Muscle

by Samuel Wilson Fussell

  It was love at first sight. My “cozy bachelor pad” turned out to be a storm cellar. There were no windows—anywhere. Not in the tiny bathroom, the even smaller kitchenette, not even in the first of my two front doors. The ceiling was barely six and a half feet tall, made even lower by a number of hanging steel pipes. Their function was a mystery until a family member upstairs flushed the toilet.

  It was a real bunker, four concrete walls protected by earth in its outer perimeters and by the house above. And there were two refrigerators in the corner. Two! My heart skipped a beat in joy.

  “I’ll get rid of one of ’em for you,” Mr. Tarantino assured me.

  “Not on your life,” I said, pausing out of habit now. It had become second nature. “I have need of two.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said, shrugging.

  “One more thing,” he called at the door. “No telephone. You want I should call the company for installation?”

  “No thanks.” I smiled, checking the walls for an outlet for my blender. “No phone, no mail, nothing.”

  He looked at me searchingly, then stared at my check in his hands. He shrugged and clambered up the stairs out into the light.

  A mattress, a lamp, an easy chair. I scavenged the neighborhood for discarded furniture. I liked to think of myself as Robinson Crusoe, marooned and forsaken by chance on a barbarous isle. Crusoe withdraws to his fortress, whose walls he creates with sharpened sticks. I withdrew to mine. Our situations seemed to me identical, and our reactions not dissimilar. The real difference lay in our methodology. His musket, my peaked bicep; his sharpened stick, my straining pectorals; his fortress, my bunker.

  The reality of course was somewhat different. Far from the shipwrecked Crusoe, I was a cosseted preppie who felt guilty enough about his own advantages to betray them and begin life again, from scratch. But the reality didn’t matter; I was so far removed from it that my life pre-iron no longer existed for me. It had all happened to someone else, someone smaller, frailer, less substantial than this new-and-improved packaged version.

  From what I could see in the gym, the best bodies were developed through consistent training, hard work, and attention to diet. Those who wanted the best bodies, and were willing to do whatever it took to get them, got them. It had nothing to do with slow-twitch or fast-twitch muscles, with “metabolic optimizers” or “the mind-body connection” touted by the latest article. The scientific jargon was just a veneer of respectability concocted by magazine editors to sell the product. In the same vein, Arnold labeled bodybuilding “progressive weight resistance training,” a euphemism bringing to mind modern science and white lab coats rather than mirrors and the acrid smell of sweat.

  But the articles were all nonsense. What mattered was sheer desperation and effort. And with that in mind, I felt I was anyone’s equal. My idol wasn’t a bodybuilder, but a coal miner: one Alexei Stakhanov of the Soviet Union. On August thirty-first, 1935, he drilled 102 tons of coal in six hours, fourteen times the norm for his shift. For his efforts, the word Stakhanovite was added to our vocabulary. Forget the science, just lift more than the norm during the shift.

  So, twice a day, I emerged from the bunker and pounded away in the gym, two hours per session. And it worked. The bigger I got, the better I felt. By July of 1986, my weight rose to 230 pounds. I’d leave it to others to feel. I’d experience whatever physical pain was necessary to cauterize my real pain, the pain I felt in being so vulnerable, so assailable.

  I stuck to the basic exercises in my routine, performing four or five per body part. On back morning, I started with pull-ups, which became increasingly difficult as I gained weight. Then, in my mass mania, on to the bloodletting of deadlifts, or, as an occasional substitute exercise, bent-over barbell rows. These were not as taxing as deadlifts, but they were painful enough so that I was the only gym member who actually did them. They are a kind of abbreviated deadlift, where you keep your knees bent slightly, torso parallel to the floor, then bring the barbell up with your arms and back muscles to touch your chest, then down to the floor again. I concluded my back workout with low pulley rows, the collegiate rower once more.

  A return trip to the bunker for as many meals as I could hold down, then back to the gym for chest at night. I kept with the great mass producer, the bench press, working my upper chest, as I had with Mousie that first time, with dumbbell presses from an incline position, then flies and declines.

