food is better. I would probably make sure the flight attendants were younger and hotter than in coach, too. But hey, I really couldn’t complain. I have a beautiful wife, two bratty but precious kids, and a job that lets me work at home and pretty much eat and train whenever I want. The only thing missing was obscene amounts of cash.
Luckily Jared and two of his friends from the varsity football squad were working out and provided a distraction from my pre-mid-life crisis. I watched them as I did my cardio on the Nautilus treadmaster, a machine I love but on which I have also tripped on more times than John Ritter’s character on Three’s Company used to stumble on that classic sitcom. We had mutually decided that Jared would train on his own for the duration of the football season. I know he enjoyed the little ego boost he got from outdoing the older players in just about every lift. Today it looked like they were working the bench press. It’s a lift that actually has excellent application for their particular sport, since blocking and tackling are all about pushing power. Every year at the NFL Combine, one of the main criteria in judging a prospective player’s strength is watching how many reps he can do with 225 pounds. The record as it stands is 43, set by a petite 312-pounder back in 2005. Oddly enough, most young football players don’t stick with that weight and keep trying to increase their reps on it. Instead, they are forever maxing out.
It’s not just football players, of course. The all-time number one question asked of any male that trains with weights is “how much ya bench?” It’s all related to the whole competitive alpha male frame of mind that many of us possess in our adolescent years and often well beyond. I always hated that question for the simple fact that I couldn’t bench press my way out of a wet paper bag. I can’t even say how much I ever maxed because there was always a spotter helping me out with a powerful upright row. One time in 1997 I did a set of 405 for ten reps, and the shoulders of the guy spotting me probably grew an inch wider from the workout he got assisting me. Eventually I figured out it was just easier to lie and come out with some number that sounded impressive, but not so heavy that it sounded implausible. It never mattered anyway, because the person asking inevitably knew or was related to someone that could bench press more. One time, long before the world record was over a thousand pounds in that lift as it is today, I found the question particularly annoying, as the woman demanding an answer was truly obnoxious. So I said 1,200 pounds for two reps. “Oh, my nephew does more than that,” she said with a dismissive wave.
Luckily, I had taught Jared well enough so that he refused to partake in the group-effort form of bench pressing. He did the reps on his own and used a full range of motion while the other two kids did the usual horrific form and relied on each other to lift the weights. Still, I couldn’t ignore the fact that Jared did at least ten sets that I saw, not counting the warm-ups. From there the kids moved on to barbell curls and then preacher curls and alternate dumbbell curls, and once again Jared was the only one using any semblance of decent technique. Still, something was bothering me. I finished my cardio before they were even done, and I motioned Jared over to the front desk for a quick chat while I went to work on an English Toffee flavor Parrillo Protein Chew bar™. Yeah, I know it’s not polite to talk with your mouth full, but dang it, I was starving and they are so yummy!
“What’s up, Ron?”
I nodded toward several bunches of bananas gathered near the blender behind us on the counter where they made the shakes.
“Are you finding yourself suddenly craving those?” I asked. He knitted his brows.
“Huh?”
“Are you noticing strange abrasions on your knuckles lately?” Now he was really lost.
“What the heck are you talking about?” I slouched my shoulders forward and let my arms hang down as low as I can.
“This is what your posture is starting to look like – a freaking gorilla. And it’s because you have been bench pressing your nuts off while starting to really slack on your deadlifts and rows.” Now he got it, and made a nonchalant face to put me at ease before I continued my rant.
“Tyler, Scott, and Mike – all they ever want to do is bench presses and curls. I’m only training like this for a couple more months til the season’s over. Then I’m working with you again, right? And you always make sure I do all the back stuff.”
“Damn straight I do.” I tossed the bar wrapper toward a waste bin behind the counter and missed. The guy working there scowled and picked it up for me. “But I am a little worried you will start picking up this bad habit that so many guys fall into, which is over-emphasizing chest and arm training at the expense of everything else. These guys strutting around with their Affliction shirts so tight they cut off circulation might look jacked to some drunk young girl in a club, but to real bodybuilders they look like lazy clowns. No back, no legs, no physique. You put them next to a guy that’s proportionately developed and they look like nothing. You do want to stand on a bodybuilding stage and look like you belong up there, don’t you?”
“Yeah, you know I do,” Jared mumbled.
“Look, your dad wants to compete again, probably next summer, and he posed for me back over the winter so I could let him know what he needed to work on. He was actually working his back, but had almost no development because he didn’t have a good mind-muscle connection with it. He never did. You’re still young enough so that you can build everything equally before anything gets out of balance. But it won’t happen if you don’t make sure you do just as much pulling in the gym as you do pushing.” He nodded in acknowledgement.
“I was never any good at the bench press and in a way it was sort of a blessing,” I explained. “I was strong on chin-ups, any kind of row, and rack deadlifts, so I always had just as much muscle thickness from the back as I did the front. That definitely helped me out in competition, trust me. Big chests were a dime a dozen, but when the lineup turns around, it’s very easy to see who hasn’t been giving his back equal attention. Before I see you doing another thing for chest in here, you’d better hit that back.”
“I will, I will,” he assured me.
Now I was back to my anxious thoughts. I only had 368 days left until I turned forty, and there was still no Lamborghini Gallardo in my driveway. I made a mental note to get online first thing when I got home. First I would visit www.registeryourendoftheworldcult.com, and then see if there were any good comets coming around over the next year. My sheep-like followers would need to start booking their trips and forking over their money pronto!
Ron Harris
is the author of
Real Bodybuilding,
available at
www.ronharrismuscle.com