Bodybuilders Never Die , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing - Jim Moore

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91 pages

English

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The extraordinary story of a skinny lad from Manchester who rose to become British Champion bodybuilder. And there the cliches end in this gritty, humorous, and brutally honest tale which strips away the dream tan and any illusion of a glamorous lifestyle to lay bare the sport as never before. Jim Moore writes about the all-too-often taboo subjects of performance-enhancing drugs, the debilitating illnesses and mental health problems which blight the scene. He takes the reader behind the stage curtain to reveal the murky depths to which some-including himself-will plunge in search of success. Moore reveals the shocking contradictions and dangers inherent in the bread-and-butter running of the sport, matched only by the intensity and insanity of his own dedication. It was this never-say-die approach which eventually saw Moore crowned a national champion five times; but also an attitude which ultimately almost caused his death.

Informations

Publié par	Pitch Publishing
Date de parution	01 juillet 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781909626003
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Contents
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Bodybuilders never die – they simply lose their pump
My introduction to the iron
Getting the needle
Getting ripped
Taking it to the Brits
Taking time out
Taking the title
The wilderness years
This ain’t no yuppie flu
Goodnight old friend
The comeback
Driving loco in Dudley
Showdown at the NAC
Germany here we come
Time to rebuild
It’s showtime
Beefing it
Taking it to the max
Licking my wounds
Nightmare in broad daylight
P itch P u b lishi n g A2 Yeoman Gate Yeoman Way Durrington BN13 3QZ www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
First published in eBook format in 2013
eISBN: 978-1-90962-600-3
(Printed edition: 978-1-90917-882-3)
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
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De d i c a t ed t o t h e m e m o r i e s o f Mum a n d D a d : " A p p l e " Ann i e a n d " R o r y " N o r m an M o o r e a n d also t o J o f o r s h a r i n g m y li f e , m y l o v e , m y h e a r t .
Bodybuilders never die –they simply lose their pump
I NEVER started out to write a story, but when you are going stir crazy at home and the doctors are telling you non-stop to rest, I thought that I would risk exercising the only two digits that I can type with. If you’re looking for an exercise or drug manual, then this isn’t for you. This is a personal account of a journey, and if you’re not an Iron Warrior, then I think it will give you a unique, no bullshit insight into what it takes to create a world-class physique and if you are one of the brethren, then maybe you will know someone like me or perhaps you’ll see yourself in my words.
Apart from the celebrated years of Arnold and films like P u m p i n g Ir o n , bodybuilding is a much marginalised sport. In fact, when it is shown in the mainstream media, it is often in derogatory terms as some kind of homoerotica or they get some poor twat and poke fun at him. The only time bodybuilding is ever taken seriously is when it is demonised as in the case of people like Greg Valentino who used a drug called Synthol to make his arms look freaky, or Beryl "Beef It" Fox who murdered his wife.
I have spent most of my life trying to defend my sport and I have realised that the bodybuilding magazines only ever highlight a handful of top bodybuilders with their glamorous lifestyles and people have very little insight into the bread and butter competitors like me. People have even asked me how much money I have made in winning my five titles. I think they are shocked when I tell them that I had won very little money and apart from some sponsorship, competing for nearly 20 years had cost me a small fortune.
My story is far from glamorous, but it isn’t ugly either. It is full of true-life events that I hope will tell you just how dedicated all the guys and girls who compete are. I will tell you how from my humble beginning of training in a makeshift gym at home, I ended up on stage competing against the best athletes in the world.
Hopefully people will see that bodybuilding is a lot more that just drugs; it takes dedication and guts and a lot of knowledge, with a little bit of insanity thrown in for good measure! Go past any gym in the morning or late at night – and I am not talking about leisure clubs here, where many of the so-called beautiful people go through the motions of training because they fear if they grimaced, they would need to take another visit to the local Botox clinic. No, I am talking about real gyms, where the screams of pain can be heard and the smell of sweat and Ralgex greets you on arrival. No matter what time of year, rain, snow or sunshine, you’ll see them, the dedicated either smashing out reps or torturing themselves on the bike or stepper machines.
