Wrong subforum.
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To be fair, this is one of the few threads that seems to be getting bipartisan support, rightly so.
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I’m enjoying it very much - couldn’t resist poking some fun at the comment, though.
Edit: also wanted to mention @RT_Nomad’s tearing of his bicep during a scott curl, which if I’m not mistaken is a preacher curl, so score another point to @EyeDentist for warning about the vanilla preacher curl!
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I’m pretty sure this’d be interesting. I vote for more talking about this, along with everything else. Everything is golden.
Even among Nautilus fans, there is not universal love for some aspects of those early machines - high friction and the feel of the chain drive are things I’ve seen discussed before. Some of those issues were minimized in later generations of machines, either from Nautilus or other vendors. (For example, leverage designs from Hammer Strength and Rodgers/Pendulum seem very smooth and don’t seem to have a lot of friction). Have you found any later generation machines that you like better?
Let me touch on the start of my involvement in the politics of the NPC. To become a NPC National Judge you had to know the rule book. (I no longer have the rule book I had.) At the first of the rule book it was clearly stated that this was an organization that is run by the athletes and for the athletes. The athletes were to elect their Association Chairmen.
During the test for national judge (1979) we were told that the NPC was making plans to separate from the AAU. At that year they were known as The National Physique Committee of the AAU. We were told that they had to pay the AAU a portion of money to be part of the AAU. So you guessed right, the separation is about money and power. Now, let me say that this made perfect sense to me. When the separation was complete the NPC could keep all the proceeds of every contest.
This segment will concern how each state determined which city/promoter had the rights to hold the state bodybuilding championship (in our case, the Mr Florida). The Region Chairman had the sole authority to make that determination each year. If a state had more than one Association, it was to be rotated among the associations each year.
Florida was split up a little strange. It consisted of 3 associations:
- The Florida Association
- The Gold Coast Association
- The West Florida Association.
But only The Florida Association and The Gold Coast Association were within the borders of The Region. The West Florida Association was in the same region as Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
The state championships had moved from city to city through 1977, which was held in Orlando that year. The next year the Mr Florida moved to Miami. I should be completely fair in saying that it was the best production of the Mr Florida that I had ever seen. But what bothered me were three things:
- Miami was the longest drive for me
- The judges tended to be the same ones, though some judges would make the drive.
- The rule book said it was to be rotated to other associations and other cities.
By 1979, the Florida Associations requested that all Mr Florida judges be qualified Association Judges. This made the judging pool better qualified, but also a smaller number of available judges. It was not uncommon that gym owners became Association Judges, so there existed a possible conflict of interest if the gym owner (judge) had a member in the contest. And when the Mr Florida is held in the same location every year, that being Miami, there was a possibility that the south Florida entrants had a slight advantage.
Now let’s get to me trying to level the playing field. It seems that the Region Chairman and the Miami promoter were the same person. The Region Chairman always selected himself to hold the Mr Florida. (There has been made a movie loosely based on the Region Chairman/promoter not at all related to his NPC duties. I am a little curious if anyone guesses the movie.)
I had come to have earned fairly good respect from the NPC National Chairman, as he was usually the Head Judge at the National contests. I scored high relative to other NPC National Judges and was chosen in 1981 to judge the Lightweight and Light-Heavyweight Classes and the Overall. (Scores were kept on all judges as to how close their placement picks were compared to the resulting placements of all competitors.) I pleaded my case for the Mr Florida being rotated throughout the state and mentioned the conflict of interest that the Florida Region Chairman was using for his advantage. The National Chairman listened to me and said he could clearly see my point. But it turns out that I had less influence than his Region Chairman. The contest stayed in Miami the next year and for many more years, and I haven’t kept up.
Some may say, “Why be so concerned?” I was an idealist concerning bodybuilding at the time, and thought the athlete was more important than the people running the organization. I see now it was always a “business” decision. And will address how this got worse in my eyes a little later…
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I am to 1983 and I have come to the reality that I had probably reached my genetic limits, so I had one more option to consider. I needed an advantage. I decided to go see doctor who was known to write prescriptions for AAS’s to most every young man who asked. My quest was to get some human growth hormone. You should know that this is before synthetic HGH was available.
He wrote me a script for 10 vials of (if I recall correctly) 4 I.U. per cc. It was to take 2 I.U. every other day, until I ran out. If I recall correctly I paid around $950 and had to pick up the prescription from a hospital where it was stored in the refrigerator. I did so and proceeded make plans to increase my protein intake. (Also please note that knew absolutely no one who was taking HGH and had no idea what to expect, but hoped to gain a bunch of muscle.)
