One thing I didn’t have to worry about for my strength contest (or the bodybuilding contests to follow) was drug detection. The flyers for these meets did not include the “natural” or “drug-free” warnings that occasionally accompanied the notice of a show. This omission was a signal to all competitors that there would not be a polygraph or urinalysis test on the day of the competition.
But only the credulous public buys the distinction between “drug-free” and drugged. All strength athletes, whether powerlifters, bodybuilders or Olympic weight lifters, know that the tests are laughably flawed. The brilliant minds of science may be coming up with the tests, but they are also helping athletes defeat their purpose. When Ziegler first began perfecting steroids for strength athletes back in ’58, he was acting in the interest of national prestige (read nationalist paranoia). The Soviet weight-lifting team was said to be experimenting with testosterone. If we didn’t catch up to them, we would be disgraced.
Generated in this spirit, the steroid war has never pitted athletes against scientists, but scientists against scientists. The real race isn’t out on the track or in the gym, but in the labs. Doctors are, after all, human, and as susceptible to Olympic medal tally obsession as the man at home in front of his television set in Manhattan or Minsk.
And as the steroid war has moved to the eighties, for every scientist who improves the drug test to detect chemical masking agents (like probenicid), there’s another scientist who discovers a new masking agent (like Azubromaron, Anturane, or Carinamide) to prevent detection. Or there’s a scientist who designs a new strength drug altogether, like human growth hormone, which is, to date, undetectable. As Dan Duchaine, author of the Underground Steroid Handbook writes in Modern Bodybuilding, “the drug test, even at the IOC (International Olympic Committee) level, is failed primarily by uninformed athletes.”
To ensure my strength, I “stacked” my drugs for the seven weeks before the contest, no longer relying on just my usual blend of testosterone cypionate, Anavar, and Deca (2 ccs, 70 pills, and 4 ccs per week, respectively) but 3 ccs per week of Equipoise as well. Vinnie bought a 30-cc vial of this horse drug from a veterinarian who worked at Santa Anita Race Track. On the label were illustrations of bulls, horses, dogs, and pigs. According to Vinnie, it worked as a muscle and strength builder for humans, too.
“Look, Sam, you think they gonna mistreat five million dollar thoroughbreds?” Vinnie first asked me when I questioned him on Equipoise. To Vinnie, the argument was simple. Their “net worth” far exceeded mine.
Since I didn’t have to worry about my drug program, I worried about my Inzer Blast Shirt. Actually, it belonged to Lamar, but he gave it to me when he heard that I was soon to compete. Lamar and his father wanted to lend me The Outlaw, which was, as Macon confided “the God damn Rolls Royce of lifting suits,” but it was designed specifically for squatting and deadlifting, which wouldn’t help me much in a bench-press contest.
The Inzer Blast Shirt’s whole raison d’être was benching. It guaranteed the user an increase of 20 to 35 pounds on his personal best. This sounded wonderful—it might just push me over the 400-pound barrier, since 385 was my personal best.
All shiny red nylon and rigid, it looked harmless enough in Lamar’s hands. But from the very beginning, when Lamar and Macon took turns stretching it over my torso in the locker room, we encountered difficulty. It took 5 full minutes to tug and draw the material over my head. I patiently stood with my arms raised to the sky as the boys broke into a sweat just rolling it down my chest and stomach. Macon had to prop his foot against my ass to get enough leverage to pull the constricting fabric down my back.
The tighter it was, the better, they said. It would give me a feeling of security. It would prevent an injury. It would keep my arms in the benching groove. All the world champions wore them, Hero included. It was tight, all right, so tight that the fabric propelled my arms forward. I looked like a sleepwalker as I waddled to take my place on the bench. But this was precisely how the shirt was supposed to work. “Designed to aid and support your bench press throughout the entire range of motion,” the shirt’s main function was to limit that range of motion. I couldn’t eat or bowl or use the toilet wearing the Inzer Blast Shirt, but by God I could bench.
