'Twas the Night Before Christmas - Competitor Style

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Not a creature was still, not even a mouse.

The contest is only a few months away,
So there’s no time to rest on this holiday.

The competition suit was hanging on the wall with great care
To motivate, inspire and – just a little – to scare.

When from the dining room there arose such a clatter
I sprang from my treadmill to see what was the matter.

My family was feasting on the holiday meal,
Eating dish after dish after dish with great zeal.

“Some gravy won’t hurt you!  Here, have some pie!”
Says my well-meaning mother with a gleam in her eye.

I sat with a plain salad to fill up my belly
So that it won’t look like a bowl full of jelly.

No fat grams! No sugar! No salt will I eat!
Yes to protein shakes, egg whites and lean meat!

Soon two-a-day workouts will help me look my best.
But for now maybe there is some time to rest -

Dreaming of muscles so ripped and so cut.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a nice butt!

Button Badges - The Big Finish

They’re done!  155 badges, numbered and ready to be assigned to competitors in April.

And it only took a total of about 3 1/2 hours to complete.

My hand hurts.

Button Badges - The Beginning

2009 was the first year that Bodybuilder Hubby ran the local bodybuilding contest.  It was definitely a learn-as-you-go kind of experience.  So many things came down to that last two weeks – lots of late nights.  I finished stuffing the competitors' goodie bags at 3am the morning of the contest.  I got an hour of sleep before having to leave for the contest venue.

My big goal for the day of that contest was not to burst into tears of exhaustion in front of anyone.  And I succeeded at that goal.  Yeah, me!

One of the tasks I had taken on was making the badges for the competitors.  The competitors wear a pin with a number on it while they are on stage; the number is how the judges identify the competitors on the score sheets.

I remembered making badges at a summer camp in junior high.  It had been really fun to do.  So I thought, wouldn’t it be nice and look more professional if I could make a badge like that for each competitor, instead of using those plastic name tag holders with hand-written numbers.

So, three weeks before the contest, I did an on-line search and found Badge-a-Minit, a company that sells the parts and equipment needed to make the badges.  I ordered a hand-press machine and parts to make 100 badges.

While I waited for the materials to arrive, I made the numbers.  I printed out numbers in several different fonts to figure out which was easiest to read from a distance.  I taped the printed page to a kitchen cabinet so Bodybuilder Hubby could tell me which was best.  His eyesight is amazing; mine… well, let’s just say that I live in a world with slightly fuzzy edges.

I had the numbers printed and cut out by the time the box arrived from Badge-a-Minit a week before the contest.   But when I opened the box, the back pieces of the badges – the part with the pin on it – was missing.

I called the company in a panic and spoke with the nicest-ever customer service lady.   She made me think of down-home, mid-west America; I pictured her sitting at an old metal desk with a rotary phone decked out in a cardigan sweater and curly grey hair.  She promised me the pin backs would be shipped that day.

They arrived the following Wednesday, three days before the contest.

Each badge starts with four parts: the pin back, a metal disk backing, the paper circle with the image (in this case a number), and a clear plastic circle that covers the front.  So you start by stacking a metal back, a paper circle, and a plastic circle.  Then you line up the top center with a little triangle on the blue circular frame.  The yellow circle part fits inside this one, twisting on to hold everything in place.  Then you flip it over.  The purple circle fits inside the blue one, and the green circle stacks on top.  Then you use the heels of both hands to push down – THUNK! – until they snap together.  Then you take off the purple and green circles and flip the blue frame over.  The red circle fits on top of the front of the badge inside the blue frame.  Next you push down on the red circle. Then you flip it over again and use the tip of a fingernail to make sure the edges of the plastic and paper circles are folded under neatly.  Next you put in the pin back, line it up, stack the green circle on that.  The whole thing fits inside the press.  Line it up and squeeze like crazy.  Then take it all apart.

That makes one badge.

I finished the 100^th badge at 2am Friday morning, the day before the contest. 

And I made a promise to myself that I would never wait until the last minute again.

For the 2010 contest, I started a couple months ahead and completed 150 badges in five hours with the help of a friend.

For the 2011 contest, I’m starting in November.  The sooner those badges are done, the better.

I’ll make enough again to have a total of 150, but we have some left over from last year, so there’s only 113 that I’ll actually have to do.   The junior high camper somewhere inside me thinks it will be lots of fun.

Anatomy of a Contest: Evening Show

The evening portion of the contest day really is the “show” part of it all.  This is when the trophies are awarded.  There’s an MC who keeps things moving and attempts to tell jokes.  The audience is larger, so there’s a lot of energy from a room filled with cheering people anxious to know who’s won.

