How I became a Land Monster

[TheMonster]

Musings of a Bodybuilder

part 1

I have always been interested in physical pursuits.

I have always been impressed by men who were physically fit, feats of strength, and those who were able to withstand pain of all kinds.

Even when I was little, I never generally gorged on junk food like most of my peers. While my understanding of excercise and nutrition have grown considerably, I recall avoiding candy, popcorn, chips, soda... things of that nature even in elementary school when I was not involved in sports. This was odd to my parents, who said I SHOULD be eating these things like most growing boys.

I also remember that I used to do situps, pushups, jumping jacks, pullups and situps around my house when I was alone.

However, unlike most people, I have never been that interested in what is known as generic "sports".... such as baseball, basketball, soccer, whatever. I can tolerate playing them, but generally watching them and rooting for someone else is intolerable boredom.

I experiemented briefly in sports by playing littleleauge basbell in late elementary and during junior high school, but I was not really good at anything besides running and catching fly balls. I soon realized that physical fitness didn't count for too much in baseball, besides perhaps running speed.... so I dismissed the sport because the naturally talented/coordinated kids dominated, regardless of what they ate. It didnt matter how flexible, or how fast or fat or whatever they were. The talented fat kids who showed up late to the game, eating a bag of Taco Bell, would still get more contact with the ball, throw straighter, and be considered a more valuable player.

I tried out for my basketball team, since I thougt it might be a sport where I could practice it on my own and have an edge over talented people. However, since I was not tall, and I was not especialy coordinated, I was cut immediately from tryouts, and then gave it up.

I have a naturally skinny frame. I finished 8th grade at 5'11, 115-120lbs. Since I was naturally skinny, and still interested in finding a sport where I thought sucess would equate to a work ethic.... I naturally gravitated towards cross country and distance running in my highschool years.

Football had long intrigued me, since I knew most of the good ones were stong and had good work ethics... but I was 120lbs coming into highschool, and really just ruled it out based on my size. The football players I knew in junior high were already much bigger than me.

In retrospect, football or wrestling would have been better choices for me, since I could learn a work ethic, and start to build up muslce strength and size at an earlier age, but cross country still taught me alot of things about a physical work ethic, pain, competition, etc etc.

I competed in cross country for three years, pretty seriously in fact. I never had any friends or girlfriends during highschool, probably because I spent alot of time just running. It is a pretty time consuming sport actually. My junior year I remember running 60-80 miles a week, at least 1/2 of them alone. The before and after school training programs only had us running about 30 miles a week. I would run at least that much more by myself at nights, or weekends in order to gain an edge.

I had actually pretty decent sucess at cross country, compared to my past sporting history. Besides varsity cross country, I also made it to the national junior olympics in Chicago. I ran at the regional cross country events sophomore and junior years, but failed to make it to state championship. I ran in many local "road races", various 5k, 10k, and half-marathons, when the cross country season was over... and usually won my age group.

However, in the more serious school competitions, with hundreds upon hundreds of people who were serious and also my same age, I was only placing in the top 20-30% generally. This was not that outstanding, getting 30th place in a group of 150 people. It is statistically good I suppose, but not that awe-inspiring.

Even in sports such as cross country, where I assumed you could forge a champion from virually anyone.... it seems there guys who just were naturally much better at it than others. It pissed me off that some freshman with virtually no running history, with good genetics, was performing just about how I was, without 3 years of training, or running 60 miles a week.

So frustrated with the gene pool, frustrated from being so thin and looked down on, and frustrated with sports in general, I retired myself from competition after my junior year of running.



part 2

After I quit running my junior year, I did not take part in any form of diet or athletic regimen. For essentially the first time in my life, I went a matter of a month or 2 without any serious physical challenge. I was somewhat depressed with my poor effort-to-sucess ratio in varsity cross country, and I was even more depressed, even angry, that my years of literal blood sweat and tears just resulted in a physique that got made fun of by my peers.

It is disheartening to work so hard... harder than most people your age can even understand... and then end up with a result that people make fun of. I was a small framed endurance athlete, but shoved into the same category as any wimpy highschool dweeb as far as the "jocks" were concerned. The facts that I was much more fit than any "geek", and that I had worked just as hard or harder at sports as "jocks" did, didn't matter.

As a result of my scrawniness, I had my personal school belongings stolen many times during this period, and people at my school (usually non-athletes, sometimes football players) would heckel me when I was out running. Often they would honk & hurl beer bottles at me, try to splash me with rain puddles, etc. This was very unmotivating, and caused to do alot of running very early in the morning or late at night.

I stewed and grew very angry, and the summer after my junior year was over, I decided to hit the weight room.

I knew nothing about weight training, but I was too proud (and poor) to hire a personal trainer. So I just applied the common-sense knowledge I had about getting ****nig big. I knew I had to workout as much as I could, and cram as much healthy food as I could down my throat. I decided to workout at the local YMCA, which consisted nothing more of some light dumbbells, and crappy out-of-date machines.

Thus began the solitary quest of the Hulk....

The summer after my junior year, I went from 6 feet 130lbs, to 6 feet 160lbs at similar bodyfat. I would go to the local crappy gym, train to complete exhaustion on every single machine they had.... sometimes experiment with the dumbbells.... then come home, stuff myself with protein, and fall asleep.

When senior year started, I joined a Gold's gym that many of our football players used after school. I suprised alot of people with my sudden muscular gains, and I continued to work hard all year the best I knew how. I went from 160lbs to 190lbs during that year, and the course of the summer. I entered Texas A&M at feet 6 feet, 190lbs. During all of this time, the only supplement I ever took was a vitamin in the mornings.

During college, I contined training hard, and joined the TAMU Weightlifting club my freshman year after I found out about them. Even though I never became good friends with many of them, they did have alot to show me about weightlifting. I consider it a very valuable experience. I was weaned off of macines, and started doing alot of hardcore excerises with free-weights, that are much more physically and mentally draining. I made good gains here in a short period of time, as far as strength and knowledge were concerned.

Sadly, my progress slowed, as I seemed to have satisifed my personal goals of overcoming scrawniness. I finished freshman year weighting 200lbs, and didn't gain any muscle mass at all till end of sophomore year of college.

I had essentially made excellent gains at weight lifting, going from 130 lbs to 200 lbs of lean mass in a matter of a few years, more than doubling my strength (some cases trippling my strengt on lifts)..... which is considered pretty remarkable to the average person. But I lost the drive for progress, was pleased with my moderate accomplishments, and was content once again to sit around and play video games. In fact, I lost 10lbs during this period.