Most Annoying Question Ever Asked As A Bodybuilder & Personal Trainer UPDATED VERSION

 
This is something posted over at the MYSPACE FITNESS & MUSCLE GROUP in response to the question, “What is the most annoying question that I have ever been asked as a bodybuilder and personal trainer?” Well, unfortunately, I have quite a list and I am always amazed that people actually say these things! Don’t get me wrong, I do truly enjoy talking about what I do and have been known to spend hours upon hours answering questions from complete strangers on everything from how a ten minute workout can really get you in shape (I get that one a lot for some reason) to general questions on dieting, training  and losing weight. (If you ever see me in the street, please don’t hesitate to stop me and say “hi!” and if you have a question, ask away, I am always happy to help out!) On the other hand, however some people do ask some really silly (and sometimes inappropriate things that I won’t bore you with here), and so here they are in no particular order of annoyance, along with the responses that I sometimes say or just think to say in my head (it depends on my mood- but most times I just think it). People liked the original post so much that I even gave some second thought to a return to the comedy stage…Anyway I hope enjoy it and please feel free to leave your own comments at the end.

 
Q: “Do you lift weights?” 

A:  No my parents happened to be Greek Gods. Why do you ask?

Q: “How much do you lift?”  

A:16! 

Q: “Are you really going to lift all that weight?”

A: No, I just like to load up the bars in the gym and stand next to them while breathing really heavily. It’s how I get my cardio in, and it makes my stalker phone calls more realistic.

Q: “How long will it take me to look like you?”

A: About 30 seconds, but you will have to wear dark colours and find a way to fake the beginnings of male pattern baldness.

Q: “How can I turn fat into muscle?” 

A: You need a full moon, two live chickens (free range, mind you), four land lizards and some red paint. An advanced knowledge of alchemy would help too!

Q: “Doesn’t all that muscle slow you down?” 

A: Only when passing in front of a mirror.

Q: “How come you don’t wear clothes that show off your muscles all the time?”

A: Because it would certainly tip the super-villains off as to my secret identity.

Q: “Why don’t eat normal food?”

A: I have to watch my figure, because if I don’t, no one else will.

Q: “What is it like to live with yourself with a body like that?”

A: Actually, I don’t livwe with myself anymore. I had a huge argument and broke up with myself about four days ago and I moved out. If you don’t mind it’s still a sensitive issue and I would rather not talk about it.

Q: “Why do you still train so hard, aren’t you big enough already?”

A: No, you see my goal is to win the Mr. Universe, not the earth based one, the real one held on Cardassia, and if you have ever seen the Klingons, you’ll understand that I really need to keep up with my training. Don’t even get me started on how big the Kryptonians can be!

Q: “Did you ever follow the Atkins Diet?” 

A: No, because I never wanted to look like Dr. Atkins.

Q: “Do you only eat salads?”

A: That’s right, I have one leaf of lettuce, twice a day. If I am really feel like splurging, I’ll have three leaves!!!

Q: “What is the best way to lose 40 lbs in 24 hours?”

A: Cut off your left leg.
 

Q: “What is the best way to lose 20 lbs in a week?”

A: Easy, go to Mexico, start drinking the tap water and just watch the pounds melt away!

Q: ‘How did you get so big without using steroids?”

A: I never, ever exhale! Ever!

Q: “You know I used to look just like you when I worked out!”

A: Thanks for telling me, I really wouldn’t have known otherwise.
 

Q: “How can you look like that if you don’t take any supplements?”

A: Simple, I have this magic pendant that I wear, that not only helps me lose bodyfat and gain muscle, but it gives me the proportional strength of a soccer mom in Florida named Frida. You should get one!
 

Q: “Why do you train so hard all the time?”

A: Richard Simmons! That guy is  hitting the gym hard and might catch up to me, if I don’t watch it. I hear Dr. Phil isn’t too far behind either.

Q: “Don’t you feel strange with so many people knowing what you look like in your underwear?” 

