2010 Iron Man Blog

Updated Competitors List - as of 01/23/07

Mens list updated to include Omar Deckard.

Figure list to be updated later in the week (Alberding, Paynton and Payan dropped out). We are at 23 Men and 18 Figure.

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IFBB PRO MEN COMPETITORS (tentative)
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Edward Abbew
Jason Arntz
Eryk Bui
Omar Deckard
Kris Dim
Mark Dugdale
Moe Elmoussaoui
Aiman Faour
Toney Freeman
Ahmad Haidar
David Henry
Rusty Jeffers
Rod Ketchens
Martin Kjellstrom
Francesco Mazzotta
Silvio Samuel
Daniele Seccarecci
Roc Shabazz
Sergey Shelestov
Clifton Torres
Luke Wood
Hidetada Yamagishi
Fabrizio Zittucro

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NPC FIGURE COMPETITORS (tentative)
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Debbie Bell
Noreene L. Castillo
Michele Cogger
Danielle A. Edmonds
Sirvan Ergili
Kathy Fehringer
Dena Gunnoe
Dawn Kirkham
Elizabeth Laub
Cindy Martinez
Monica Mark
Tanya M. Peale
Venus Ramos
Alecia Rankovic
Diva Richards
Ann Treesukosol
Vanessa Van Overmeer
Soumaya Wilmore

I am almost embarrassed to admit that I entered the 2006 Ironman Figure competition “just for fun”!  At the time, I was in the middle of my first year of studies at Whittier Law School (Costa Mesa, CA).  I had planned to take a year off from competing in order to focus on my law school career.  But before long, I started to wonder if I could train for a competition DURING my first year in law school!  After competing for the first time in 2003, I got “hooked” on the challenges of contest preparation and the sense of fulfillment and achievement that I got from reaching my goals.  (I’m sure those of you who compete can relate to that!)  So, as you can imagine, by October 2005, I was already going through “withdrawals” from the figure competition scene.  I called my trainer/nutritionist, Kim Oddo, and asked him about the Ironman Figure competition.  We decided to give it a shot! I knew that I wanted to compete at nationals in the summer of 2006, so I looked at the Ironman as a “stepping stone” to a successful 2006 season.  I was so anxious to step on the figure stage again that I didn’t care about having to diet through the holidays!!!

The diet and training were not too bad…aside from the fact that I had NO LIFE outside of the gym, the library, and the classroom! LOL!  But it all paid off when I realized that my level of conditioning going into the Ironman was my personal best!!!  Everything just seemed to be going perfect!

When I arrived at the host hotel on Friday evening (before the competition), I was surprisingly relaxed and calm.  I was excited to step on stage, but I also knew that I had already achieved my personal best…so I was happy   The next morning, I had that same calm and confident feeling…which, as any competitor knows, is the absolute best feeling ever!!!  That calm and confidence lasted even up until I stepped on stage!  After the first round of prejudging (1-piece suits), I looked around and realized that my class was by far the largest class in the competition!  There were about 20 women in my class (Class A), while there were about 7 or 8 women in the other 2 classes COMBINED!!!  That’s about when my nerves kicked in!  Going into the 2nd round (2-piece suits), I just tried to maintain that calm feeling and continue to have fun.  When I got the 1st callout in the 2nd round and heard all of my friends and family cheering for me, I got “goosebumps”!  This was the first time in my entire figure career that I had gotten the 1st callout in both rounds! I realized that I actually had a good shot at winning my class! I wasn’t even thinking about the Overall!!!

When I returned to the awards show that night, I tried to remain calm, knowing that the callouts don’t always mean what you think they do   Stepping onto the stage at the Ironman Awards show was surreal…the stage lights, camera flashes and cheers/applause from the audience made me feel like I was dreaming!  When my name was called as the Figure Class A winner, I was so excited! That was my first class win!!!  Then I had to go back on stage for comparisons for the overall award!  I remember hearing people in the audience screaming out my name and my competitor number…it was crazy!!!  Then after it was announced that the judges had reached their decision, there was that infamous pause…….and then they announced me as the Overall winner of the 2006 NPC Ironman Figure competition!  I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, smile, wave, etc!!!  What an experience!