  The next day, legs were an adventure all in themselves. Just mentally preparing for a leg workout was exhausting, since experience proved there was no way to avoid the pain. Once in the gym, I started first with the mass-gainers, as usual. In the case of legs, it was squats. Eight excruciating breathless sets in which I drowned the creaking noise of my knees and lower back with screams of effort. The leg-press machine followed squats. This movement simulated the squat, except that it changed the angle from a vertical move to a horizontal one. It wasn’t as good for my muscles, but it was a hell of a lot easier on my joints. In conjunction, both worked well. The hack squat machine was next, the third angle of the morning in which I worked legs. Once again, the movement didn’t change, legs to chest, legs locked, but the hack squat was set at an incline position. I adjusted a padded leather yoke over my shoulders connected to the weights, lowered myself to my haunches and up again, twelve times. I ended the session with five sets of leg extensions, the exercise designed to scoop cuts into the legs, and make startling divisions between the long vertical quadriceps muscles.

  At night, I’d return for what we called “hams and calves,” the second and final part of leg day. Stretch and squeeze, the same philosophy always applied, no matter which muscle I was working. I’d grab a barbell at thigh height, then, keeping my legs straight while bending my back, bring the weight down to my toes. These were stiff-legged deadlifts, basically, touching your toes with a 300-pound weight attached to your wrists. It was an exercise designed specifically for the hamstrings. The pain I felt in my lower back after doing a set made clear that every movement in the gym also, to some degree, works some other part of the body.

  Leg curls followed stiff-legged deadlifts, performed on the Universal station, where I compared notes with my old friend Austin and the rest of the Universal gang. Then, without a break, on to calf blasting. Calf exercises are the only movements in the gym which, universally, bodybuilders find boring. Like the exercises for all other body parts, there are variations; you can bomb them from a standing position, from a seated position, with friends mounted on your shoulders and back, but it is tedious work. Even the pump isn’t a reward in this activity, when it arrives it is so painful that most bodybuilders simply avoid the exercise altogether. But not me. From the moment I started lifting, I was all too aware of my calf deficiency. My solace was that it had once been a shortcoming for Arnold as well. He solved the calf crisis by cutting all of his long pants at the knee to expose the problem. Bodybuilding lore had it that he gained two inches in one year, working that much harder in the constant shame he forced himself to suffer. I emulated “The Austrian Oak” and used the scissors on my pants. I even rolled my socks all the way down to my ankles to emphasize the point.

  And at night, I was merciless, blasting them beyond pain. I stepped up to a raised wooden block and bent at the waist. Up and down I’d go on my toes, trying to isolate the movement until only my calves moved. Then, I’d make like a horse, or as they call it in the gym, a donkey, and Mousie and the bulk of Sweepea would clamber astride my back for added weight. New angles, new pain; the seated calf machine by the window, the weights connected to a pad on my knees as I brought my toes up and down. I ended the marathon on the standing calf machine, the weight stack connected this time to my shoulders.

  I learned to judge a successful leg day by the quality of cramping every evening. If I could fall asleep back at the bunker without severe muscular pain, then something was terribly wrong. While my legs spasmed through th
e night, I’d dream of Tom Platz, the so-called “Golden Eagle.” More than any other bodybuilder, he’d given up everything to reverse the course of nature. He had been born with a miserable structure, his hips wider than a yardstick, his shoulders narrower than a ruler. But through sheer industry, through set after set of 315-pound squats for 50 straight reps, through training sessions interspersed with vomit and blood, Tom had hurdled these obstacles and become Mr. Universe. His thighs were each larger than an average human’s waist. His calves looked like watermelons.

  On the morning of the third day, inspired by my dreams, I sped to the gym for my deltoid exercises, movements specifically geared to accrete muscle in the front, middle, and rear sections of the shoulder. All bodybuilders strain for the look known as “cannonball deltoids.” Arnold had them, Tom had them, and I wanted them. So I paid my dues at the shoulder-press rack.