A: You mean they weren’t kidding about using X-ray lenses in the camera for the photoshoots? I was fully clothed the whole time!

Q: “Do you really look the way that you do in the pictures?”

A: Yes but, only on weekdays at 3:34 pm, Eastern Standard Time.

Q: “With muscles like that, why don’t you get a tattoo?”

A: Great idea! Where can I get a life-sized tattoo of myself, but 2 inches taller?

Q: “What would really happen if you cheated on your diet once and had a little bit of pizza or ice-cream?”

A: Then I would have broken my promise to the tree fairies and they would take away my first born son. Can’t afford the wrath of the tree fairies! 

Q: “How come your arms are so big?”

A: Mosquitoes. My skin is really sensitive!

Q: “How come you stay in great shape all the time?”  

A: Cloning. There are actually four of us and now that you know our secret we are going to have to kill you.

Q: “Isn’t it a bit weird spending all that time doing things like bodybuilding? Why don’t you do a more normal sport.”

A: After they banned full contact cheese rolling, I had nowhere else to go. Besides it seemed like a pretty natural transition.

Q: “Are you available for bachelorette parties? I need a stripper?”

A: Absolutely, as long as you feed me and I don’t have to take off any of my clothes.

Q: “Are all those muscles really yours?”

A: Well, not exactly, it’s a suit that I got early on layaway from Modells. Two more payments of $19.99 and they are all mine!!!!
Any questions?

NYC personal trainerKevin Richardson is not leaving his day job as a health and fitness writer, personal trainer and the founder of the Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise. You can learn more about the 10 minute workouts of the Naturally Intense System at his official website at www.naturallyintense.net and be sure to get his free weight loss book here!

Fred Sanya- Kenyan Bodybuilding Champion

I got an email from my good friend and photographer, Dennis Lee about a guy that he had met in Kenya named Fred Sanya. Fred was a Kenyan bodybuilder that was coming to America to compete in the November MuscleMania contest and Dennis asked if I could meet Fred and give him some guidance with regards to his training and diet, as where he lives in Kenya, the gym is made up of homemade weights, made from cement. More astonishingly Dennis told me that Fred was truly a sight to see in terms of his impressive muscle mass, but that he was even more impressive since he only ate one meal a day. On hearing that I knew that I had to do whatever I could to help out Fred. I had just received a letter from a bodybuilder in Benin who was in a similar situation and wanted to know if I could help him out in some way as well and I always do my best whenever I hear these stories as I know all too well what it is like to try to build a champion level physique on just one meal a day myself.

Fed Sanya Back In The Gym In Kenya

As a teenager in Trinidad, I never had enough money to afford the ideal number of meals and would struggle to eat four times a day. I actually started my career as a personal trainer at the advice of my coach as a way to get more money to buy my food. At the time I only got paid once a month so I only had enough food for about 3 weeks. For the last week (or sometimes two depending on the length of the month) I would only have enough for one main meal and as hard as it was it never stopped me from the pursuit of my goal. Hearing about Fred, I thus felt an immediate kinship and arranged to have him meet me at the 19th Street Gym, where I train and my personal training business operates.

To say that I was impressed by Fred would be a true understatement. He came in, all full of smiles with a friend of his who was helping him get around for the day and I shook the hand of this giant of a man. He stood just about six feet tall and at about 220lbs with a barrel chest and impressively wide shoulders. His physique spoke of the years of training that he had put himself through (Fred at this point has been training for over 8 years now) and that he was able to accumulate such amazing proportions eating one meal a day spoke legion to what he would accomplish in the months to come. Fred was so happy just to be here, and we sat down in the gym lobby for a while and spoke about bodybuilding, training and the difference between what it is like here in the United States and his native land in terms of the food and training equipment.

Fred Sanya At 19th Street Gym

Fred said that in his country there is so little food and the gyms are so run down that you just have to train hard and do the best that you can. Some of the competitiors in Kenya also take steroids, which Fred is dead set against using and welcomed the idea of coming to the United States to compete in drug tested contests. I sympathized with him, as when I started competing in Trinidad, there was no such thing as a drug free contest. Steroids were very much a part of the competitive landscape and my decision to not not go that route was  very difficult one, but I stood fast and was able to be competitive nonetheless.