I have collapsed many times in the gym, had nosebleeds, thrown up during workouts. To me and, as the world would describe them, the other "fanatics", this was accepted as an everyday occurrence as we drove ourselves through session after session of masochistic intensity in pursuit of our dreams. I will take you into a world where the word average is spat out with distaste; I will speak of the drugs, the crazy and often humorous situations that I found myself in. I will introduce you to the people who shared my life, some dodgy as hell, some sadly no longer with us, but what we had in common was our love of the iron.
This is the journey I took to turn a wiry, long distance runner’s body of eight stone into a ripped up championship frame of over 15 stone. I will talk of victory, overcoming adversity and the drive and passion that made me into a world-class physique, but ultimately nearly killed me.
My introduction to the iron
T HE PHYSIQUE is created for many reasons; some to keep the outside world at bay, some in the vain pursuit of attracting women, some in the hope of feeling "loved". For others like me it was a mixture of all three and the ultimate stage to display it on: The Bodybuilding Competition. A place where one is judged not on strength but on the look of the physique. Its ideals are to show maximum muscularity with minimum body fat.
I never set out to be a bodybuilder. I certainly never thought that I would compete, let alone be fairly successful, in fact I think you could call me a bodybuilder by accident, but let’s get on with the story.
I am a competitive bastard. It wouldn’t matter if it was Monopoly or Tiddlywinks, I would do anything to win, but it wasn’t always that way. In fact as a kid, I was darn right lazy. My first introduction to weights was when after much prompting and the bribe of buying me some sweets after, I got on the bus one night with my bro to an old terraced house in Manchester. The guy’s name was Harry and he had turned the main bedroom of his house into a small gym. I often wonder nowadays how he managed to convince his poor long-suffering wife that utilising their best bedroom and no doubt demoting her to one of the smaller rooms was a good idea. He seemed quite old but at the age of ten, I guess anyone over 30 was ancient.
Rumour had it that he was an accomplished strongman until his left arm was run over by a steam engine. I remember trying to get a glimpse of his arm to see if it was actually flat like something out of a cartoon, but much to my disappointment, his arm seemed relatively normal. His chest on the other hand seemed huge; much exacerbated no doubt by his habit of inflating his chest muscles whenever he talked to you.
The room was stark and cold, filled with a bench press, squat stands and various plates and bars. I can remember our kid gasping with the effort as he worked his socks off, while I watched and wondered what all the commotion was about, no doubt dreaming of the treat that I would get for going.
If I wasn’t there, I would be swimming. My dad loved the baths and I on the other hand didn’t. I could cope with the swimming, but having to walk three miles home shivering against the cold rain was a total bitch. In fact Dad was into anything sporty, he was a decent boxer and a very good swimmer, even at a height of 5ft 4in. He had once held the combined Forces all-comers backstroke record. Our back yard was used for everything; shot put, long jump, high jump and he even made some old wooden stakes to represent hurdles to practise with.
Football was what I loved though. If you asked kids of my age what they wanted to be, most would have replied: "Georgie Best!" He was my first and many of the other kids’ idol. We all wanted to be able to dribble like George, therefore most games were full of strikers. No one wanted to be a full-back or midfielder so if someone had a football we would either play out in the street until the neighbours moved us on or spend hours in the local park, sometimes until it was so dark you could hardly make out where the ball was.
Running was what I did most. Back then, in an avenue with over 100 houses, there was only one family with a car. I think they were called Jones, proper posh they were or so we thought. It wasn’t just at the athletic club, I ran everywhere – to school, back for dinner, back to school, well until I was 14 and then I seemed to develop some kind of amnesia and although I set out for school, I often ended up in the centre of Manchester where most of the other truants congregated.
I don’t know where the laid-back personality that I had went but I guess it got thrown out with puberty. Suddenly everything I did was a competition; it didn’t matter if it was chess, I wanted to win. I was a decathlete long before it became trendy, not in the sense of Daley Thompson, but I immersed myself into all sports – long and high jump, shot put, javelin and discus: sprinting, long distance and even swimming which I was crap at.
What I lacked in skill I tried to make up with sheer determination. If someone could do 50 press-ups I had to do 60 or die trying and I am not just saying that as a throwaway word, I literally would drive myself through pain to win. I had some success in other sports, but now I realise that my obsessive, driven nature was like a sculpture awaiting form and that the sport of bodybuilding was there to feed my need for self-determination.
So you can see, even though my family were into sport, I wasn’t brought up with the media images of Stallone, Van Damme or Schwarzenegger that young people are exposed to today. Our ideas of what a muscular physique should look like were from advertis