Bulking up is hard to do

When I won Mr. New Jersey almost 40 years ago (Spring, 1963) I stood onstage among a throng of big, fat guys by today's standards. We were all training hard and heavy and eating like apes. There were lats and chests, shoulders and biceps everywhere; thighs were a bit light and no calves anywhere unless one were born with them. The few guys who had abs stood out, not for their unusual muscularity, but because they were skinny -- fleas with muscles. It was Jersey, after all, and these were the beginnings.

Looking back at my childhood, teens and the few years of adulthood before moving to California, I see a guy growing up on meat and potatoes. Not bad. The gooey stuff, cupcakes, Three Musketeers, jelly beans, soda pop, fudgcycles and chocolate chip cookies, oozed through my body during the reckless summers at the lake when I was 10, 11 and 12, and sugar accompanied by the rancid fat of the all-beef hotdogs was pure fuel. Swim, run, jump, row, paddle, hike and race. I recycled the junk into action and carbon dioxide.

Most of the time we (two older brothers and I) ate our meat and potatoes and vegetable at dinner as a family and my mom made sure we each took our vitamins and minerals; the spindly framework of order and discipline was pieced together. I wasn't up against the world's worst habits from the starting blocks, thank God. Early influences and habits define, and given half a chance, they can make or break.

I was consciously force-feeding at 20, when "bulking up" had become my burden of choice, my expression, my plan of attack; the un-crowded road I'd travel for a long time to come. I found myself living on the outskirts of society with a bunch of guys and their wives, girls and families. A collection of real decent folk with common interests; they liked to lift weights, be strong and build their muscles. They also ate well and preferred to go about their own business without the interruption of conventional distractions and responsibilities. Pure and simple, they were a subculture of muscleheads: postal workers, university students, school teachers, a doctor, a lawyer or two, an engineer, a pilot, a few wrestlers, more than one actor and a lot of extras. We mingled, like-minded and private, encouraging and respectful: have muscles, will travel.

Some of us would "bulk up" together. Across the street from the Muscle Beach Gym on 4th and Broadway in Santa Monica was The Little Inn, an all-you-can-eat Swedish smorgasbord no bigger than a newsstand. After our evening workout, a handful of us would plod over to the Inn and make our way around the center-island steamer table and salad bar. We grazed and talked and planned and eventually fell silent… stuffed. Our plates were always empty when we left, tables cleared with final gulps of water before we funneled out the door, leaving behind us a collective sigh of relief from the owner-chef-manager and needlessly intimidated diners.

Thursday night was a grand meat and seafood all-you-can-eat buffet at Ted's Rancho, a long and narrow restaurant overhanging a beach in Malibu, and Sunday was a brunch at The Sea Lion, an eatery a mile further north on the same Coast Highway. These were bargain feasts for bulkers, and I have fond memories of my frequent visits as I tramped along to my goal of 250 pounds.

Seeing 250 appear on the screen before me, I think of it as a svelte weight compared to the company of huge men with whom I associated. Chuck Fish, aspiring strong man and pro wrestler weighed 330; Chuck Ahrens, 330 under several sweatshirts and the widest man I've ever seen in my life; legendary Steve Marjanian weighing 320 and carrying the weight with inspiring symmetry (he could move more iron in an hour than a locomotive); and Oliver Sacks from England who trained at The Dungeon while attending graduate school at UCLA. He weighed over 300 pounds, was brilliant and told fascinating stories with a remarkable talent for describing people, places and things. (I believe he is the same Oliver Sacks that is an acclaimed neurologist and author of award-winning fiction and non-fiction, including Awakenings. Face on a book-jacket looks like him only he's thinner and older and no longer wearing a shredded spinnaker for a shirt.)

The process of gaining mass covered a five-year span, 18 though 22, improving in efficiency as I practiced, learned and increased in strength -- proceeding to lift heavier and harder. At no time did I let up. I ate a lot but I didn't "pig out" on sugar or carbs. Protein that I could reach and fat I couldn't trim was cast into the furnace for workouts and muscle growth.

I talk to young guys at the gym who want to gain weight. I give them the eat-a-lot-of-wholesome-food-frequently program and three weeks later, distraught and downtrodden, they confess that they can't seem to put on a pound. I guess they don't have enough time and are attempting to accelerate the cumbersome weight-gain procedure by heavy fretting and by applying substantial disappointment. I then realize that I failed to include in the program a primary imperative: for a long time. How long, they want to know. As long as it takes, I tell them. It's two more sets of heavy fretting and substantial disappointment before the truth sinks in. They're on their own.

My hope: They don't walk away from the gym and find themselves trying to dig their way out of obesity one day like an awful lot of their parents and friends who have never stood in a gym and do regularly eat a lot, frequently and for a long time… they're on their own, also.

Bulking up is hard to do. Becoming overweight is easy. Caution: Don't confuse the two. Always train hard and eat right... eliminates disappointment and fretting.

Fly high, Bombers. Stay close to God. Dave

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