Many times over the course of the years that I have been involved in bodybuilding I've invariably come to debate the issue of what all these muscles are for? Throughout this debate, especially today, I find myself continually having to preface my position. My argument is not in favor of the physiques showcased on a bodybuilding stage at the professional level. A handful of guys look like that, and the reason they do is because of an amalgam of genetics, determination, knowledge, focus and drive beyond mortal men. Those guys are in a league all their own, as are the guys shooting for that level with any degree of seriousness and success. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about you and me. Guys who train and stay lean; sometimes do a little gear and bulk up a little and then diet down and stay in pretty decent shape the rest of the time. L or XL. Even XXL, but with very little body fat. You know what I mean? There are thousands of you.
Why do we do it? The answer lies within all of us and every answer is as deep as it is different. However, on a more superficial level there are some commonalities. Along with our physical quest, there comes some very desirable side effects, many of which not only remind us of how lucky we are, but also evince the elite nature of our community.
Bodybuilding is cool. Looking muscular and lean is one of those few desirable things in life that money can't buy. It's something specialized and hard to do and get right. However, when you do-- along with the accolades to your personal monument-- your description also carries caveats which include: ‘but looks don't count,' and ‘women don't find muscles attractive,' and ‘a woman is attracted to a man's soul, not his body', to name but a few.
Loosely related to such denunciation, I'm sure the feminist faction will also discount a built guy because, to them, there really is no reason to be so physically strong. Women, while physically weaker, can still do anything a man can do. A man building his body will only ensure his dominion over a woman. And, since there is the idea that some women enjoy a submissive roll, providing such an impressively dominant figure plays on their weakness. Theorists will rationalize that any attraction is purely on the subconscious level because a man in good physical shape imparts to the female an instinctual sense that he will be virile, a good hunter, and a strong protector. This, of course, is merely to satisfy the continuation of our species.
By the same measure that I'm convinced that whomever said "money can't buy happiness" was dead-ass broke and miserable, I believe it's the typical fat out-of-shape American archetype that stands for the ideal that attraction comes from the inside. Okay, I'll go along with inner beauty being a requisite to a long and happy life committed to your soul-mate, but, out on the prowl, the tigress is looking for meat. This is not often admitted nor even realized. But, looking back, I'd have to say that the most satisfying times were in the presence of such a tigress when she first discovered this particular flavor.
Some of you will read this and identify with it because of your own similar experiences and will be able to bolster my position. Being built and in shape piques the interest of many a female while at the same time inspires, in you, the confidence to accomplish things you might not otherwise set out to do-- both when you're out on patrol and when you close the deal. Apart from everything else, at that moment, this distinct advantage you have is worth every ounce of suffering you've ever poured into the gym, and it also justifies it. To some degree, for the many of the single guys who don't compete, it's as motivating a factor as any competition could represent. It's safe to say that there are tons of better reasons to build your body than to attract chicks, but when all other motivators fail-- from a purely sexual standpoint- it's a damn good reason to stay in shape.
A couple of weeks ago I was hanging out with some good old friends of mine and we were talking about the defining moments of our lives. I spent a good deal of my childhood and adolescence as a fat and out of shape kid. And the world treated me differently for it. When I was young, America wasn't nearly as overweight, and kids, as a rule, were skinny. I was the lone standout in my entire school. By the time I was 13 I had pieced together enough ads in the back of magazines to figure out that I needed to lift weights. By the time I was 16 I was once again the lone standout of my entire school, but for a completely different reason. While I surely agree that getting good grades and being a good person is important, being one of the biggest guys in high school was the most empowering, especially for a kid who used to be ridiculed because he was fat. But the real defining moment of my bodybuilding adventure came several years later at the hand of a fierce, yet uninitiated tigress. Having that conversation with my friends jarred something loose in the back of my mind and I remembered I had written the following account of it. This is one of my most defining moments and how it was celebrated.
I had just gotten done dieting for a photo shoot and was in pretty killer shape-- for me it was probably my best shape yet, and I liked the way I looked. So, I decided that this time I wasn't going to graze at will on pizza and ice cream in front of a pile of movies and gain 22 pounds in two days like I did the last time. This particular diet had been a piece of cake and there was no justifiable cause for me to not just continue on with it. So, I picked up the calories a little and kept cruising.
