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Beyond the Muscles

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I arrived late and flustered. The Natural Bodybuilders SA champs had started almost an hour ago but I had been on the other side of Cape Town after a single letter miss spell took me to someone’s house in the middle of the suburb.  I had prepped my apologies and explanations for being late and thought I would have to sneak quietly to the back in the middle of the show to meet my contacts. Instead of the championship performances I expected to see when I entered the hall there was just a line of well-built men in tracksuits getting designated a number up on a stage.  The imagined show full of shredded men posing to an enthralled crowd faded away and was replaced with the entirely civilian reality in front of me.

 

The place where they were having the competition reminded of the kind of place I might have had a high school sports day.  Dull architecture, but bright and spacious with a stage up front dressed up in banners and logos. There was even a little tuck shop at the back where you could get a packet of chips, sports drink or even a microwave pie. In front of the stage was a sparse but enthusiastic crowd. For now it’s really just those directly involved, either participating or close to someone who was.

 

Possibly the most important if not somewhat underwhelming section is this part, the pre judging. The pre judging is where the real sport happens. It’s where the scores of most of the competitors are decided by a panel of judges. Later comes the more performative show where the competitors get a chance to bring out their showmanship. It’s rare that a score gets changed at that point so it’s really more about the performance than the sport

 

After greeting my sources from Grahamstown I took a seat in the crowd and watched, for the first time ever, live bodybuilding.  Every ten minutes or so, a line-up of guys wearing nothing but their muscles and a speedo would walk out onto the stage to be judged. Then a man on stage with a microphone would instruct them to go through their various poses, tell certain guys to step forward or back and occasionally chastise the younger bodybuilders, in an almost paternal way, for standing in the wrong place or doing the incorrect pose. They are given the order and they pull their bodies and puff themselves out to expose their muscles for the judges. It’s about definition, not size, so the more you bring out the shape, ridges and curves of your muscles the better. When they flex and show off what they’ve got their muscles tend to, kind of, rise up. Their backs in particular look like topographical maps as every subtle contour of their muscles becomes visible from even as far back as I was sitting.

 

It’s sometimes a bit cartoonish. It just seems so unreal, even theatrical at times, but maybe that’s part of it.  The faces that they pull when posing express the fullest range of human emotion. From big smiles full of teeth to grimaces of pain and discomfort as their muscles pop out. A lot of people don’t realise that at this point in the show is where they are at the weakest. One of the younger guys in particular looked like every pose he struck was agony. They might look their best , with the kind of abs you could grate cheese on and the legs my god, but the last stage of prep is to avoid any fluids and most foods. Pretty much everyone is dehydrated until right after their performance. I imagine that that first glass of water tastes amazing.

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Sitting in my plastic chair a few rows from the back, I got a sense that this was the kind of scene where everyone knows each other. It seemed small enough and close knit enough that once you’ve been around for a year or so you get to know all the regular faces. The older men, who had clearly had a decade or two of experience, mostly skirted around the seating area or chatted to someone on the side.

 

As the judging went on and row after row of competitors went up on stage I decided to see what has happening behind the scenes. Back stage I found a frantic hustle and bustle as these herculean men moved about getting ready to go on stage for judgment. In the corridor were men lifting weights getting pumped up and pacing all over was a man with a clipboard and list trying to organise the flurry of people with loud shouts. I was walking around with my camera and attracting a lot of attention. A lot of guys asked me to take their photo back stage and when I brought the camera up to my face to take a shot anyone in front of the lens would pull a pose. This made getting candid shots difficult. One man pulled me aside into a stair well so that I could get shots of him posing. I never got his name or learnt anything about him other than the fact that he was from Paarl, which he repeated in response to everything I asked.  

 

Upstairs, behind the stage, is the changing room where everyone is getting dressed, mostly into speedos but a few wear board shorts. Inside they are applying this thick deep bronze paint to their bodies. It helps the muscles stand out by creating more contrast and definition on the skin. They really do glisten after that first coat. Everyone does it which is why everyone looks so incredibly tanned right before the show. In the changing room you get to see a few more of the tricks of the trade that they use in the hours and minutes leading up to going on stage. I discovered these small tricks depend on your body. Everyone has their own little trick but there are a few common things like eating sweets right before a show. It brings out the veins more and makes them clearer for the judges to see.  One of the guys was grazing away at a pink tuft of candy floss while having his muscles painted. Some drink red wine to heat up the body and achieve a similar effect, though most don't like to take in any fluids, including water, which is why everyone is at some stage of dehydration. They do this to limit the amount of fluid between the skin and the muscles. It makes the skin seem as though it is a size too small on their bodies thus making their muscles more prominent.

