WHERE DID IT BEGIN FOR YOU?
Think back to the first inspirations you’d had to make you want to lift weights, body build, or compete in sports. What are your earliest memories? It could have been seeing Arnold on Wide World of Sports as he went from a huge muscular phenomenon to an absolute freak as the muscles flexed and his body became statuesque. It could have been your father or brother or neighbor, or seeing professional athletes up close at your first real sporting event.
It could have been the “Feats of Strength” freak at the carnival sideshow, or a movie clip from one of the “Beach Blanket” movies. It could have even been Jack Lalane with his chair, “breathing in, breathing out…” as he brought fitness to the living rooms of women all over the country in the ’60’s.
WHERE IT BEGAN FOR ME
There are two distinct things that stand out from my memory that helped to shape my life as a bodybuilder.
I must have been 5 or 6 years old. A guy from down the street, Wally, who came around infrequently, came walking from the end of the block in skinny, rolled up jeans, white Converse tennis shoes, and a white t-shirt that fit him like paint. He was smart, articulate, and kind with a joking demeanor. His shoulders hid the sun, his arms, contoured and veiny, lean as a hunting dog, stuck from his shirtsleeves like deli salamis. His black Elvis “waterfall” hung over one eye; and it took all of us to get the courage to ask him our request. The reputation was that he could lift a car off the ground by the bumper.