I told Fred about another bodybuilder that also had very little access to good food at the beginning of his career, but was able to compete and build a championship level physique, my good friend, Kai Greene- who in my opinion was one of the greatest natural bodybuilders of all time, during the period that I was with him competing in the NPC. Kai and I would spend hours talking about the importance of passion, and that most people simply didn’t understand the concept of making your dreams a reality no matter what the obstacles are. Fred is a great example of just that as he never complained about what he didn’t have he just trained hard and was able to accomplish great things in the process.

Fred Shows The Champion Level Form That He Was Able To Build Drug Free!

Victor Munoz, Victor Martinez’s coach and a friend of mine walked by and I introduced him to Fred. Fred was very excited to meet the man behind one of the top IFBB pros on the circuit today and Victor shared some of his words of wisdom as well. Hailing from Cuba, he too knew what it was like to not have everything at your fingertips as it is here in the United States. He said that Fred had a lot of potential  and that he would do really well over here, but that he needed to eat clean at all times, since the food over here is plentiful, but it is really easy to start eating the wrong things. Fred was very excited to learn that Victor Martinez actually trained at the 19th Street Gym and could hardly wait to see the place.

Fred’s typical workout regime in Kenya revolved around the very basics, squats, deadlifts, shoulder presses, rows curls and bench presses with not very much else. Fred trained 6 days a week twice a day (that’s not a typo) and has made tremendous gains from this remarkable regime. Some might say that his unconventional approach is not an effective one, but the proof as they say is in the pudding and Fred’s physique does indeed speak volumes for the validity of what he was doing. As someone that gained over 100lbs over the years with three fifteen to twenty minute workouts, I know for a fact that very often the unconventional can produce some unconventional results! I told Fred about my own Naturally Intense System of 10 minute workouts and he was incredulous.

“How can you work the muscles in such a short time?” he asked with a puzzled expression on his face, so I did what I always do when asked that question, I took him for a workout! Fred had also never trained in a real gym, so when we descended into the sprawling sea of iron that is the 19th Street Gym, he was dumbfounded. I reminded him that though the many machines offer a great degree of variety for many body parts, the basics of what got him to where he was in the first place should never be forgotten. He wanted to train legs and so I took him through a paces of a Naturally Intense leg workout!

Fred loved every minute of it, and after the first round of hamstring curls (which, by the way he had never done before ), clearly feeling the effects, he boomed,

“Please! We are not finished yet?”

We were not, after launching into a set of squats, verticals and calves he was barely able to walk. Total training time, 8.5 minutes and Fred looked at me with a great smile, shook my hand and said,

“Maybe I need to think about training a bit like this, I have never felt like this before!”

At this point my other clients at the gym had arrived and Fred warned them,

“Be careful with this guy, this training is no joke!”

Me & Fred Hamming It Up For The Camera!

In Fred I could really see the passion that I and so many others have over the years and I look forward to helping him and seeing him go straight to the top of the sport. I hope that his example helps inspire you and many others that you can indeed make your dreams a reality without drugs, and even without the many protein powders and supplements that are so much a part of training today. All you need is a burnign desire to succed and a real commitment to never give up, no matter what. Excelsior!

You can see more of Fred at his website at www.fredsanya.com.

 Update- 12/2/09- Congratulations to Fred Sanya on winning his class at the 2009 Musclemania and I am honored to have been able to help him with his diet and training. He truly is a champion at heart!

Kevin Richardson is a lifetime drug free bodybuilder and founder of the Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise. You can visit his official website at www.naturallyintense.net

Steroids In Sports Are Here To Stay! 

98% of Olympians polled in 1995 said they would use drugs if they wouldn’t be caught.

In 1995 a Chicago physician, Bob Goldman, asked 198 Olympic-level U.S. athletes whether they would be willing to take a banned substance if they were guaranteed to win and not get caught; 195 said yes. More than half of them went on to say that they would take the drug if it would enable them to win every competition for five years even if it would kill them.

