Bodybuilding
My Fitness Journey - Dissatisfaction in Action
When I was in my pre-teen years, I definitely wasn’t very athletic. I’d had a triple hernia as a child, so my mother was a bit protective and didn’t want me to get too physical. So, sports were not high on my list when I was young. Obviously, this played into my strength as an artist, giving me more time to focus on learning techniques.
I got interested in fitness in the late 70s. I don’t recall a specific event that was the catalyst. I know seeing Sylvester Stallone in Rocky when it first came out, was one trigger. It made me aware of something that I had not realized as a child growing up; that to excel at anything in life would take a great deal of commitment, focus, energy, passion and faith…and that to be really great at anything would take a lot of hard work.
The more I became immersed in watching sports, the more I was encouraged to participate. But that was just a door opener. What I think got me into training and eventually bodybuilding was frustration with my results!
About 45 years ago, a good friend of mine who’s also a “hard-charger”, was attending Texas State University (North Texas State at the time). We waited tables together while I was still struggling as an artist and he was attending school. We were young men on a mission with a shared drive to be successful, so we’d often share wisdom. One day he told me one of his professors had challenged his class with a statement about motivation. He postulated that “motivation was simply dissatisfaction in action”.
Well, I thought that sounded awfully negative. I thought: shouldn’t motivation be a positive thing? But, try as I may to argue against that concept, I couldn’t find a hole in it. No matter how I tried. That actually became the story of my fitness journey…dissatisfaction in action. I had not achieved the athletic build I was after, so I was dissatisfied and thus, motivated to find the magic potion. Motivation clearly wasn’t enough. Although I learned a great deal over the years, I had to go to the next level. I had to really dig in and learn about fitness if I was going to achieve my objectives.
This was a personal journey…after all, I was already in my 20’s when I got drawn into the fitness world. There was no one telling me I had to workout or eat a certain way. It was just my decision and determination to achieve something. I was dissatisfied, so I was motivated. I had been bitten by the iron bug.
My journey was definitely a gradual process. I realized that if there are things I wanted in this world, I needed to make a plan and a commitment, not just expect them to somehow magically occur. That’s one of the biggest things we have to learn in life - you have to be proactive if you want to achieve or obtain something. You can’t just hope and pray it comes to you without any plan of action or effort on your part. You need to make a plan and do the hard work. Faith alone won’t cut it. You have to genuinely want something, because when you strive to attain something, it leads to habits and life choices that are congruent with that objective.
In 1996, I entered my first bodybuilding contest. I was 38-years old. I recall guys in that first show that were in their late teens or early 20s. I did it nearly a dozen more times before finally winning a show! I guess I am committed.
Driven by a passion to pursue excellence in everything I do
It began quite harmlessly. I wanted to get my goals and my objectives with respect to working out into perspective. Not sure where that interest was going to lead, so I started reading bodybuilding magazines to learn how to train and eat. Reading everything I could get my hands on for years, from the early 80’s until the Internet changed things, I must have subscribed to 2-3 magazines a month, trying to learn the secret to muscle growth.
I’m sure it had to do with the artistry of the human form when developed to an extreme level of fitness that must have appealed to my artistic sense. It was probably a combination of my interest in sports and the energy and passion I would try to capture in my work, that I quickly became interested in the bodybuilding lifestyle. The idea of shaping my own body just seemed so basic. Similar to how I would shape and form an image in a painting.
To prepare for my first competition I found a protein supplement that I thought would be simple and cost effective. Beverly International had been around since the early 60’s and still creating products from the golden era of bodybuilding, but with new scientific findings. They published a magazine to motivate and sell their products, featuring ordinarily people (their customers) who had successfully used their products and diet protocols to achieve success on the bodybuilding stage, although some clearly used some artificial supplements as well. Regardless, I put it in the back of my mind that one day I would achieve my goals and be featured in that magazine.
Thirty-years after seeing those featured athletes, I achieved my goal, winning my pro card in the Natural Fit Federation, winning both the Open and Masters 35+ categories on August 31, 2023 - a day before my 65th birthday.
Contact Todd.
Happy to give you feedback on training, diet, competition, but more importantly, the knowledge to discern what you need to know from what you don’t. While it certainly isn’t rocket science - it’s still science! And chemistry, life science, biology and nutrition, were not my favorite concepts in school - at all! Still, I have a burning desire to learn the latest/optimal approach to diet and exercise for body composition training.
After first picking up a weigh in a gym in New Orleans, LA in 1979, I was bit by the iron bug. I’ve read everything I could about training and diet. I bought every course when I was younger. I’ve been a sponge trying to learn everything I could to accelerate my progress beyond my genetic limitations. We may never know all the nutritional guidelines to achieve our health and physique goals, It’s a mystery we’ll likely never stop learning more about.
Having been training now for nearly 50 years, I feel like I’ve read everything that’s come along regarding he latest diet trend, weight training protocol, etc. (or so it seems), since the late 70s, the 80s, the 90s all the way up to today! Take a look at my thoughts on some of these protocols and approaches to diet and training. They may save you some time!