I get a lot of people coming and going through the gym here each week. I see lots of lifters, strongmen, student athletes and just regular folk. Some are cool and some are just downright nutty. Iron Sport is not a very big bodybuilder gym, but every once in a while a bodybuilder will strut his swole into my place. Although we do have a few bodybuilders that train here, usually the ones in our area go to the nearby LA Fitness. So when one of these muscular marvels comes in - it usually means he was kicked out of all the other respectable gyms in the area.

I don’t know what it is about bodybuilders, but every time one walks in they always feel like they need to run down their resume of bullshit for me, which always include the following:
“I’m usually walking around at 245 with 5 percent bodyfat but I just came off a long layoff. I can’t workout at my old gym anymore because people there keep hassling me to train them. I’m sponsored by so and so supplements. I’m supposed to do a photo shoot for Flex Magazine next month.” And the one they ALL say. “I’m getting ready for Junior Nats.” I have no idea what ‘Junior Nats’ is, but apparently every bodybuilder in the country is perpetually prepping for it.

A bodybuilder came in last night and after he fed me the resume, he then stood there and told me that he didn’t have any money. His five gold chains, expensive watch and the Cadillac he drove up in told me different. So after squeezing a three month membership out of this champion, he strutted into the gym to impress the shit out of everyone. The gym was packed and after fifteen more minutes of him giving other guys in the gym the resume, he was ready to blow our minds. He proceeds to stack up our two 18-inch wooden pulling boxes one on top of another in front of the power racks. I ask him what in the hell he is doing and he tells me he is doing barbell rows and wants to stand on them to get a ‘full stretch.’ Ohhhh technical bodybuilder jargon, I get it. So I hang around because I want to see how this 5’4” guy is going to get a full THREE FEET of stretch on his lats. He loads a bar up to 225 and puts it on the outside of the power rack a full two feet away from the stack-o-boxes that he just constructed. He leans way over and somehow gets the bar off the racks then proceeds to do his rows with NO STRETCH WHATSOEVER, the plates never went lower than his feet, he could've easily been safely standing on the floor.

But the best part of the set was when he tried to reach way out and put the par back onto the racks, he misses the pins on one side and it goes crashing to the floor and because he was strapped to the bar he goes to the floor with it in a most spectacular fashion. He literally flipped over off the blocks onto his head and his legs went crashing into the power racks. He gets up with a big gash on his leg and looks around the room gives the look as if to say, “I meant to do that.”

All I could do is shake my head and, for insurance reasons, leave the room.