 

Back downstairs , just the entrance to the stage is a tiny little room where men who are about to go on gather to spray each other with gloss and do a few last minute exercises to bulge their muscles. It was cramped and pungent from all the spray and sweat. Pipes ran across the ceiling clearly indicating that this was a utility closet of some kind that had been appropriated for pre-show preparations. Really, it looked a little silly. This cramped and dimly lit room filled with these men spraying each other, lifting weights and getting ready to put on a show. Despite this, there was an air of excitement. This is the final stop before judgement, the last place you go before your fate is decided and there was certainly a sense of nervousness. Most of the guys say that they always get nervous beforehand but that fades away once you get on stage and do your thing.

 

Being backstage and seeing all of this I could not help but chuckle to myself, it’s all so theatrical back here. These massive , often intimidating , hyper masculine men all running around in a tizzy getting into costume, putting on their makeup, getting into place and then literally getting on stage and showing you what they’ve got. It’s quite disarming in a way because it clashes so much with your expectations of what these men and their world will be like.

 

After an hour or so of hanging about, chatting I caught up with my sources from Grahamstown, down in Cape Town for the championship. My initial contact had been through Mbongeni Nikani, a Rhodes University student who I shared a residence with in my first year. He had never shown much interest in bodybuilding when I knew him but over the years I had observed his Facebook profile become full of pictures of his ever amassing muscles. We chatted briefly before he had to go on stage but he seemed pretty wrapped up in mental preparations.  Before I had a chance to really take in the scene I had been approached by one of the other competitors from Grahamstown, Lesley Sauls. He came up to me, intrigued by my presence, likely a result of the large camera hanging from my neck, to talk to me about the story. He immediately took over the conversation and began to explain the world of bodybuilding without much prompting. One of the first things he did was take out his phone and show me photos of his last victory. He showed me a picture of him all muscled and oiled up smiling victoriously next to a large trophy. I guess it’s not really that surprising that he is a little bit of a show off when it comes to bodybuilding. To be fair, he’s good at it. At the Cape Town show a man who’d been in the game for decades , yes decades, referred to him as “untouchable” with due admiration. It does not take long to see that Sauls cares a lot about the sport and the people involved in it. He was very insistent that any photos I take be disseminated among all the bodybuilders present at the competition I visited.

I left the show pretty soon after the Grahamstown guys had competed. Apparently they all went for steak at Spur as a treat afterwards.  My first encounter with the sport and the people had been, revealing if nothing else. I got to see bodybuilding as a sport that people take seriously, people who have goals other than just looking good and getting ripped. While I had learnt a lot it still felt very alien.

 

 

How it all began

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In its current form, bodybuilding got going in the late 19th century. This was the first time that men started weight training with a specific competitive goal in mind. However, there was a desire to gain strength and power through weight training long before the actual sport started. The celebration of the human form through muscular development was one of the ideals of the ancient Greeks. Just think of the vases with muscled up men on them or the myth of Hercules. The spirit at the core of bodybuilding is a rather ancient one.

 

At the end of the 19th century, weight training began to change. Weightlifting for entertainment began in Europe, and it was from here that the professional strongman developed. The intention was not to sculpt one's body to perfection but rather to enthral crowds with feats of amazing strength.  This still was not quite bodybuilding though. In a way bodybuilding split off from the professional strongman. Strongmen competitions cared less about the aesthetics that make up so a big part of bodybuilding. However, they share a lineage in this tradition of entertaining by taking the human body to its limits in form and ability.

 

 The first ever bodybuilding competition , in the sense that we would recognize today, was held by Eugene Sandow, thought by many to be the father of modern bodybuilding. It was held in 1891 and billed as “The Great Show”, a bold title for a bold sport. Sandow sought to bridge the gap between the aesthetics of body development and the pure power of the strongman. In his new competition he would unify the two and take bodybuilding on its first steps into becoming a respected sport. Competitors were to be judged on the general development of their bodies, the conditions of their skin and muscles, balance and overall health. It might seem strange to think that the gargantuan bodies of some of the bodybuilders we see today were initially meant to strive for balance and not just raw size. But, as the sport got bigger so did the muscles.

 

Bodybuilding grew from there and in the 1930s reached its golden age. Adherents were becoming more and more interested in developing balanced physiques and losing body fat. On the California coast in the US weightlifting became a popular beachfront activity among amateurs and professionals alike. Sun, sand and spectators, really it's surprising it took until the thirties for people to start working out at the beach. The most famous of these beach hangouts was in Santa Monica and was called Muscle Beach. It is believed that this is the name early European settlers gave it after fleeing Europe in search of better gains. That part is a lie but the rest is true.