Macon warned me that I might experience a minor degree of discomfort as he lowered the bar to my grasp. Lamar often did on the first set, he said. But I screamed in pain when the bar fell to my chest. I could actually feel my skin tearing underneath my armpits. Lamar was delighted. That proved it. A perfect fit, he said.
At the end of the workout, it wasn’t much better, and when Lamar and Macon rolled the shirt off me and I looked in the mirror, I saw that my upper body was a collection of bruises and raw, open sores. It had done the trick, though, increasing my bench press to 405 pounds, with a lengthy pause, no less. Lamar let me borrow it for the duration. In return, I bought Cuddles some nutritionally sound biscuits.
Everything was going to plan—the Inzer Blast Shirt, the actual lifting, the diet, the mental mood. All were in place. If I could just nail 405 pounds in the contest, I was sure I would not only win my weight class, but raise a number of eyebrows as well.
Was I ready? Well, I ripped the safety brake of Vinnie’s Luv right out of its socket when I pulled up to the digs that afternoon. At Shangri-La, 12 hours before the meet, I weighed in at 243. But that night, there was trouble. As I lay in bed, I had difficulty breathing. Was it the Equipoise? In a last dash for greatness, I had thrown caution to the wind and had been secretly injecting myself with 4 ccs of the stuff per week. Since food seemed to flow through me unimpeded, multiple injections were the only way I could maintain enough bodyweight to enter the contest in the 275-pound category.
It wasn’t my asthma that bothered me, though. It was my heart. It pounded uncontrollably, a resting 120 beats per minute, in fact. It might well have been the testosterone too, since I had also upped that dosage to 4 ccs per week. Or it could have been simply nerves. Powerlifting USA displayed exceedingly large men with abnormally low brows. In fact, the promoter of tomorrow’s meet was also the promoter of the Budweiser World Record Breakers in Hawaii. Tomorrow’s contest featured $1,400 in cash prizes. Men who actually made their living at this might be there. No, I didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. I had just finished my breakfast when Vinnie came knocking the morning of the contest.
“Time to kick ass and take names, Big Man,” he charged, with thin-lipped severity.
Outside the Y, the line of powerlifters in transit, all clad in sweatsuits advertising their gyms, perked me up. There were representatives from each of the five different divisions, but none of them looked big enough to be in my weight class. Everything was going according to plan. As Vinnie left me to tour the competition room, I joined the group of strength specialists and sat with them in the building’s lobby.
I spotted two empty seats next to a human light bulb. He had a great barrel chest and sparrow stalks for legs (Sweepea back in New York would have known him for what he was—a bar body). His black face bore blue tattoos, a series of tears running down one cheek. It was difficult to tell from his lopsided body, but I estimated he was in the 220-pound class. I sat down beside him, but he didn’t turn his head.
“What’s up?” I asked, and then the more pertinent question: “By the way, what weight class are you in?”
Slowly, keeping his eyes fixed dead ahead, he spoke.
“The name’s Titanium.”
“Well, the pleasure’s mine,” I said. “You aren’t in the 275’s are you, Ty?”
“I said the name’s Titanium!” he repeated with increasing volume.
Right. Don’t talk, just let him visualize. While he ground his teeth beside me, I watched as the contestants filed through the door, from the shuffling, blue-haired geriatrics of the Masters Division to the gum-smacking, preening teens.
To my right, an elbow nudged me.
“How’s it hanging?” the man said. “I’m Francis, but my friends call me Turbo.” He was a Master, around fifty years old, with glasses and a paunch. His tank top said POWERLIFTERS: STRONG ENOUGH TO BEAR THE STRAIN, MAN ENOUGH TO TAKE THE PAIN.
“Just fine, how are you?” I said.
“Great. Great. The Synthroid is really working, so’s the Halotestin and the Test,” he said, speaking of his drug program. “Only the strong survive,” he said, with a reassuring smile.
Turbo nudged me again, “Look! There’s Chip Taylor—123. Open. His Schwartz is really impressive!”