I bought a 15lb, or so, turkey (every few days) and using a roasting bag, flipped it upside down so the breast would be setting in a bath of turkey fat, to keep the white meat moist. I set my eating schedule to eat 50 grams of protein every 3 hours. I even went so far as to wake at 2:00am to eat 50g of turkey protein. (Note: We did not believe at that time there was a protein powder that could compare to real food.)
I didn’t change anything significant about my workout. A week before I started the HGH, I started my normal AAS cycle (200mg/week Test C, 200mg/wk Deca, and about 20mg of one of the orals, I can’t recall which one.) I injected the HGH subcutaneously in my belly at night.
I had great hopes for some real muscle size gains. But… IMO, got no better results than if I didn’t take any HGH. I don’t know what might have gone wrong. Maybe my insulin sensitivity was insufficient for the HGH to work. I never knew. I felt that I dropped $950 to find out that HGH wasn’t the magic injection, at least, for me.
A couple years later I heard that some recipients of cadaver HGH were dying from Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease about 5 years after taking the cadaver HGH. Now that got my attention. I had a 3+ window to have great concern whether I would add to the casualty list. Seroids might make you sick, but cadaver HGH could kill you, as there was no cure for CJD.
I then fully accepted that the national bodybuilding contests were in my rear view mirror, at least until I turned 40 years old. That became my long term goal going forward.
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I have found a few later generation machines that I like. Hammer Strength comes to mind. I like their pulldown and rowing machines. Both of those are very smooth. The Hammer Strength chest machines? I did not like any of those, and their shoulder press was just okay. Their seated shrug was nice as I liked to shrug seated every so often.
But my favorite machine was the plate loaded Strive Leg Extension. That is, by far, IMO, the best leg extension machine ever made. Most seated leg curl machines are very good.
Also, the next to last gym I had a membership had a Cybex Pullover Machine. It was as good as the cable driven, plate loaded Nautilus Pullover Machine, but it allowed a good stretch and range of motion. The Cybex cam wasn’t nearly as aggressive as that old Nautilus pullover, but as a finishing exercise I liked it that feature a little better.
No arm machine is as good as free weights, especially if you add accommodating weight to a Scott Curl bench (chains in particular).
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From 1984 to 1988 my bodybuilding “career” was pretty much on “injury accommodation mode.” I was still doing between 2 and 4 contests a year, mostly regional contests open to all contestants. I tried the AAU Mr USA in 1985, but placed out of the hardware, 6th place in the Tall Class. In November of 1983 I had turned 35. There was usually an Over 35 division at every contest. I entered them whether I was in top shape or not, especially if they led up to a show that I had targeted to peak. It was to the point that I nearly always took hardware home. I was beginning to accumulate an unruly quantity of trophies.
But to the training… As you know I had been recovering from a biceps injury and have had to deal with multiple shoulder injuries. One of the two I found a very acceptable work-around.
For biceps curls I found a bi-lateral curl with an EZ-curl bar and done over the top of the old leg extension/leg curl machine. Most of you have probably never seen one, so I will attempt to describe the feature the machine had that made its use advantageous. The Machine was a padded table, about the height you could sit on without sitting “down”. I laid across the table with my arms over the end opposite the plate loaded extension/curl apparatus. With the curl bar on the floor I could reach far enough to grab the bar. So at the bottom of the movement there was zero torque resistance and as I curled the bar the angle would increase the torque resistance to a maximum at 90 degrees, with only about 45 degrees of movement left for full contraction. I worked back up to a very good amount of weight, really feeling the contraction and peak. I still did some barbell curls the old fashion way. You know the one that was usually accompanied with some body swing. It was almost a compound exercise. I did some incline dumbbell bicep work too.
The continuous shoulder injuries began to negatively impact my training. Though I hadn’t been doing heavy bench presses, I began to notice my training bench press poundage was dropping. At first I could not assign a cause, but later have come to believe that the shoulder stabilizing muscles and ligaments were insufficient to allow my prime movers to fire as hard. I had dropped to where a set of 6 reps with 315lbs was about my limit. My overhead presses suffered a little also.
What shoulder exercise could I add that I could move some heavy weight? I recalled my former love of cleans. So I added hanging cleans as my heavy shoulder exercise. I had gone to another gym, because my Ohio friend closed his gym. There was an Olympic lifter there who liked to do his cleans with me, so we worked our cleans together. I was doing 4 sets of 5 reps with 255lbs. My back had improved enough that 255lbs deadlifting off the ground to do the hanging cleans caused no concerns. But I still decided to avoid any heavier lower back work (at this time). I firmly believed the hanging clean as a far superior exercise to the deadlift, and still do to this day.