For each weight and height class the competitors come out on stage.  The figure competitors each do their “walk” and poses, and then line up across the back of the stage.  The bodybuilders do a 60 second posing routine to music of their choice.  These routines can be a lot of fun to watch, especially when the competitor obviously puts some thought into choreographing poses to the music or adds something that expresses personality and makes it unique.

One good/bad thing is that not every bodybuilder gets to do their routine at the bigger shows.   The shows are already several hours long, so simply to keep it from getting too much longer, sometimes only the top five bodybuilders in each class get to do their routine.  I always feel bad for those people who put so much work into getting ready for the show, and for their friends and family who come to see them, for them to only get 30 seconds on stage when the weight class in introduced.  But at the same time, I don’t want the competition to last any longer.  I’m not sure if there’s a better way to keep the time under control but to give people a chance to show off the hard work they’ve done.

At the end of each group (Figure, Women’s Bodybuilding and Men’s Bodybuilding) the winners of each class comes out on stage and the judges vote on the spot to determine the Overall Winner.  These are the best of the best, and it’s exciting to watch.

I have an issue with some of the trophy girls I’ve seen at past competitions.  A bit of a pet peeve.  At most award shows, take the Academy Awards for example, the trophy girl hands over the trophy to the winner and then steps back off to the side and out of camera frame.  At some of the bodybuilding contests, the trophy girl stands smack dab in the middle of the stage holding up the hand of the winner.  This makes me CRAZY!  Hey, Trophy Girl!  The audience is NOT clapping for you.  GET OUT OF THE WAY and let the person who actually won get the recognition and attention he/she deserves!  Argh!

There.  It had to be said.  I feel better now.

The only other real complaint I have about the evening show is that from the audience point of view there’s not much to distinguish the competitions from year to year.  There’s often the same MC in the same auditorium, and many of the same competitors.  It can feel a bit like you’ve seen it all before.

Bodybuilder Hubby thinks the contest he runs is just fine the way it is.  But I keep thinking there may be ways to make it even better.

I’ve been brainstorming ideas to make his contest stand out a little more from year to year.  One idea is to have a theme each year.  There’s an infamous half-marathon in our area every spring.  The run itself sucks – as I can attest from personal experiences – 8 miles up a mountain and 5 miles down the back side.  But it is one of the most fun races I’ve ever done because they have a different theme every year that they really make a big deal out of – signs and people dressed up and all sorts of things.  I’m not sure how that would work with a bodybuilding contest, but I’m thinking about it.

I also told Bodybuilder Hubby that I’d like to be the MC.  He burst out laughing.  I think he thought I was kidding.  I wasn’t.

But I have another idea that I haven’t told him about yet.  It involves me, a video camera, and a handful of competitors willing to let me follow them around during one of their workouts.  I can totally picture in my head how I want it to all come together.  I just need to find the right time to make the suggestion to Bodybuilder Hubby and get him excited about it too before I start any of the actual work to make it happen.

So for now, let’s just keep it a secret.  Just between you and me.

Anatomy of a Contest: Morning and Afternoon

Contest Day: The Morning

Competitors arrive at the contest hours before it actually starts.  They begin with registration.  The figure competitors are measured by height, and the bodybuilding competitors are weighed, so that everyone ends up in their correct height or weight class on stage.  The competitors receive goodie bags, usually full of product samples, T-shirts and a wide variety of coupons and fliers.  Then they head backstage to get ready.

I’ve never been backstage during this part of the process, but I know they get dressed, put on more tanning stuff and lift weights to pump up their muscles.

At this point, I’m out sitting in the audience.  Or, especially in the last few years, sitting at home trying to time it so that I get there just in time to see Bodybuilder Hubby’s class without having to sit through everyone else’s.  It’s really hard to judge how much time it’s going to take; one year I showed up just as everything was coming to an end.  Oops.

The morning part of the contest is when most of the judging happens.  The competitors come on stage with their height or weight class, standing in order based on the numbers they were randomly assigned.    They go through a series of turns and poses (different ones for figure and for bodybuilding).  The judges take notes and make comparisons.  Then they start moving people around so that they can compare different competitors side by side.  Usually it’s a good sign when Bodybuilder Hubby is asked to move to the middle; that makes me think they want to see him better or compare everyone else to him.

The judges look for things like symmetry, muscle size and definition, and stage presence.   In truth, though, even after years of watching these contests, I am terrible at predicting who will win.   Maybe the judges know better what to look for; maybe they can just see better from their vantage point front and center.

Depending on the size of the group, this process can go quickly or drag on and on and on. 