Right. The Schwartz Formula. Hero had told me all about this. Invented by Lyle A. Schwartz, powerlifting enthusiast and professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University, it is a judging system in which each lifter is assigned a numerical coefficient according to body weight. At the conclusion of the contest, all lifters are graded by multiplying their coefficient with their total lifts. The system enables, say, a 123-pound man who benches 350, to defeat a 242-pound man who benches 500.
But worrying about my Schwartz would get me nowhere. I carried far too much body weight to score well by this system. I just needed to make my first lift, my opener, and I’d win a trophy, I reminded myself.
Gus, the promoter of the meet, strode through the door. He had more muscles than Lamar, more stretch marks than Bamm Bamm. A decade of 900-pound squats, 800-pound deadlifts, and 500-pound bench presses had not gone without effect. He had played the role of “Buzzsaw” in the Schwarzenegger movie The Running Man.
As the last of the competitors filed in, Gus went over the official meet rules. There would be judges stationed around the bench press to apprehend cheaters, he said, and each judge would be supplied with green and red paddles. Only legal lifts would merit green paddles. The bar must come down evenly and pause at the chest. At the sound of the clap from the head judge, the bar would be pressed upwards evenly without one side of it moving at a higher angle due to a stronger arm or shoulder until the arms locked out. But that wasn’t all. Each contestant would be required to keep his feet sturdily on the floor during the lift and his bottom in continuous contact with the bench. Chalk, wrist wraps, the Inzer Blast shirt and unlimited inhalation of ammonia were legal, as in all regulation powerlifting meets.
He then passed out to each of us one complimentary program of the event itself, filled with advertisements and notes of sponsorship. Budweiser’s Natural Light presented the competition, but Inzer Advance Designs (“We Make Power Gear A Science”) sponsored it. I flipped through the pages advertising linear leg sleds and deluxe T-Bar Rows until I spotted the list of contestants. There were three women, at 105, 123, and 165 pounds. The men’s classes began at 123 pounds, and proceeded upwards, through 132, 148, 165, 181, 198, 220, 242 to, finally, 275. I found my name—the only entrant, as expected, in the 275-pound-weight class. It was too good to be true.
Until the weigh-in, that is. There in the bowels of the Y, right by the lockers and the heater and the exposed wiring, I stepped on the Medco three separate times, and on each occasion, the bar indicated I weighed 241 pounds, one pound under the 242 limit. I couldn’t believe it. I was 2 pounds off.
I had not succeeded. I would not be unopposed. There were at least two competitors who were fifteen pounds less than me, but were still above 220, and thus in my 242-pound-weight class. And though both were officially novices, they were also experienced powerlifters.
I put my sweat clothes back on and started the long trudge up the stairs to the basketball court, the sight of the actual extravaganza. I hadn’t even lifted a weight yet, and already something had gone wrong. And it could get a hell of a lot worse. What if I could not make my opening lift? As powerlifters say, I would “bomb.” Once you state your opening lift, you can’t go lower for the next two attempts. To botch all three attempts would mean to fail even to finish third in a weight class in which there were only three contestants. Nothing could be more humiliating.
As I neared the entrance, the noise of the crowd grew louder and louder. At the last step, I peered out onto the court. The seats were arranged in a horseshoe formation around the bench, and every seat was filled. Past the heads of some of the standing spectators, I could just make out the wooden platform, raised to the level of 4 feet. Upon the regal red rug that covered the dais, lay the majestic steel and leather bench press.
I saw Macon, Moses, Vinnie, Lamar, and, poking out from the Gold’s Gym bag on Lamar’s lap, even Cuddles in the packed audience. My stomach heaved. I tried to quell the dyspepsia with a fistful of BIG Chewables and a multivitamin pack from my Gold’s Gym bag, but, without water, they were as difficult to get down as gravel.