After winning the Ironman, it all seemed like a blur!  My first win definitely catapulted me onto a whole new level of figure competitions…not only did I get a lot of publicity and coverage through photo shoots and magazine appearances, but I also experienced more pressure to win (or at least to place well) at the competitions I entered following the Ironman.  Although I didn’t get my pro card last year, I still feel like my year was a success!  Looking back now, I realize that my overall win at the Ironman opened so many doors and opportunities for me…and I met so many incredible people!  I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did without the support of family, friends, and without God giving me the strength to face each day and the new challenges it brought me.

The Ironman is one of my favorite shows!  So…to all those women who are in their last few weeks of prep for the Ironman Figure competition…just remember to go out there and have some fun!!!

For those of you reading this blog, and for those that wish to give your own predictions for the 2007 IFBB Men’s Iron Man Pro…

Be sure to check out the newly-created posts in the BodyBuilding.com forums regarding the 2007 Iron Man Pro! You can check out the threads here:

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=1189411

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=1120031

So, who else is coming to the first ever BodySpace Meet and Greet at the Iron Man only a few weeks away? Cover girl and fitness model Cara Basso will be there. Cara was the girl on all of the banners for the Iron Man and FitExpo last year. She was also was on the cover of this issue of Iron Man Magazine and has appeared in many others.

I was lucky enough to shoot with Cara at Venice Beach last year and you will see her in upcoming BodyBuilding.com ads. So come on by and meet Cara, you will be happy you did. Get your tickets really cheap right here on BodyBuilding.com. See you there!

Last year’s NPC Figure Class A and Overall Winner was Halcyon (Halcy) Duarte, soon to be one of our guest bloggers here on this blog.

Who will it be this year?  (See below for a list of tentative amateur 2007 Iron Man figure competitors.)

NPC FIGURE COMPETITORS (tentative)

Franci Alberding
Debbie Bell
Noreene L. Castillo
Michele Cogger
Danielle A. Edmonds
Sirvan Ergili
Kathy Fehringer
Dena Gunnoe
Dawn Kirkham
Elizabeth Laub
Cindy Martinez
Monica Mark
Megan Payan
Kathryn Payton
Tanya M. Peale
Venus Ramos
Alecia Rankovic
Diva Richards
Ann Treesukosol
Vanessa Van Overmeer
Soumaya Wilmore

Big Luke Wood has been posting on Getbig.com with a few of his pre-contest pics.

Luke is looking to redeem himself for a less then stellar showing his last few times on stage. He looked great when he competed in New York a couple years ago but hasn’t matched up since.

Does he have a chance to qualify? We’ll find out soon…

You never know who will show up at the IRONMAN PRO Fit Expo. The first year I attended the show, Carmen Electra was there promoting her “Strip Aerobics” video. She is a tiny lil’ thang.

One of the industry’s main men - Lonnie Teper has a variety of duties throughout the weekend. Emcee’n the show, weighing in competitors at the press conference and when he’s not warming up in his hotel room with his travel bands, he’s been known to make a stop by the bodybuilding.com booth. LT shown below doing just that:

The word on the street is that Omar Deckard, the winner of the 2006 NPC USA, has thrown his name in the mix for the 2007 IRONMAN PRO!

Does he have a chance to qualify and find himself in the top 5 qualifying for the Olympia? We’ll see in a few short weeks!

Sunday night and watching Carrie Bradshaw explain the intricacies of New York relationships, I begin to consider the relationships that define how bodybuilders interact with one another in contrast with what is normally seen between the male population in an everyday context. Most interesting to me is the breakdown of rules between male interaction, or dare I say, male bonding? Does bodybuilding allow us males to forgo the social fears of being perceived something other than straight among our peers and allow us an emotional freedom to interact with our peers without the constraints of commonly accepted social proprietary amongst males?