Actually, I remember thinking that this was a moment of enlightenment. It was when I said, "Okay, enough, I want to stay like this". I had been training HIT for over a year and for the first time in years I was completely injury free and nothing hurt; this was my first keto diet and it was effortless and so perfectly dialed in, and I'd been on it for so long, that as long as I got to eat anything I wanted on Sunday, I could eat like this forever (so far I still am), and never lose sight of my abs (so far I haven't). So, for the first time in my life, I'm thinking like maybe now-- finally-- I've got it down to the point where I can stay pretty chiseled all the time. It was the defining moment when the fat kid I grew up with was officially pronounced dead. He was never coming back.
That, in and of itself, was a feat that could stand alone in my book, considering how much of my life I wrestled that persistent fat little kid. However, the realization of what I've really got here now was still not completely evident to me. When it finally was, reveling in it was so profound that to have eluded this moment with haphazard training and reckless feasting on flavored cheese cakes would have been a tragedy not even Shakespeare could have written. This may be the shallowest reason I could ever imagine to stay in shape, but as far as shallow reasons go, this one was pretty good.
......A friend of mine invited me to his box for the Playboy Jazz Festival in LA. I've been to it before but never in a private box with all the trimmings-- my friend is loaded. When his Iimo pulled up outside my house he was already inside, three pulls deep into a blunt, a snifter of brandy in one hand and looking like the millions he has. The next best thing to having money is having friends who have money and know how to spend it. It was a beautiful sunny weekend in LA; I was sitting in the back of a stretched Lincoln having an hysterics-packed conversation with one of my best friends on our way to the Hollywood Bowl. I was catching a great buzz and very comfortable in Versace and no body fat. For all I knew this could have been the best day of my life. Then it got better.
I don't know...I think maybe things have a way of snowballing once you get the ball rolling. I felt good, I looked good, I liked what I was wearing, my mood couldn't have been more upbeat and confident. I could have stood up and given a speech. I was pondering this thought on my way back from the men's room and wondering if I wasn't just in that zone where nothing but good is going to happen today. Then, I came around the end of a long concession line, and I saw what I thought was a dream. It seemed to me that for a moment there was no sound-- we were in a void and time had stopped. The sax player held his breath, the people around us fell silent. It was like the moment a conductor of a symphony taps on his music stand and raises his arms and holds them poised.
She was wicked and angelic all at once and had the kind of curves that are usually found on mountain roads marked with little white crosses. Whatever she was wearing was made just for her and it wasn't cheap. The chassis which it cloaked was indeed hale and tone and perfectly augmented, but she definitely wasn't from my world. The jewels, her nails, her makeup, how her clothes fit, and how she moved in them when she walked in that up town-kind-of-way suggested that, if there was ever a perfect melding of all that money could buy, this chick had it all going on. She looked like it would cost a thousand bucks just to shake hands with her.
I stared. She caught me staring. She had eyes so green they almost looked yellow set into an exquisite mélange of exotic features. She lifted her gaze half an inch and caught me like a deer gets caught in headlights and I wasn't there anymore. But wherever I was, I was holding my breath.
There are babes and there are babes; and in LA it's almost a joke. They are all over the place and every one of them has her own particular problem that you're willing to deal with for a while just because she's so fuckin' beautiful. There are the short compact ones that are full of energy, talk too much, work out all the time, drink too much bottled water, and have too many pets.... And, the refined and conservative statuesque beauties that take everything too seriously and look so perfect you just know there's a neurotic monster lurking behind that cultured veils of theirs..... Then there is the soft and eager kind of babe who does way too many drugs and doesn't care where you take her so long as she's out all night and there are plenty of party supplies and she's free to trash dance up on top of the bar with two of her girlfriends.... There is the babe that has that steamy look in her eyes and smells intoxicating. She dresses in acres of shimmering cleavage and hangs on your arm and is always very, very horny when you take her home. She completely ravages you and fucks your brains out then crumples into a heap on the bed and complains about how goddamned tired she is and you would like to smack her except that you're glad you found out about how selfish she is now before you invested too much time and money and emotion in her.... Then there is the other side of the spectrum; the pale, pale babe with skin so fair you can see her blood vessels. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks seven languages from all the years she spent away at boarding school in the Pyrenees. The very fact that she's reading Othello in Latin is enough to scare you away from her....Then finally there is the trophy babe. She doesn't say too much, she doesn't do too much, but she looks so damn good on your arm that all you can manage to say to her is "yes." It will never be enough though and she'll end up making the rounds and gathering up cars and houses and jewelry just because she's so pretty. She'll end up old and well kept and never know, nor care, that an avocado is a fruit, not a vegetable.