 

By the times the 80’s came about bodybuilding had evolved into a popular sport with wide appeal. Film stars and athletes from other sports were using bodybuilding to increase the marketability thus propelling bodybuilding's popularity in popular culture. Actors like Sylvester Stallone quite noticeably had more muscles than actual athletes. At the time these physiques were particularly popular with action movie stars and so more muscles meant that they could be better marketed. Speak to almost anyone who takes the sport seriously and they will talk about seeing the likes of Schwarzenegger and Stallone in movies and on television. They and those like them inspired many, often right from childhood. However, with its adoption to such mainstream Hollywood it began to take on more of a role as a marketing tool selling a certain image. For those wanting to make big budget actions movies about ripped men killing bad guys sportsmanship, self-improvement, and discipline were less important when it came to selling tickets. After all, those muscles became a tool to sell more movies tickets. As with almost anything pure that Hollywood touches bodybuilding was tainted and the less desirable elements of vanity and image became more of the focus than the sport itself.

 

Bodybuilding has moved on quite a bit from its humble and somewhat primitive beginnings back in the 1890s. It grew to a level of popularity, aided by celebrities, that was probably never dreamed possible in its infancy. The practices of weight training and the right diet are and will always be the core upon which everything else is built.

 

 

Lesley

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Back in Grahamstown, it’s 5am, cold, raining and sunlight is easily another hour away. I’m at the Rhodes University campus gym waiting for my man. Inside the only occupant is the guy at the front desk who sleepily flips through papers at his desk. Did I mention it’s 5am? I really want to stress that part. I had only been to this gym one time before in my time at Rhodes University and that was to sign up four years ago.   After a few minutes the man I have been waiting for arrives. Lesley Sauls, the rather accomplished local bodybuilder I met in Cape Town. He paces in and greets me with a handshake and a smile. He’s a short man with a clean shaved head and an air of enthusiasm about him. He takes me into the deserted gym, lined neatly with exercise machines and apparatus but strewn messily with dumbbells and weights. It’s a bright open room, even at this hour, with the stereo playing an assortment of the latest chart fodder and the occasional intermission of talk radio. Lesley walks me through the routine for today. A mixed bag of workout routines designed to give me the best assorted view of his regiment. I learnt quite quickly that Lesley likes the camera. I could tell he was striking poses mid workout and at times he even directed me, instructing me where to stand to get the best angle. Annoyingly he was actually right on one occasion. Hitting the gym at 5am, while trying for me, was nothing out of the ordinary for Lesley who has been keeping his early morning workouts for several years.  Every day he says to himself when he wakes up “I’m going to this again. I’m going to do this again.” Unsurprisingly dedication is key when it comes to bodybuilding. On this particular day Lesley was suffering from the flu but had pushed through anyway. It showed in between workouts. While his face contorted and grimaced in a combination of power and strain as he lifted, pushed and pulled weights in between you could see he was struggling. Yet he kept at it as long as he could until the short pauses between exercises got longer and you could see that he was just not in the right condition to keep going.  He called it after an hour.

 

Lesley is a Grahamstown local, born and bred. He’s been a constable in the police force for 20 years and his passion is bodybuilding. He mainly competes in the Natural Bodybuilding Federation although he does sometimes compete in the police force federation. Yes, there is any entire federation of bodybuilding police officers that compete from all over the country. Someone make that movie, Terry Crews would kill as a bodybuilding police officer with a heart of gold. Federations each have their own rules or styles and the Natural one puts an emphasis on doing bodybuilding naturally without the use of performance enhancing drugs. As such they are one of the few federations in South Africa that require drug testing on a regular basis. It also means they get less attention and funding. Although exactly how strict they are about that is unclear as I didn’t see any drug testing happening at the Championship in Cape Town. At the South African champs Lesley performed well placing first in his category and being one of the competitors to be selected to go to the world Championships in France.

 

The origins of Lesley’s fascination with bodybuilding are quite typical; it began with what he saw on television. “The reason I got into it was as a child I used to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger in all these movies and I always liked this side of him when he pops out his arms like that and Stallone, Van Damme. They were the guys who came from bodybuilding themselves. I used to watch them as a kid. Superman as well was big and as a kid you grow up watching these guys. The incredible Hulk with Lou Ferrigno , he was a bodybuilder with Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the ‘70s. So that stuck with me and I started my training when I was like 15 years. I started training as a young boy just doing sit ups push ups. This was for karate that I was doing back then. I hated it then. You want to do the moves but the sensei made you always start there. You need a strong core. I started falling in love with doing those push ups, sit ups and how to do those pull ups. Then I did karate for six years, I obtained a purple belt but it was on and off and then I just put it to one side and I moved away from karate.”