On the Iron Man wallpapers page are photos of David Henry, Toney Freeman and Mark Dugdale parading their gym-toned bodies for the world to see. Ironically, while their proud structures communicate a subliminal alpha-male status, their Zeus-like figures are framed by a 2 inch nylon-stretch bikini that could fit my 5 year-old nephew quite comfortably and make any botox patient jealous. This interesting dichotomy between alpha-maleness and the bikini that are usually only reserved for the die-hard partiers at the Mardi Gras and the fashion-challenged at local beaches provide a paradox that while is almost in-your-face in more ways than one, is commonly accepted. Does bodybuilding allow us to emasculate ourselves, served under the guise of a sport so masculine that it makes American football players look like they belong in the junior league?

The evidence is everywhere. At the 2007 Iron Man competition, oiled men parade themselves in bikini-bottoms to an adoring crowd. In the photo gallery at bodybuilding.com, men observe and provide detailed critiques of other men’s bodies and in most cases, we post half-naked photos of ourselves on the Internet in the hopes that someone will tell us that we look a little bigger.

We all know that competitive beach volleyball players like the occasional arse slap every now and then. OK, maybe after every point they win, but served under the sport context, this is palatable by the general populace. From a bodybuilding context, why are straight bodybuilders allowed to look at quasi naked pictures of men, but still be considered straight? Is this a pandemonium or worse, a new threat to 21st century male heterosexuality? Or are the two extremes converging into a male hybrid ready to be embraced and universally adored by the world?

To the uninitiated, scratching under the surface of the bodybuilding community can be a scary experience. After the deluge of baritone voices and the clang of metal on metal, testosterone-induced grunts and stench of sweat, there is a common acceptance or sympathy that everyone is in the same boat. Perhaps it is this shared experience that has freed the male bodybuilder and allowed him to communicate openly with his peers. From this extremity, it is commonly accepted that perhaps, we are allowed to be a little emotional and emasculated, if it means at the end, we all become buff fitness-models who can draw the women like foreign bees to the air-vent in my room who stubbornly refuse to leave despite my best efforts.

Maybe without knowing, we are all aware of this unique phenomenon and while being unable to profess to it, we balance it by portraying a tough love mentality to each other as another way of saying, “Look buddy, I think you can really do it if you try. Common around the community are phrases like “Get off your arse : fatty, and “Shut up and squat, which is really another way of saying, “Go! Go! Go! You can do it! Flippant responses such as “O’RLY and “PIITB are really code for “I hear you! while responses to suicide threads such as, “Go ahead and die pussy, are really another way of telling another person that the only way they can become a better person in the long term is if they help themselves first. It’s a wooden stick, but strangely it works. This is what I refer to as the buffer zone. A zone that exists somewhere in the twilight zone, that translates our recognition of emotional responsibility into primitive grunts often accompanied by the eye-rolling of the female population and exclamations of “Men!

With the 2007 Iron Man about to start, it will be interesting to see how the competitors present themselves this year. Will the camaraderie of shared experience be more obvious that it was in previous years and will the future of bodybuilding incorporate highly choreographed routines that draw influences from calisthenics and jazz?

With the great selection of wallpapers now available to spruce up a desktop, there is no excuse for the die-hard bodybuilder to be ashamed of being a part of a movement filled with people who sympathize and work together to achieve a physique normally reserved for superheroes in comic books. Now if only my friends didn’t think I was gay for sporting a bodybuilding wallpaper…

As I look at the astonishing physiques of 2007 Iron Man competitors David Henry (2nd last year), Toney Freeman (7th last year), and Mark Dugdale (5th last year) on the Iron Man wallpapers page, I can’t help but wonder what, if any, sacrifices were made to achieve their superhero-like proportions. Did they spend their lives meticulously planning what to eat, when to eat, when to sleep and when to workout? Just what exactly did they have to give up to achieve competitive status, and could this undeniably attention-demanding “hobby be more than an interest so much that it can be considered an obsession?