As to leg training, this new gym had an incline leg press. It was a nice transition from the inverted leg press as I could get a little deeper. Though my patella tendon was still tender, my leg training was doing fairly well, as long as I didn’t allow my knees to go over my toes. So I wasn’t concentrating on building quads, which is what I most wanted, but in building my thighs and hips. I also tried doing some light front squats, where I was training 225lbs for sets of 10 reps. I felt my form was still terrible. And never felt any good contraction, but just felt awkward.
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Really enjoying your training recap.
I have to ask, do you think if you stayed with the nautilus principles…you may have not plagued your body with injuries…or did i miss it and you suffered the injuries using nautilus
You may have not built the body you wanted either
Just curious of your thoughts on this
I made a big oversight, or just a little tip of one.
But to start I do believe that I would have far less injuries if I used Nautilus equipment exclusively. None of the Nautilus machines I used required any balancing or stabilizing muscle involvement. So, I would suppose you are more apt to be in a safer position throughout the range of motion.
But I did believe that one of the chief benefits of free weights was that they did require balancing and stabilizing muscle involvement. I abandoned Nautilus because I didn’t believe it worked to build the muscle mass I desired. I am not saying I was or am correct, just that I didn’t believe Nautilus was as productive. When I made the switch back, I had yet to have any real injury issues at my young age.
Every choice in bodybuilding has a risk:benefit ratio that should be weighed as fairly as possible. I chose more risk to get more gain, whether it was long term benefit or not. And some of the risk has led to injury.
But back to the oversight about Nautilus injuries. I had one, very noticeable one. I was helping a friend of mine try to use a lot of weight on the cable driven, plate loaded Pullover Machine. It had minimal safety guards. He wanted me to push the weight to his stomach (this was his first rep, but he was way too weak for the weight on the machine.) As soon as I released my pressure on the bar, it quickly returned to past his face. The middle finger on my right hand was in the path of the cam. Off came the tip of my middle finger and the entire nail of my ring finger. So it was off to the emergency room. It seems someone found my finger tip after I left for the hospital. It got there a little later.
Anyway, there wasn’t enough tip left to sew back on, so the doctor put my finger through a hole in a cloth guard to began to sew the end of my finger, which looked like the end of a cigar that had blown up. The doctor was, unknowing to him, resting his palm in my ring finger which had the nail ripped off. I told the doctor my finger hurt. He insisted that I had enough novocaine that I shouldn’t feel any pain. I told him it was my ring finger he was resting his hand on that hurt. When he saw my ring finger without a nail, we both laughed.
Good thing I was able to finish my workout the next day as I didn’t need to grip the pullover bar.
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Ouch…that’s a great story
The reason I asked is i too have injuries from free weights, squats and deadlifts…I believe it was from being too explosive and the balance that you mentioned…not blaming it on free weights, just how I was using free weights
therefore, I use nautilus and it keeps me in the mindset of following the principles…if that even makes sense, 
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How did you get cut for the shows, what was your diet like for getting ripped?
As you might guess my approach to contest diet has changed over the years. As best I can recall, I had always believed that excessive carbohydrates were the main problem to a sharp appearance. In my early years competing there were three major things you minimized in your diet when preparing for a contest:
- Milk products - It was thought that milk products kept a layer of fat. Though no one explained the science behind it. But it was easy to follow.
- Simple sugar products - Sweets and desserts
- Bread products - That is pretty straight forward
Those rules were the basis for my contest diet preparation from 1970 through 1975.
In 1975 a significant occurrence happened at the Mr America. The appearance of the most ripped athlete to stand on the Mr America stage ever. His name might be unfamiliar to most all of you, but competitors around the USA took notice. Joe Means, though his proportions weren’t the best, his level of conditioning surpassed everyone that day and everyone who preceded him. He won Most Muscular. The rumors going around were that Joe Means contest diet comprised of just tuna fish and lettuce. I don’t know how accurate that was, but we were all on board to investigate the possibilities of this near zero carbohydrate diet.
I tried this “zero carbohydrate” diet a few times in 1975. My main problem of the extreme application of very low carbohydrates had a severe negative impact on my strength (I have always connected strength with muscle. It was the only metric that I found empirical.) I gave the extreme approach up by 1977 contests, and just did a large reduction, maybe as low as 150 grams of carbohydrates
By 1979 I had settled into a diet that seemed to be the best for me. I ate 6 meals per day that included some fat and some carbohydrates. I called it “The Idiot’s Diet.”