  From a seated position, I grabbed a loaded barbell behind my neck, brought it all the way up above my head to the point where my elbows locked out, and back down again. As my body weight increased, so did the weight I was pushing above my head. There are some bodybuilders who can press 315 pounds eight times or more behind their head. I wasn’t one of them.

  Lateral raises were next, where I picked up a pair of 40-pound dumbbells from the floor and, from a position by my hips, brought them up laterally until my stiff arms were straight on line with my shoulders. Five sets of 12 to 15 reps and on to the rear delt machine. This machine is normally used for the pectoral muscles, but through practice bodybuilders have found that if you face the machine instead of sit in it, you can actually work the back of your shoulders. I concluded the morning with Arnold presses, Arnold’s signature move in the gym, a shortened shoulder press with wrist supination, or twisting, to work each head of the deltoid.

  The third and final night was the easiest. There is not a bodybuilder alive who finds it difficult to work arms. The pump is practically immediate, the gains relatively easy and painless. I blasted my biceps with so-called “cheat curls,” the standard power movement. Barbell in hands, I brought the weight up from my thighs to my chin. Sounds easy. With 135 pounds or more it’s not. The first few reps I performed strictly, the last few I swayed my back and shimmied my hips, using any trick I could to get the weight up. Thus the “cheat.” Seven sets later, I headed for stricter bicep exercises, like alternate dumbbell curls. The dumbbells enabled me to slow down the basic curl movement, first lifting one arm to my chest, then the other. Preacher curls followed, the exercise so named because the lifter positions his arms upon an inclined pad, grabs a weight, and strictly brings it up to his chin, at which point he looks like a supplicant of iron.

  A quick drink at the water fountain and on to triceps, the backs of the arms. First a trip to the Universal and the cable push-down station. Knees slightly bent, weight just a bit forward, I grabbed the bar (connected to a cable attached to a weight stack) at my chest and brought it down to my thighs. The usual five sets, the usual 12 reps. Then, back to the bench press, this time not to work the mass of the chest, but the mass of the triceps. Just a minor adjustment to accomplish the variant exercise—bringing the hands in a few inches apart on the bar instead of at shoulder width. Finally, dips, in which I grabbed the two handles of a rack and lowered my body down, then up, down and up without touching my feet to the floor.

  I never varied the exercises, only the way I did them. And the fact was: I had to vary the way I did them to keep from going completely insane. Lifting is more than demanding. It is fundamentally boring. Each day, you know exactly what you are going to do, so you have to incorporate new techniques or movements, however minor, to keep from counting staples in the walls or numbering the tiles on the ceiling.

  So I ran the rack, starting with hundred-pound dumbbells on the incline press, getting as many repetitions as possible. Then, casting them aside, I reached for the 90’s without a pause, more reps, on to the 80’s, the 70’s. By the time I reached the 30’s, the rack was empty and my chest inflamed beyond pain.

  And when I didn’t run the rack, I resorted to other “intensifiers,” like pyramids, strip sets, forced negatives, forced reps, anything. All of the variations fell under the principle of shocking the muscle, forcing it to work in a way it had never worked before. Thus I alternated exercises, some days doing 15 reps per exercise, other days 8, some days starting out on the first set with a high number of reps, then, gradually decreasing the number of reps as I added weight, until I went to lighter weight and higher reps again (the pyramid principle).

  Forced reps involved Sweepea’s sweating face inches from mine as he forced me to get more reps on a given exercise than I could without him. Sometimes this meant the touch of his finger on the bar, making it easier for me; sometimes, it meant a touch of his finger on the bar to make it harder (forced negatives).

  Strip sets, “21’s,” “I go/you go,” anything we’d heard of we used. It wasn’t long before I was supersetting all of my exercises in the gym, dashing to complete one right after another without a second’s rest. Two in a row, rest, two in a row, rest. You could combine another body part in the second exercise, or just add to a first to make it that much more painful. Bang, bang, bang, from exercise to exercise I’d go. And when I emerged, showered, shaved, and pumped each morning, I felt reborn.