As alarming as it may sound, it’s the truth and for all the hue and cry about the need to clean up the sporting arena of illegal drug use, it is really all a flimsy façade and one that has support from the highest levels downwards.
Take competitive bodybuilding for example, few people in the general public know that there are two completely different types of bodybuilding, drug tested contests- where the athletes are given either a polygraph test or their urine is tested to ensure that they are not using anabolic steroids and a list of other banned substances. Most of you probably have never seen a natural bodybuilder (besides me!) or even knew that there is a difference. (As an aside: Many make the mistake of seeing me and wondering whether or not I use drugs, but truth be told if you saw me standing next to a modern professional drug using bodybuilder there would be little question, since I would look like a anorexic girl in spite of all my 20 years of hard training and my accomplishmentes as a natural athlete!)

Steroids In Sports: The Public Side Of Steroid Use- Professional Bodybuilding

Yes, there is another other side of the coin, and the more popular version by far are the non drug tested shows. It might surprise you to learn that these are the bodybuilders that grace the covers of the muscle magazines (natural bodybuilding has its own magazine as well, but its readership is negligible when compared to the millions of reader of their drug using counterparts). The bodybuilders you occasionally see on television use steroids, as do the ones that cross over to the film industry- a certain California governor included.
These images of men and women inflated to almost comic book like proportions are what most people think of when they hear the word ‘bodybuilder’. Sadly for women in general, female drug bodybuilding, which essentially will masculinize the bodies of women using steroids has made most women shy away from the idea of lifting weights, as the misconception is there that they will end up looking like some of the girls with masculine features. This isn’t true, but since there is no real movement to define to the general public what a drug user looks like and what a natural athlete looks like, it is hard for them to think any other way.

Both Are Hard Training Top Female Bodybuilders- One Competes In Drug Tested Contests & One Doesn't. See Any Difference?

 Now some may say that steroids are harmless when taken in moderate doses over a short period of time, but the fact of the matter is that to attain the size and definition required to stand on a national stage as a competitive male bodybuilder, you will need to use a combination of several different anabolic steroids, in addition to human growth hormone, insulin (yes, that’s right, insulin is  major part of the bodybuilder chemistry set) and diuretics. In the good Governor’s time, steroid use was rampant as well, but the doses were lower and even then the amounts that they used to look the way they did would be considered insane by clinical standards. As time went on, more and more athletes tried to push the envelope of inhuman size and definition and so more and more drugs kept being added to the cocktail.

Steroids In Sports- Professional Athlete or Professional Drug User?

Today’s professional bodybuilder can spend anywhere from $30,000 to as much as $100,000 or more to look the way they do. They don’t follow pristine diets and try to live as in as healthy a manner as possible, that is a myth that is used to sell magazines and questionable supplements, the bottom line is getting as big and as fat free as possible. Nothing else matters and to be honest, most of them eat no different from the way the general public does in terms of junk food and the like in the offseason.
Is it glamorous? Yes and no. The fan base, (small though it may be as the male athletes are now far too big to appeal to the tastes of most people in the general public and the female athletes are simply too scary for mainstream media to even look at) does exist and if you are at the very top of the sport you may be able to make some money from endorsements and guest appearances but there is a downside. At those doses, your life is pretty much centered around eating, sleeping and training and there is really no way for you to do the things that most people do. Climbing a flight of stairs at over 300lbs isn’t easy when nature would have had you at 175 lbs and I can tell you from personal experience as one that has worked with many of them, that the experience is pure misery.
From abscesses, to muscle tears, to strange fevers, the pain of the site injections, loss of energy, sex drive and so much more make up the lives of many of the athletes touted by many as the ultimate in human physical perfection. The numerous trips to the E.R. as well aren’t covered in the magazines, only when one of the troupe is unfortunate enough to die as a result of their use- at which point the industry as a whole is first to say that there is no proof that their drug use caused their death. As one that has worked with addicts over the past 14 years the similarities are considerable-  but at the end of the day, a professional bodybuilder today is really a professional drug user, and given the inability of so many of them to be able to stop- and the overall behavior, and culture as a whole, I would say professional addict.