Then the group is dismissed, and the next group comes on to the stage.  The process repeats for each of the groups: figure (each height class), women’s bodybuilding (each weight class), men’s bodybuilding (each weight class) as well as novice (first-timers), teens, and masters (the “old” ones – more on this later).

It can be a really long morning.

I’ll be the first to admit that I sometimes get bored watching the contests. But I’m not an attentive person under the best of circumstances; sitting and paying attention are not my best skills.  One year I brought a book to read, but that didn’t go over well with Bodybuilder Hubby.  He came out on stage, and I was so engrossed in the book that I didn’t notice.  Oops again.

One year, when I was working as a classroom teacher, the contest was held right at the end of the school year, the weekend when I was supposed to be completing my students’ report cards.  So I brought the report cards, my grade book and all other related paraphernalia to the contest with me.  Spread it out in a well-lit spot up front and got to work.  I remember thinking that some of my students’ parents would have been shocked to know that while I was filling out the report card for their sweet little child, I was pausing occasionally to whoop at the mostly-naked guys on stage in front of me.

Watching Bodybuilder Hubby on stage is the best part of the show.  He loves being up there; I swear he never stops smiling.  The guys around him may be dripping sweat and grimacing and grunting.  Bodybuilder Hubby just holds his poses with style and a huge grin on his face.

Contest Day: The Afternoon

The competitors have the afternoon off to rest.  During this time, the judges get together and tally the scores to determine the winners, which are announced at the night show.

Bodybuilder Hubby sometimes comes home and naps.  (He lays out a sheet on the couch to protect it from his tan.)   Sometimes he goes to see a movie with friends.  It’s a good chance for them to relax, to trash-talk each other and to speculate about winners.  Bodybuilder Hubby never makes predictions about how he did.  He says that you never know what the judges see.

A few years ago, Bodybuilder Hubby dropped onto the couch at home post-judging, having finally finished what must have been a dozen phone calls from friends telling him they thought he won.  He sighed, and looked up at me with a big smile and said, “Now do you see why I love it so much?”

Anatomy of a Contest: The Week Prior

I don't mean the anatomy of the competitors.  They pretty much speak for themselves.

But the actual contests are a thing unlike any other I’ve been a part of.  Really, where else can you ogle a group of mostly naked people and have comments like, “Check out those glutes!” be not only appropriate, but expected?

 Generally, the process goes something like this:

The Week Prior:

The week before the contest is a busy one for the competitors.  Many of them change their diets during this week to be as lean as they can be on contest day.  Bodybuilder Hubby used to cut back significantly on his water intake so that his skin would “shrink-wrap” around his muscles so the veins and muscle fibers (“striations”) would be more visible.  Kind of gross, I know.

During that week the competitors have a scheduled appointment for a polygraph (lie detector) test.   For the NGA contests, competitors have to be drug-free (basically no steroids or growth hormones or other banned substances) for seven years to be allowed to compete.   The polygraph test is the first step in determining if each competitor is drug free.  (The Pro competitors and a random selection of amateurs also do a urinalysis on the day of the show.  And yes, unfortunately there have been times when a competitor didn’t make it through this process.)  Every year I’m tempted to show up during Bodybuilder Hubby’s polygraph test to ask some questions of my own: “Do you like my hair better when it’s long?” “Do you think I’m a good mother to our kids?” “Do these pants make my butt look big?” 

A couple days before the contest, Bodybuilder Hubby starts painting himself.  There are several different tanning products on the market; he usually uses a combination of two or three.  My job is to paint his back, since he can’t see it (or reach it) to do it all himself.  For a few years he used this stuff that would brush on with one of those foam paint brushes.  One year I left a long scratch up the length of his back from the metal edge of the paint brush base.  Oops.

Then for a while, he used a spray-on tanning stuff that he basically air brushed over his entire self.  I hated that stuff.  It smelled awful - this horrible alcohol, chemical kind of smell - that would hang in the air for days.  And every surface in that bathroom would end up coated in this orange mist.  As soon as he left in the morning the day of the contest, I would scrub the bathroom within an inch of its life to get the color and smell out.  Ugh.

The stuff that he uses most often now is called Dream Tan, a thick, slick paste that he pats on with his fingertips.  Swipe in the jar, then pat, pat, pat onto the skin.  When he’s all painted up, Bodybuilder Hubby looks a lot like a life-size Academy Awards Oscar statue.

Up close, the tan color on the competitors looks bizarre: dirty and freakishly orange.  But it totally makes a difference on stage.  Once they get under those bright lights, the guys who went light on the tanning stuff (or the one guy I’ve seen who didn’t use any at all) look sickly and puffy.  More Pillsbury Doughboy than Oscar statue.