  The result was continuous, extraordinarily rapid growth—for me at least. Since I was the only one at the gym actually doing the lifting, I was the only one actually growing. Other builders clung to me like burrs, hoping that they’d make similar gains. But they didn’t because no one trained like I did. No one else was willing to suffer this kind of pain. Not Sweepea, not Mousie, and, God knows, not Austin. I became the toast of the gym, closer than anyone to that magic land of “benching four and squatting five.”

  On my off days, I grew impatient, yearning to speed up time and start the next day’s workout. The more I trained, the more desperately I needed to train. My body ached for the pump. I couldn’t live without it, that burning sensation acquired through bombing a muscle area. At first it feels like someone rubbing heat balm on the particular muscle you’re working, it feels almost numb, then the analgesic spreads. Within minutes, you feel your whole body glowing, as if you’re the sole source of illumination in a dark world. You can’t help but smile. And it was the pump that kept me going, endorphins running to the rescue whenever I called. If Sisyphus gets a pump from his eternal exercise, I assure you all this time he’s been a happy man.

  In just a year fellow lifters went from disparaging my genetic heritage to lauding it. It was the common consensus in the weight room that my parents must be German. Sweepea and Mousie, far from acting like jealous siblings, gloated like doting parents. “We’ve created a monster,” they grew fond of boasting. I’d catapulted past them ages ago. Even Bert, the snarling gargoyle, had only smiles of admiration for me.

  Now I not only looked like a builder, I acted like one in front of my friends. Sweepea and Mousie watched proudly when an iron neophyte made his way over to me at the end of my second year. He reminded me of myself—or at least that self I’d discarded two years earlier. Spectacles magnified his lemur eyes. His complexion was milky white, and he wore his high school gym shorts too high (closer to the nipples than the navel was not the current fashion).

  Despite appearances, though, he had caught the disease. That was evident as soon as he snarled at himself in the mirror­ and did an agonizing high rep set of arm curls. It was apparent that he hated himself as he was. Just watching him was painful.

  “My name’s Joel,” he said mournfully. “I was wondering, just what is it that you guys eat and drink to get so darn big?” His voice signaled pure desperation.

  “Why,” I pronounced, arching my back and raising my shoulders, “I would drink donkey urine from the source itself, if I thought it would make me grow. We all would. Damn it, man, we’re bodybuilders!” I laughed heartily, turning to see Sweepea
and Mousie break up themselves. Joel turned green. I dug my elbow deep into his sunken ribs to make sure he realized I was joking. “Just look for anything high in protein and low in fat,” I explained.

  My transformation was complete, outside and in. The builder persona was no longer a role—it was actually me. And though I no longer had a nine-to-five job, I hardly thought of myself as jobless. Just the opposite: Now I was a workaholic who devoted every hour of the day, one way or another, to the gym. Even professional bodybuilders train at most around 4 hours a day (Austin had been right, you can only do so much to build before you cross the line and break down the muscle tissue by doing too much), so the time I didn’t spend actually lifting, I spent in support of or preparation for it.

  I was at the supermarket stocking up on fuel to help me with my lifting. Roaming the aisles, I picked up each week 70 eggs, 14 tins of tuna, 10½ pounds of beef, 10 pounds of chicken, 9 gallons of nonfat milk, 4 loaves of bread, and as many sacks of brown rice, whole wheat pasta, baking potatoes, and fruit as I could load into my shopping carts (one wasn’t enough).

  Or I was back in the bunker, gobbling my daily multi­vitamin packets. I took 6,666 percent of the daily minimum requirement of vitamin B1, 5,882 percent of B2, 1,333 percent of E, 1,000 percent of C, and so on. I had more letters inside me than the alphabet, all to cover the rigors of training. I supplemented even my supplements with desiccated and defatted beef-liver tablets to help my liver and kidneys process the overload.

  The lifting life meant laundry as well. Once a week, on my off-day, I did “the Walk,” bags in hand, from the bunker to the corner laundromat. I monopolized a row of six washers for my jocks and sweatpants and T-shirts and tank tops and then six driers. Kerchiefed Queens mothers shook their heads in sympathy, assuming I managed a local Little League team.