 

 

Why Keep Coming Back?

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That’s how it started but what keeps him and pushes him every day to live this life is a combination of a competitive attitude and a deep sense of self improvement. Many of the bodybuilders I spoke to share a similar attitude, especially if they had been doing it for a while. For those committed to the sport there is this sense of being the best version of yourself. To manipulate your body to such heights and to just be better than you were yesterday. In this regard it’s quite an introspective process which can sometimes be at odds with a sport so focused on appearance. It comes down to an attitude of discipline, as with many sports. Bodybuilding can seem very alien and unintelligible especially when compared to other sports as it seems to focus in on and exacerbate human vanity. It can seem odd that people would go to such lengths just to achieve a certain body image especially when this grants you no real ability in the same way an Olympic swimmer has great skill at swimming. Yet, when it comes down to it bodybuilding is grounded in the same philosophy and ideals as any sport; being the best, challenging limits and beating them all under the belief that we can be better than we were. It’s not about just posing and looking good. It’s easy to get that impression when we see big gunned movie stars who came from bodybuilding. In our image obsessed world it can be easy to see bodybuilding as little more than human vanity taken to a professional level. Of course that’s not entirely wrong, a body like that can easily go to one’s head but that’s certainly not what the likes of Eugene Sandow and Lesley are in it for. It is a sport, as serious as any other, and a way to view yourself and life.

 

It’s around this that Lesley orders life. “I think living healthier; I think it’s much easier than being a fat boy on a couch playing with a remote. For me it’s like it became a lifestyle and a passion.  Each and every time you just want to be better than you were yesterday, and that’s what keeps you going. If you look in the mirror and you stand there and you see more lines you are like “wow, look at me know” and that motivates you. Whenever you stand up you see something new happening. Based on my experience you become addicted.”

 

However, it does take a certain kind of person to cultivate a healthy attitude in such an image centred environment. It can be hard to strike a balance and reconcile the more admirable qualities of bodybuilding with pure vanity. Every bodybuilder must deal with this conflict between the desire to be a good sportsman and to excel physically and with the desire to simply stoke one's ego. It is a difficult thing to do as being image conscious and putting effort into how you look does help you.Perhaps it takes a certain level of maturity to balance those two elements. To allow just enough vanity to care enough to make you look good for the judges but temper it with a discipline that knows what really matters is the sport not the looks. A few of the guys that I spoke to at the SA champs said they got into it just to look good. Even some that take the sport pretty seriously started gyming just because they just wanted to look good. On top of that there is also the plain bad sportsmanship that is kind of inevitable in a sport like this.  Lesly has encountered a few of those types in his time.

“My friend David, he just took his medal off when he came in sixth place and gave it back to the judges and told them this is not me and he walked out. 2015 in Spain we were in the same line up, he came second in the world he took the trophy and he threw it to one side. That’s bad sportsmanship and that’s bad ego, he announced previously that he is simply the best bodybuilder there is in naturals. So, he came second. Its something that if you put it into your head that you are gonna win this and you expect to win this and you tell yourself there is no way that I can lose this then you will be a sore loser. But if you work towards that goal and say I’m ready to win this but whatever happens happens, then you become more conscience of ok today is judgment day, I did the best, let me see how things go, the best man has to win. I don’t need to have ego. That’s why I help everyone, each and every upcoming bodybuilder. There are some people that inbox me that they want assistance. It’s not about money for me, it’s not about ego, it’s just about doing what you love and giving back to the community.”

 

Juice

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Of course we can’t talk about bodybuilding without mentioning steroids (or juice as they are sometimes referred). It’s a bit of joke really, the idea of these gargantuan men all roided and raged up but there is some reality there. To learn more about them here in Grahamstown I sat down with a guy I knew had being using steroids whilst he was bodybuilding though he doesn’t compete anymore. He was pretty open about it; he really did not care at the time who knew he was using them.