Beware accidentally brushing against a competitor in the aisle, or forgetting one is covered in sticky goo as you give an innocent congratulatory hug.  Your clothes will never be the same.

"Healthy" Cookies?

Cookies may seem like an odd topic for a blog about bodybuilding, but getting to eat them is the advantage I have being the wife and not the actual bodybuilder.

I love to bake.  I love fresh-from-the-oven baked goods.  I love trying new recipes.  And I love trying to come up with ways to make cookies and muffins and cakes as healthy as they can be (while still tasting good.)

I’ve been baking a lot this fall, partly to celebrate the cooling weather and partly because I tend to bake when I’m feeling stressed.  When I was in grad school, I baked constantly.    In one day I made 20 loaves of quick breads: zucchini, banana, pumpkin.  If you lived within a five mile radius of my house, you probably got bread from me that Christmas.

Now I get the bonus of using baking as an activity to share with my kids.  They sit on the counter on either side of the mixing bowl, “helping.”  They taste and smell most of the ingredients, at least until the egg is added.  They’ve been well trained that once the raw egg goes in, there’s no more tasting.  Just say no to Salmonella!

This morning was beautiful and crisp and chilly, and practically screaming for molasses cookies.

I have a recipe for molasses cookies that I love, and that is decently healthy.  It came out of a fitness magazine years ago.  My only complaint is that is calls for ½ cup of oil, an ingredient I refuse to bake with.  (Baked goods should not make your fingertips glisten with oil, according to me.)

I usually substitute butter, which has the added benefit of tasting better, but today I couldn’t find any in the fridge.

I often use milk as a substitute for oil in muffin recipes, so I decided it was the perfect chance to play with the cookie recipe a little and see if I could make it even better for us. 

The fact that I’ve already eaten four of them should say something about how they turned out.

My New “Healthy-ish” Molasses Cookie Recipe:

½ cup milk (I used whole milk because that’s all we tend to have in the house – for the kiddos.)

¼ cup molasses

½ cup brown sugar

1 egg

1½ cups all-purpose flour

½ cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ginger

¼ tsp cloves

Roll the dough into balls a little over an 1 inch in size.   The dough is sticky.  The original recipe called for chilling the dough for two hours, but I don’t have the patience for that.

Instead, use two spoons to scoop out and drop a blop of dough into a small bowl of white sugar.  Use the spoons to form the ball and roll it in sugar.

Use the bottom of a drinking glass to flatten the dough balls a little on the cookie sheet.  (Without fat added, they won’t spread or flatten much on their own.)

Bake at 375⁰ for 8-10 minutes.

Mmmmm…..

What's for Dinner?

During the early years of our marriage, I often (lovingly) referred to Bodybuilder Hubby as “The Human Garbage Disposal.”

Because this boy can eat.

When Bodybuilder Hubby is training for a contest, his diet is very regimented.  But for many years, the off-season meant being able to eat whatever he wanted. Dinner out with friends might involve finishing his own plate and then seven more tacos or whatever else was too much for his friends to finish.  He would complain when, on a busy day, he was only able to eat five meals.  (He still complains about this on most days, actually…)  He’d stand on the scale in the morning and be all excited when he’d gained a couple of pounds.  I’d try really hard not to smack him.

He would make these huge pans of what he called “lasagna” but which tasted like flavorless ground beef with noodles.   Then he’d finish it all in a matter of days.

I’ve watched himself gorge himself at a restaurant hours after a contest was over, then wake up the next morning so swollen from the salt and grease that his fingers looked like messed up sausages.

Contest prep time was completely different.  I helped Bodybuilder Hubby prepare his meals back in those early days, back when it was a novelty.  (He’s on his own now.)  He would cook ten pounds of chicken breast meat at a time and a big pot of white rice.  (He had to teach me how to use a rice cooker, something I’d never even seen before.)  Then he would stand at the kitchen counter with a box of sandwich baggies and a food scale and divide the food up into portions for each meal: dozens of bags of diced chicken, rice and frozen green beans.  He bought a small freezer that we kept in the garage, solely for storing his prepped meals.

Bodybuilder Hubby’s approach to food has changed over the years.  He doesn’t let himself go as much during the off season, though he still puts on a fair amount of weight.   He eats “clean” most of the time: little salt and fat, very few processed foods. 