This babe was none of these, I don't even think she was human. She was unclassifiable, so gorgeous and far removed from my realm that if I dared even dream about a girl like her I'd have to wake up and beg God for forgiveness. I was still staring when her smile brought me back to earth and I was able to breathe again. She had that fine-drawn intense look that's either a little crazy or a little horny-- or both-- but classy and mysterious and just reserved enough to let you ponder the probability that if you ever hook up with her it's going to be an event for the record books.
Through the plumpest juiciest lips, and the whitest teeth I've ever seen, she told me she thought the music was incredible. I agreed.... I would have told her I thought head cheese was incredible too if it was her idea.
I don't remember what we said from there and it didn't really matter. This was one of the few-- if any-- times in your life where both sides are drawn by the same inexplicable and profound intense lust. An exact chemical match. I kept saying the right things and soon her and her friend (much to the delight of my amigo) joined us in the box. We spent the afternoon and evening listening to great jazz and talking about everything. We all went out to dinner that night and then to a club and then somehow this unimaginable beauty ended up with me in my bedroom with the door shut, the candles lit, half buzzed, and racing a hundred miles an hour to that point of no return.
During any other day, at any other time, this chick would have been totally out of my league, now here we are ready to do the most primordial thing. As far as I was out of my league she was out of hers too. At least as far as bodies are concerned. During dinner she asked me what I did for a living. Then she realized that the bulk under my suit was not the kind she was used to around her office. She started getting curious and grabbed my leg, "oh-migod." Look, this girl had never even seen the inside of a real gym, or a bodybuilding magazine, much less what bodybuilders look like other than in TV commercials-- she certainly never saw one up close and she definitely had never touched one in the 33 years she walked the planet.
So there we were on my bed, a big tangle of arms and legs and tongues and lips trying to free each other of our trappings when I pushed myself up off her on to my knees and finished pulling off my shirt that she had pulled up over my head. As soon as I pulled my head out of it and looked back down at her she looked back at me startled and edged away from me. I just stood there on my knees looking back at her trying to figure out what was wrong.
Her eyes were opened just as wide as her mouth-- just like someone looking at something they have never seen before. Slowly one of her hands rose up to meet me. Her fingers were long and elegant, a couple of them had rings, one with a row of diamonds that matched the ones circling her wrist that were reflecting the candle light in little specs all around the room. At an agonizing pace, her perfect French manicure traced the outline of my abs. "Oh mi-god," she said again.
She brought the Lord's name up a few more times when she employed the use of her other hand. I just let her explore. She touched me with as much reverence as the keys on a Steinway. Then she moved and headed for my chest and eventually the rest of me. I was being handled like some rare find at an archeological dig and I liked it. By the end of it all she lay crumbled in a pile over two pillows wearing that vacant malaise that suggests something had been done with her brains.
Could this have happened without the six pack? Not even if I could have made her drink it. The point here is not my conquest but rather, what motivated it. Shooting game at a radical babe is enough to cripple a guy. Lots of bad-ass babes say that men are intimidated by them. Some of them are sitting home doing nothing right now. That's a shame. The most confident, most self assured guy-- the guy in the best shape-- has the best chance of attracting the hottest girl. Anyone telling you any differently is lying.
In the movie Pumping Iron, Arnold is asked something on the order of "don't women find all that muscle unattractive?" Arnold answered, inimitably cocky, "a woman has never said oh, no I can't have sex with you because your muscles are too big." Well, you know what? It's also never happened to me, nor to you, and I don't know one other muscle head to whom it has happened either, and I know a lot of muscle heads. The guys who are single are banging hotties left and right and the guys who are hooked up are with the fiercest girl they ever saw in their lives. So, looks count. The other stuff counts too; but don't think a woman doesn't appreciate the package she gets to play with. Especially if she's never seen our kind before. There is nothing like that first moment when the uninitiated chick pulls back the wrapper of her new favorite candy and then can't say no. She's never going back. She'll move on, but she'll never forget you. That time when she lost control of herself is never going to be far from her thoughts.
All you guys who are married or otherwise monogamously confined have your own reason for staying in shape and it's a lot tougher than it is for guys out trying to close a deal. You have to keep the same bad-ass babe interested until the maggots pick the last of your hard earned muscle off your bones-- at least that's what you promised. Being creative and imaginative in the bedroom to keep your sex interesting is largely amplified by your attitude about yourself. The more confident you feel about yourself the more apt you are to be the kind of man that makes her go raaaaarrrrrrr.... She's going to treat you like you're bad-ass. Being married is the reason to surrender, not give up, especially on yourself.
Either way, single or committed, chicks dig muscles. Perhaps actually less for their visual effect than the effect they have on you because a buff dude is going to do her up right, and she knows it. For the women that don't, you're going to change the way she looks at a man forever.
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