- The Idiot’s Diet worked both off season and for contest prep. I ate the same caloric and protein:carbo:fat (flexible balance) six times a day everyday. The only fixed food type was protein. I tried to eat 40 to 50 grams of protein every meal. Off season I would increase carbs and fats so that I was gaining a little weight every week. I could not function well above 245lbs, so I usually stopped there. (I got sleep apnea when I approached 250lbs.) Come contest time I tried to ease my weight to 240lbs at 12 weeks out and had dropped all processed foods. I dropped a little carbs and fats, trying to start the release of bodyfat, without the losing of strength. As the weeks would go by I would drop more carbs and fats depending if my weight loss was fast or slow. I had done this so many times that I knew what decrease worked the best for me. (All dieting in the '70’s and early '80’s was done without cardio, as no one I knew did any for a contest.) I did take a form of the Steve Kline dinner plate of 1/3 veggies, 1/3 starch, and 1/3 protein, with my modifications to prioritize protein needs.
Then came John Parrillo. I became increasing interested in his philosophy around 1985 and started to apply his diet strategy. Though I don’t believe he is absolutely accurate I liked his “You cannot over train. You can only under eat.” That made a little change in my approach and it was then that I started doing cardio for contest prep. And I also dropped all fruit from my contest prep diet.
I still maintained my “The Idiot Diet” but added cardio and the extra nutrition that the cardio allowed. So I was eating a little more and getting sharper for contests.
If you have any questions, please ask. I might have omitted something.
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Did you have an issue with water retention and sodium in your diet?
Why is that? That seems like a specific detail, or was that another carb that you dropped?
I can answer this the quickest.
Parrillo said that a certain percentage of people partitioned fructose to their fat cells. I didn’t know if there was any real science behind that (no internet), but fruit was never an integral part of my contest diet, so it was just a “touching every base” approach.
My contest carbohydrates were all complex carbs.
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This question of water retention only makes sense to me in relation to a contest.
The remedy is multifaceted.
- All my contests preparations included AAS’s. So the type of AAS the last two weeks is important. You want to be switched to “dry” AAS’s at least the last 2 weeks.
- I began watching my sodium intake the last 3 weeks. I never used a salt shaker, ever, well almost never. Never added salt to anything. There is a concern when limiting sodium for any length of time: your body goes into a sodium retaining mode. To counter this sodium sparing mode I would eat extra sodium the Sunday before the show (if it were on Saturday). Then right back on low sodium through contest day.
- The last facet might be the most critical. Anxiety! This must be controlled or you will look flat the day of the competition and then look remarkedly better the next morning. It is my firm belief that anxiety will put a layer of fluid under your skin. This is the reason I did many shows every year. I wanted to be completely comfortable on the stage. And I didn’t want there to be the attitude that “this particular show” is all that is important. It never was, because there was the one before it and the one after it. It was never “all the marbles.” I was always trying to reduce the stress.
My final trick was a salt bath the morning of the prejudging. It wasn’t always practical, but when I could I did. The hypertonic salt bath pulls the water out of your skin which is isotonic. (Conversely, a hypotonic pure water bath allows you isotonic skin to pull water into it.)
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In 1987 my bodybuilding approach took a slight turn. I was approaching 40 years old and I liked my chances in the Master’s Nationals (Over 40). But I wanted an intermediate goal leading up to my first qualified year for the Master’s.
In Florida they had recently started drug tested bodybuilding contests. I’m thinking I could use a nice extended period of time off of the AAS’s. The only AAS rule there was that the athlete must be drug free for at least one year prior to the contest. All contestants were to be tested by lie detector. So for most all of 1987 I was off of all AAS’s.
Training went okay. I made no workout changes apart from I quit trying to continually get stronger. I did my same number of sets and reps, same days too, but with a little lighter weight than I wanted (I always liked lifting as heavy weight possible.) At this time we were unaware that one of the main advantages of AAS’s was that the body could tolerate greater volume. But I suppose the slightly less weight is less volume. Because my most important goal was the Master’s Nationals, I refuse to consider losing any muscle to get really sharp. I knew full well that my refusal to get “ripped” would hurt my chances of winning, but my intermediate goal didn’t include the intense need to be on stage at my very best.
There were two drug tested shows in the summer of 1988, the last summer where I was under 40 years of age. Of the components of the show that I experienced the most anxiety was the lie detector test. I was quite nervous, because I knew that the night I got home from the last drug tested show that I was shooting 200mg of testosterone C and starting the orals the next morning. For whatever reason, I know not why, I passed the lie detector tests for both contests. I remember little else, except I didn’t win either contest, but got a trophy at both. I don’t even know what place.
My delts and traps looked smaller, but everything else was about the same, just not a well defined. Doris Barrilleaux was there taking pictures, as she was at very many of the Florida bodybuilding shows. She always took black and white photos.I bought this photo below that she took. IMO, it shows me a whole lot better looking in the face than I am, and was the sole reason I bought it. So if you think someone photoshopped some one else’s head on my shoulders, that’s what I was thinking too.
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