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“The first steroids I got on, I met some guy in the gym who was on stuff and I asked him what he was on and then he hooked me up with what he was taking and showed me how to do it. I did a bit of research and then he showed me and then I just did it myself after that. They are very illegal. You can’t compete or do a lot of sports on it because obviously it’s unfair. It’s a banned substance as well, some of them. A lot of them actually get passed as veterinary products. As soon as I started I got hooked. It’s very addictive, it’s the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning and it’s what you think about when you go to bed. It’s very draining, I only did it for about two and a half, three years and I put on like twenty kilos. Its different for different  people. Yeah you get addicted to the results because they are a lot better and you get a lot bigger and you get a lot more compliments and I think that is what you get addicted to. You get addicted to people complimenting you all the time.I found that for me it wasn’t just about becoming shredded and big. I got addicted to people complimenting me and that would force me to go to gym and if people weren’t complimenting me I felt like I was slacking off or losing shape. I know it sounds weird .I will tell you right now I think there are more people using steroids than you would think. When I was on it you notice the people that are also on it and who are taking. At one stage it was nearly everyone in the gym. Most of the guys take something, on average. They will deny it but they do. I would hook them up and then they would still deny it. Even local people who compete in the completions where it's banned they are on it. ”

 

I can’t really blame those who fall into the temptation of steroids. I’ve been told that I should go on steroids and start gyming hard twice in my life and both times I dismissed it but not without seriously considering what I stood to gain. To put it simply, it was an easy way to achieve body confidence. It was a means to skip all the dreadful hard work and become comfortable with my body by turning it into something completely different. Surely a lot of people can understand that temptation when someone offers you a quick way to get this body which comes with so much and fulfils the deepest of desires which is to be desired. For those in the sport, the frustration of not getting your body to where it needs to be and how you want it can certainly draw people towards steroids. It’s such a huge commitment of time, money, imagery both mental and physical to take bodybuilding seriously and when you see the competition you are up against any one up you can get must seem like a God-send.

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The Takeaway

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Going into this, bodybuilding was alien to me and, really, so is sport in general. As such my mind was full of assumptions mostly based out of what I had seen or heard in media. Seeing some photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime or reading about the sport had not really given me all that much to go on when it came to exploring the reality. I imagined two things, giant blobs of roided up muscle barely capable of contemplating much more than their own vanity and being bored.  I think I wanted these to be true. Saying that I don’t know much about sport is putting it mildly. I hate it. It just makes me think of awkward PE experiences brought on by a totally lack of physical competence  usually resulting in me coming last.

 

It seemed at the time that no matter what physical activity I tried at school I was always outpaced by the other kids. Being tall didn't even help me with basketball. It was pretty common for me to see everyone else out pace in me in most regards whilst I wheezed in the back lamenting my existence and wishing that I could come down with a convincing yet palatable illness to get me out of it. By far the worst part was the contrived and patronizing congratulations I would get for achieving the bare minimum and at least trying. At my school there was always the ‘easy’ sport. This had nothing to do with the sport itself but more with the teacher who took us for it. If it was one of the cool teachers who let us get away with stuff in class then usually the likes of myself would sign up. So I just followed Mrs Lewis the English teacher to whichever sport. At first, it was tennis which I’m still clueless as how to actually play. Then it was badminton, which I actually enjoyed. This was mostly because my friends also did it and we could mess around and laugh at the word shuttlecock.

 

What’s more I just don't get it, the appeal and excitement is totally lost on me. Besides a brief period in 2010 when South Africa hosted the world cup I have never been able to enjoy watching sport. So I think I imagined myself as this snarky humanities student who majored in philosophy to come in and expose the insidious vanity or rife drug usage as a way of showing that I was never wrong for hating sports. All I had to do was prove it was stupid. The reality was more complicated and interesting than expected.  In that little room right before the stage at the SA champs I got chatting to a bunch of older guys who were prepping to go on stage. The men in there were part of the masters category which is for men over 50. There was a man in his 70s with a body that made me feel ashamed of myself. He was all shiny from the spray and in nothing but a speedo. He told me about why he does this and how its all about self-improvement for him. It's about being the best version of himself he can be. Not only physically but mentally as he explained that his workouts just filled him with such a positive feeling as he saw himself improve over time. Outside of the gym, which he owns, he is a pastor who works with kids his community which is stricken with drug abuse. He told me about how important sport was for preventing kids from getting into drug abuse. If they are spending all their time doing sport it focuses them and gives them a goal to work towards. Bodybuilding became so close to his heart because it helped him become a better person and in turn helped him help others. Plus, he just struck me as a really sweet guy especially when he told about how he teared up when his two sons went on stage before he did. I barely recognised him after his performance without his speedos and muscles. In dad jeans and glasses he seemed far more suburban than the athlete I had met a little earlier.

 

Sport is still something I will never truly ‘get’ but I think I understand this one a little better. At the heart of bodybuilding, away from images of glorious bodies is just that desire for excellence, which characterises so much of human endeavour. It’s that spirit which makes people push past defined limits and achieve what was thought to be impossible ,not only in our endeavours but in ourselves