As I sit here and contemplate this puzzler, I question in wonderment why some of my muscles have been able to naturally grow an extra two inches in two months whilst the rest of my body; and by which I mean the most important area, my chest, has taken two years to grow this much. My mind wanders to a universal issue that confronts each self-proclaimed bodybuilder sooner or later; why are we so obsessed with this sport? Are we simply victims of this health kick of the 21st century where bodybuilding is the new black, or ironically, are we mindless addicts to a healthy activity so much that it becomes self-destructive, in an era where obesity is a soaring epidemic?

To answer this question, I looked inward as to why I started bodybuilding. Admittedly, my bodybuilding habits leave a lot to be desired and I’m probably the world’s worst bodybuilder, but as a self-proclaimed fitness junkie, it is an interesting contrast between why I shamelessly throw myself off huge rock ledges, and why I suffer hours of pain three times a week all for the goal of physical symmetry. And for what purpose other than to have the option of taking half-naked photos in the mirror because I’m too lazy to use the timer function on my digital camera, and then post them all over the Internet for everyone to see and have random strangers tell me that I look “a little bigger.

Without hesitation, I admit that the former is done in the search of adrenaline, the rush of adventure and the elation that occurs afterwards that often transforms me into what many people mistakenly believe to be an escaped patient from the local psychiatry ward on an endorphin overdose.

The latter? That’s an interesting one. At first, I reasoned that I was doing it for the opposite sex, after all, being a university student, I am constantly surrounded by very attractive members of the fairer sex. Then I realized hang on a second, maybe not. After all, if this was the case, once we, as males, are able to trick the opposite sex into marrying us (how clever are we!), we simply forgo the gym sessions and let ourselves go confident in the knowledge that the ability for a female to escape from a relationship is inversely proportionate to the achievement of marriage between two people.

I realize with a wry smile that I, like so many other bodybuilders, painstakingly monitor what we eat, when we eat and how we perform at the gym for more personal reasons, to make us feel attractive because maybe, just maybe, we get a rush from knowing that other people find us attractive.

This still doesn’t explain however why we look at ourselves in the mirror, measure ourselves for the umpteenth time and conclude that we still aren’t big enough. Do we simply, as a representative of a sect of the general populace, love ourselves with so much abandon that we put Paris Hilton’s music videos to shame? Do we get off seeing our own squat-perfected muscular butts while watching our pectorals perform the river dance?

To better understand this question, I asked a close friend, who tells me he does it because he no longer wants to be the fat kid, but despite maintaining a body fat percentage of 8%, which translates to pretty ripped, every time he looks in the mirror, he still sees the fat kid that greeted him in the mirror every year during his childhood. Personally, I want to eventually be so buff that the guys over at Abercrombie & Fitch say, “Oh dude! You’re so friggen ripped! Come model for us! to which I’ll reply, “Hell no!

So just how obsessed do we have to be to achieve our personal bodybuilding goals? Despite the health benefits of working out, the risk of being addicted can impact on our frame of mind leading to severe depression, negative self-image and low self-esteem effecting not only our psychological well-being, but also our physical health due to the possible abuse of our bodies. I don’t know if I’m addicted, but on reflection, I have been to the gym twice, been at an indoor rock climbing centre twice, and have spent half a day surfing at a local beach : and this was just in the last four days.

The question of whether each one of us is addicted to bodybuilding, is something personal that each one of us needs to answer and apparently isn’t as clear-cut as I expected. Sometimes, I don’t even know if I’m addicted to bodybuilding or  just addicted to being so active but to be honest, if this is what it takes to achieve my bodybuilding goals, then guilty as charged.

We’ve recently added a special page just for the growing collection of 2007 Iron Man wallpapers.

From this week forward until the 2007 Iron Man, we’ll be adding at least two (if not more) Iron Man-themed wallpapers, so keep checking back often for updates, here:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/2007ironmanwallpapers.htm

Added New Today:  Mark Dugdale!