Holding on to the frame of the door for support, I caught sight of a long table to one side of the platform, with seats for the judges. Judges and an audience. I was on trial. If I could just nail 405 pounds on the bench press, there would be a reprieve. The other contestants in my weight class wouldn’t matter. Four hundred and five was respectability, actually impressive for a first-time contestant. At least, that’s what I told myself, as I emerged from the stairwell and did “the Walk” over to the warm-up room.
The practice pit was sorely inadequate for our needs. It was humid and steaming and almost pitch-black. During my stretching exercises, I saw that an ugly black-white situation had developed. The minority competitors, clearly in the majority here, had opted to confiscate the sole practice bench press and reserve it exclusively for members of their own race. The usual majority, here a muttering minority, warmed up as best they could on inferior cables and dumbbells, cursing the situation—but not very loudly.
For a few minutes, I tried the cables as well. But it was impossible. I couldn’t get limber. If I were to even make my opening lift, I had to have the practice bench. I made the move for integration—not out of morality but out of desperation, slipping onto the bench press without even bothering to wait in line. Titanium approached me after my warm-up sets. He had been warming up with 400 pounds. What he would do in the actual competition was beyond imagining.
“What you doin’ here?” he asked, trailed by a few new friends in do-rags.
“What do you mean?” I said uneasily. A preppie among gang-bangers? A white among blacks?
“You ain’t no powuhliftuh! You a bodybuilder, that’s what I mean,” he said, his friends nodding their heads behind him. They weren’t angry, just confused.
It was true, I stuck out like a sore thumb. Unlike the powerlifters at this meet, I had legs, I didn’t have a belly, and I had more veins running on the surface of my skin than most of them had underneath it. The veteran powerlifters in the group knew I wouldn’t be as strong as I looked because I didn’t train for strength. The beginners thought I’d be stronger than strong, because I looked it (and that’s just what I’d been training for the last four years—that look, that appearance of strength). If I was a scream in search of a mouth, I’d chosen the wrong song.
When the hour struck, and the crowded court could hold no more, the judges with their colored paddles took their seats and the competition began. One by one, the lighter competitors filed out from the darkness at the sound of their names from the crackling PA system. As in bodybuilding shows, the lightweight classes went first, which left myself, Titanium, and a scattering of others the only remaining contestants at the warm-up bench. I planned on opening at 365, 40 pounds beneath my new Inzer Blast best, but a much higher weight than the maximum lifts in the lightest classes.
As a final preparation, I donned the Inzer Blast Shirt. Turbo and Titanium took turns stretching it onto my body. It was murder—more confining than a straitjacket, even worse than the first time with Macon and Lamar. But the pain vanished as soon as I heard my name on the PA system. It was adrenaline’s turn. I dabbed my hands with chalk and emerged from the gloom with my arms strung out before me as if I were choking someone.
Mounting the dais, I spun around and lay down on the bench, arms extended upwards. Thirty inches above my face rested the bar laden with 365 solid pounds, a weight I paused without difficulty back at Shangri-La. But that was with an adequate warm-up, and not in front of three hundred people.
At my count of three, the two official spotters helped me lift the bending iron bar off the steel trestles, where I held it at arm’s length. They let go. I was on my own now. At one with myself and iron. It didn’t feel heavy. I let it slowly descend to my raised chest, then, keeping my bottom in continuous contact with the bench and my feet in unmoving contact with the ground, I paused the weight on my nipples. I waited for the clap for what seemed like three long agonizing seconds. I heard it at last and began the bar’s ascent. Something was wrong. My progress slowed, and I realized I was in trouble. I heard a rising roar from the crowd. My face froze in terror, but I pushed with all my might, not stopping until I locked my arms out and threw the weight back onto the rack.
I rose from the bench unsteadily and eyed the judges to my right. The verdict was green. My opener was a success.
“My man!” Titanium said to me as I rejoined the others. In a flash, I understood. He had mistaken my interminable pause for arrogance, instead of what it really was—incompetence.
“What shows you done, man?” he asked.
“This is my first,” I revealed, smiling. “How about you?”
“You know, here and there, FCI mostly,” he said under his breath.
Muscle Page 15