tegid’s BodyBlog

I have just read another blog entry by a guy called Rudy, that I’ve found particularly inspiring:
http://blog.bodybuilding.com/rlxmuscle/2007/11/21/“champions”/

I’ve had a tough time recently. The medics are still (after 7 years) arguing as to what is happening to me. The most frustrating thing is that their versions of events  don’t agree with each other’s and they certainly don’t agree with mine. It was only after I took them to an appeal hearing this summer that they started to listen.

The epilepsy specialists insist that the drugs they prescribe can’t produce the side-effects I’m reporting, so they want to get a specialist in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to see me.

There is something wonderfully calming in going to a gym and just shutting all this chaos outside the door.  I can just get on with the exercise I have planned, achieve it and for a precious time just believe that my condition is actually getting better - the opposite opinion to the rather frustrating world beyond the gym doors.

(or War and Peace Vol. 3)

After going to the website http://www.bostream.nu/beefq/oldtimebb.html

I read this article with interest.  I identified with the description of bodybuilding – the routine of it, the focus and expansion of understanding.  I was interested in the statement regarding the shift of bodybuilding’s emphasis over the past 10 years.  I agree that top-level bodybuilding has lost its ‘quest’ and ‘pursuit of an ideal’.  It has undoubtedly been transformed into an entertainment medium (and almost into a comedy in some respects).  The Biblical story of Samson could be briefly considered as a template for the way that the admirable ‘ideal’ of bodybuilding has been seduced by money.

Why has this happened? What drove this transition to ‘the dark side?’  

I recently experienced something that may explain this.  I sat with another guy that uses the same gym that I go to – a small YMCA health-related-fitness gym here in the middle-class fringe of London.  He explained that he used steroids a lot but stopped four years ago. He works as a senior police officer.  He then pointed out the others in the gym that he knew to be using steroids – and it was a surprise to me.  They were people in my generation (OK – so I’m in my 40’s but I don’t feel like it!).  I thought it was going to be the younger guys but it wasn’t.  It was the people I least expected.  If I had to resort to labelling, I’d suggest that they were middle-aged/retirement-aged, high-income, high-achievers.  Bear in mind that these were just the people he knew about…

It seems to me that people here want to change themselves – and do so through their appearance.  They want to look like something that is good.  They want the world to like them, because of their looks.  They searched around for an ideal – in this case the physiques of the classic bodybuilders – and they wanted it for themselves – instantly.  So WHY did they want that? After all, they want the expensive houses and cars and get those, they want the luxury holidays and luxury food and they get those.  They want the flat-screen TVs and the designer clothes…  So why did they want to look like Schwarzenegger as well?

In my opinion, what they want to change is the part of themselves that they feel bad about – and it is inside.  They quietly fear that others do NOT like them because they do not like themselves.  But they don’t know how to change what they fear - so they change everything they can about their outside.  And when the latest appearance change doesn’t improve their feelings for themselves, they hunt for something else to alter.  Hence this leads to the demand for increasingly distorted and dysmorphic illusions generated by those at the centre of the bodybuilding stage that you described.

For the unscrupulous marketers, this gives an unending source of income – for they will always be able to sell products that extend the make-believe image of something the rest of the world will ‘like you for’, that this ‘botox’ generation clamour for.

(NOTE that there are many other people that body build that do not fall into this category - I’m not saying that it applies to everyone that ever picks up a barbell).

It would really, really get messed up if the bodybuilding world chose to make self-improvement its central ideal - to include physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual elements.  I agree that the current ‘fashion’ or ‘emulation’ of the ‘Californian Bad Boy’ image (with previous experience of jail and survival of ghetto warfare) is a further failure of bodybuilding’s core and a further victory by the unscrupulous commercial profiteers.  They’ve conned us into believing that a hero NEEDS to look and behave like that.  

Of course all people aspire to hero status; particularly if it can be found in unlikely/unconventional characters. In my opinion, what has been exploited – or removed- is the notion that heroes (and antiheros) feel good about themselves.  If heroes feel good about themselves, they won’t take orders from commercial sponsors.  Heroes will not be spoon-fed what colour their skin should be on stage, what clothing to wear, what supplements to eat and what pharmaceutical products to use in order to win.  A hero (according to Christopher Reeve) is ‘an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles’.  

So in order to be heroes, we need to be far more honest – and supportive of each other, particularly when it comes to facing up to the bits of our personalities that we don’t feel good about.  As a community, Bodybuilding.com certainly has the capability of doing this.  I suspect that once that is achieved then we will get our hero status back – and a lot more besides.

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I’m very pleased to say that I’ve found heroes on this website, who have helped me enormously. They know who they are. I am eternally grateful for the hope they bring to an aspiring hero.

You know what? Something fairly astonishing happened here this week. In the UK, there is a general consensus that bodybuilding is generally evil – same sort of category as bikers/hell’s angels, I guess. The fitness industry does its best to remove gyms with free-weights and then replaces them with the selectorized credit-card-driven CV systems that look so much nicer on their brochures.

This week I found that there is one free-weights gym left, in this county… That’s quite a journey for me, though. I described this on my BodyBlog and thought no more of it and was astonished to realize that the three people that have helped me the most at BB.com were logged in at that exact time and all wrote back within the hour. What are the chances of that???

The fitness industry happily quotes scientific ‘principle’ to justify its methods and costs – the American College of Sports Medicine is regarded as the bible for sport and fitness and there are a plethora of additional journals and departments that all add to this.  I even worked at the top ones in the UK some time back.

When it came to the crunch: which of these actually have helped me? Which of these have actually said “Mike – we see you have difficulties and need help. Here – we’ll use whatever’s in our knowledge and see if this can assist you on your difficult journey ahead?”  None.

If anything, all they have done is attempted to banish me – I liked the quote ‘it’s like you have leprosy, not epilepsy’ it is a very accurate observation.

Here at BB.com – where all those so-called ‘muscle heads’ and ‘substance-takers’ supposedly meet to chat – I have found more assistance and concern than anywhere else. Doesn’t that say something?

Today I had a profound experience when somebody that uses the forum contacted me and their words had me crying with laughter one minute and then in tears the next. I thought I was pretty impervious to this sort of thing: it is not often that someone can melt my exterior armour using honesty alone… There you have it - ice on fire - folks.

It shows that there is so very much more to so many of the people using this website than initially meets the eye (or PC screen).  I just pray that the ‘established’ fitness industry does no more to erode away the magic that lurks beneath the visible surface of the bodybuilding fraternity.