Kudos go out to Ian L. Sitren for the spectacular photos, and Jeran “The Dahl” Dahlquist for the resulting wallpapers themselves. 

And plenty of it! You can not only get into this show really cheap by buying your special BodySpace Iron Man Pro tickets right here on BodyBuilding.com but you also get into the Fit Expo. And to answer the question that is asked all of the time, YEAH, there is always lots of free swag for you to bag! And there is always all kinds of things going on, people to see, people to meet and a lot to learn just right in the Fit Expo hall.

Where else are you going to get the chance to meet eight-time Ms. Olympia winner Lenda Murray and have her toss you a free t-shirt?!

The Iron Man Pro also kicks off expanded coverage plans by BodyBuilding.com. We are going to be doing all kinds of new things this year to bring more to you online and in person. And of course a big part of it is the live Webcast. Check it all out right here on the Iron Man Pro main page. So even if you can’t make it to this one, and we hope you will, it will all be right here for you online.

You probably have seen this ad running in all of the magazines. That is what we want to bring to you. No one else brings you this much and it is all free. By the way this was a really fun ad to shoot and the BodyBuilding.com art department really did a great job adding in the show photos.

So do it, be a part of it, come to the Iron Man Pro show, come to the FitExpo, watch it online, talk about it in the Forums, and start your BodySpace and BodyBlog. BodyBuilding.com has made bodybuilding and fitness a sport that you can not only watch, but your sport where you can actually be a part of it. Thanks and keep coming back!!

Hello all bodybuilding fans! And welcome to the 2007 IFBB season! Coming off the incredible 2006 season, this year promises to be jam packed with upsets, surprises, and new champions! With the Iron Man Pro fast approaching, you can bet to see fireworks right off the bat with the first show of the year.

Before I get into more about the Iron Man, let me take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Jeff (surfgod777) and I am a 25 year old and live in the Bay Area in California. I have lived in CA my entire life where I grew up, went to school, and now work and live. I got into bodybuilding for myself a while ago during school and have been in love with it ever since. Soon after starting training myself, I got into reading the magazines and online articles (at bodybuilding.com), which lead into an interest in the pro and amateur athletes. I soon found myself going to local shows in my area and even the Olympia the past few years (you can check out my Olympia experiences in the 2006 Olympia Blog).  I also have been tracking my progress in many journals and reviews that can be found online at the forums. Check them out and encourage me to reach my goals!

Now that you know about me, it’s time to get ready for the Iron Man Pro. This is the first stop on the 2007 IFFB season, and it promises to be a great event. What more can you ask for to start the year? The event is held in beautiful Pasadena, California. This is a perfect bodybuilding location. Close to the mecca of bodybuilding in Venice, close to the beach, and beautiful weather (it’s almost 70-degrees right now… in January!). Stay tuned in the next few days as me and the other bloggers give you our insights and predictions for the show, expo, and weekend. Take care!

What’s up guys! I’m stoked to be part of the bodybuilding.com team for the IRONMAN. I’ve been contributing to the site for awhile but not it’s time to step it up a notch. I will be flying out to LA on Thursday afternoon. Friday morning I will be hitting Gold’s Gym Venice with Ron Avidan from GETBIG.com and then we’re going to head to Pasadena for the Press Conference. Hopefully it doesn’t rain this time. No one do a raindance this year, aight? I’ll be in Pasadena until Monday, have a short little break and then it’s off to the Arnold.

An inside scoop that you may not have heard yet, but IFBB Figure Pro and Rookie of the Year, Gina Aliotti (don’t miss Gina Aliotti on the Fit Show!) will be helping out with judging duties at the NPC Figure portion. The winner of this NPC Figure event has gone on to turn pro a fair number of times.

I’ll be doing some short video interviews and backstage coverage at the event. Looking forward to this show as it is one of my favorites of the year.