SecondFocus Blog

Just a few months ago world famous trainer to the bodybuilding stars of the Olympia stage, Charles Glass, had no idea that behind closed doors we had a plan for him…. Dog Training.

It started out like this; we were all sitting around a conference table at BodyBuilding.com in Boise Idaho back in November. One of the big topics was our print magazine ads and the photography for them. And one of the many ideas that came out of that meeting was using Charles Glass and using him to be training a cat running on a treadmill in a gym. My position was that if you want a cat to run on a treadmill I could get it done but a dog might be easier. And so it was agreed that a dog was it, and an English Bull Dog was the choice. So as I returned to Southern California, the art department went to work on designing a concept and I went to work too. We needed a gym that would be empty, that was part of the concept, and an English Bull Dog that could run on a treadmill. And I had a time rush looking like we were going to need to shoot this within a couple of weeks. We did it.

Now this was not an ordinary English Bull Dog but an actual actor, and a veteran of many big time television commercials and major ad campaigns. It took some looking but I found the right dog. And then I was lucky enough to have a great gym to use, Iron Bodies in Costa Mesa CA. And so it was set for the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. Our own world champ, Bob Cicherillo, gathered up Charles Glass, and our star dog arrived on set with an entourage of two trainers and the owner. They did not however arrive by limo and the press was not invited.

The first thing we had to do was to make sure that our stars, the dog and Charles understood each other. So Charles used a sure fire method that he uses with all Olympia champs, bribery with small food items.

And then Charles explained in depth his training methods and secrets so we would get off on the right paw. Charles did tell me afterward that the dog was quicker to learn and grasped the concepts better than many of his clients.

We did both upper and lower body that day including some bench press.

Preacher bench curls of course are great for biceps, front biceps only.

And of course we got in some cardio.

I did manage to take a few photos along the way while being careful not to fall on Bob from my positon on the ladder. And Bob managed to take it all in and picked up a few training tips himself.

Actually we had a lot of fun and it was one of the more creative bodybuilding ad shoots we had seen anywhere. Bob was actually a lot of help coming up with some really good ideas along the way. And Charles Glass showed himself to be a really good actor. The BodyBuilding.com team told me that they could not stop laughing out loud while they watched the frames of the shoot go by. It is funny. It was not just showing up and taking photographs of a dog. It took some planning, the right people, the right place and the right dog. And it all worked out.

Thanks for taking a look and keep coming back for more!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 8th, 2007 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.