Government Policy Towards Steroid In Sports 

Now, what does this have to do with sports, as bodybuilding is a fringe activity at best? Simple, if the most blatant use of drugs is not stopped by either the government or the upper echelon of the sport, why would they devote their time to stopping athletes whose use is almost undetectable to the average human eye? Take baseball for example. People pay money to see athletes throw the ball faster and hit the ball harder than they ever could. Mediocrity doesn’t sell, but record breaking performance does. The same applies for everything from boxing to American football to a host of other sports. In many cases, steroids are used in small amounts to help recovery so they can train more often and get better at what they do, or to help injuries heal faster- steroids are fantastic anti-inflammatory drugs. They don’t take drugs to the degree that say the bodybuilder does, nor do they train and consume an inhuman amount of food they way a bodybuilder would, so they don’t ‘jacked up’ as one would say. The crowd loves a winner and if you recall the statement by the Olympians at the top of the post that they would use drugs if they were sure they wouldn’t get caught, what would stop the boxer, baseball player or any other sportsman from thinking the same way?
Add to it the insane amounts of many given to athletes based on their performance and I would go out on a limb and say that over 90% of every sports fan would use drugs if it would make them able to play their game better and allow them to rake in millions of dollars. Wouldn’t you at least consider it? Especially since the amounts that are used in most sports are really not that much and are under the supervision of a physician in most cases? Be honest and you will find that the immorality of steroid use that the media portrays is nothing more than typical human behaviors. The powers that be know that their athletes are using drugs, but they also know that the crowd loves what they do and that they are making them very wealthy- thus there is no real incentive to put real testing in place. When an athlete is past their prime and the government and or media is on their backs they might ‘find’ a positive test or two from some of their athletes that happen to be on their way out of the game anyway- but those tests are almost always several years old. Why the delay? I will let you figure that our yourself.

The Governor Of California Is The Main Sponsor Of The Biggest Steroid Show In The World

Getting back to bodybuilding, Arnold Schwarzenegger did  a lot to influence so many impressionable young men to get into bodybuilding, and as they went on I the pursuit of looking like him many learned that Arnold had a little help and so got a little help of their own. Arnold Schwarzenegger almost single handedly made the steroid look publicly acceptable. He admitted his use very early on, and yet today as governor fo California and chief law enforcement officer of the state, he still sponsors and lends his name to the biggest convention of steroid users in the world, the Arnold Classic. A weekend of bodybuilding and other sports that the good Governor always attends. Do you really think that in a country where the Chief Officer of a state lends his name and image to a steroid rally that stopping drug use is a real priority. Perhaps more importantly, in a world where athletes make millions, we overlook the small detail that the team owners and sports officials that run and manage the games make billions, and that they are not going to give up their income anytime soon. Most telling is our own attitudes. We are a nation of winners, of great performers and we love our sportsmen to be the best. Add that to the thoughts of a young and upcoming teen athlete and his or her coach and you should understand that the drugs are not going anywhere unless we all change as a people.

Kevin Richardson is a lifetime drug free bodybuilder and founder of the Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise. You can visit his official website at www.naturallyintense.net

By pounding steel in fire it becomes strong, by lifting steel to the point where it produces a fire in our muscles, we too become strong.

Warmest regards,
Kevin Richardson
Founder, Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise™
Naturally Intense Personal Training NYC
www.naturallyintense.net

The worst thing to say is that I want to look like this person or that person. In doing so you limit yourself to being only as excellent as they may be and in so doing prevent yourself from realizing a higher level of accomplishment that you never knew possible. One that far surpasses that of whom you admire. Let others be guides, not goals.

Warmest regards,

Kevin Richardson

Founder, Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise™

Naturally Intense Personal Training NYC

www.naturallyintense.net