One thing that seems to surprise people is that Bodybuilder Hubby prefers real butter to processed “healthier” spreads.  Butter has one ingredient: butter.  Many of those spreads have long lists of ingredients, including artificial colors and flavors.  And, let’s be honest.  Those spreads taste like crap.  According to me, real butter on a fresh slice of homemade multigrain bread is the epitome of yumminess.  Mmmmm….

For years I didn’t have to worry about cooking dinner every night.  Bodybuilder Hubby did his thing, and I did mine.  (Lean Cuisine frozen meals, anyone?)  Now that we have kids, I’m trying to figure out how to do things like plan meals in advance and, basically, how to cook.  But we still rarely eat all together as a family, something I’m hoping we’ll figure out how to do better as our kids get older.

We did actually sit down to a family dinner last week: breaded baked chicken and zucchini.  Everybody ate it, and it tasted really good.  Doesn’t get much better than that.

Contest Poster Story

A few weeks ago…

Bodybuilder Hubby:  Hey, do you think that this weekend you could make up a mini version of the 2011 contest poster for me to use on some promotional stuff?

What I Thought:  The contest poster?  You mean the poster that last year took me four weeks to finish?  The one that I have set aside the entire month of November to work on?  That poster?

What I Said:   Um, sure.  I think I can do that.

Normally I really enjoy projects like this.  It’s fun to create something visual, to see what new tricks I can learn to use.  When there’s a time crunch, however, or when I don’t have a clear picture in my head of what I want, then it’s not as much fun.

Sometimes the best ideas come from looking at what others have done and thinking of changes or improvements to come up with something new and better.  So I started by Googling “bodybuilding contest poster” to see what other people were using.

I was a little surprised to recognize Bodybuilder Hubby’s body on one of the posters that came up in the search.  Not surprised that he was on a poster, but surprised that I recognized his headless body on a thumbnail image.  I wonder if most people would be able to recognize a picture of their spouse’s body; something about that just seems sort of odd to me.

Many contest posters include pictures from the previous year’s contest.  So I started by looking through last year’s pictures and selecting my favorites of each Overall and Pro winner.

Photoshop is my friend.   It’s lots of fun to play with and does some great things.  For example, when I’m making a family Christmas card, I don’t need one picture that’s good of all of us, I just need one good picture of each person in the same setting and lighting.  And the holiday picture of extended family from a few years back where I suddenly looked about 10 pounds thinner?  The Photoshop Diet!

For the pictures of the competition winners, I take out the background so that I have just their images to use on the poster.  This is a fairly easy process, but sort of a weird one.  In some cases, like when the background color is similar to the color of the shadow on a leg, I have to zoom in and clean up the lines.   Once I was working on a picture while I was on an airplane.  I was zoomed in really close on a competitor’s suit so that I could digitally remove the badge with the number on it.  I realized after I’d been working on it for a minute or two that it probably looked really strange to the people around me that I was working so intently zoomed in on a pair of briefs. 

This year’s poster actually came together really quickly.  In the Google search, I’d found a couple of posters with some black and white and some color pictures, so I stole that idea.  I already knew that I wanted to use a bright green color, especially since most of the other posters I saw were blue or red.   My latest favorite Photoshop trick is to use bevels and “strokes” to accent lettering, so I used a lot of both. 

I was really pleased with the end result, which only took a total of about four hours.    I showed Bodybuilder Hubby as soon as I printed a copy.  He smiled when he saw it, which is usually a good sign.  Then he had one comment:  “Are you sure you want to use green?”

Yes, I am.

The poster isn’t finished.  By contest time next spring, there will likely be more than 25 different versions, as we add sponsors and finalize the decision about the dates and times.  We may change some of the pictures.  I really like the pictures that I chose of last year’s Figure winners, but neither is in a “traditional” Figure pose.  Not sure if that matters.

But for now, it’s good.  According to me.  And the best part?  Maybe now I can use the month of November to work on some projects of my own…

What's for Breakfast?

“What does he eat?”

This is, without a doubt, the question I get asked most often about Bodybuilder Hubby.

Over the years, his diet has been tweaked and changed, and sometimes has varied greatly from off-season to training time.  But his typical breakfast has probably stayed the most consistent: eggs, oatmeal, and meat.  All together.  In a bowl.

Eggs:   Bodybuilder Hubby eats a lot of eggs (mostly the whites), probably something like thirty kajillion each week.  More than once I’ve had grocery store clerks comment on how many eggs I bought at a time, about how we must have such a large family.  At the time, it was just me and Bodybuilder Hubby.  And I rarely ate eggs.   I’ve always thought it was quite convenient that most of Bodybuilder Hubby’s contests have been in the spring.  Eggs always go on sale for Easter.

Oatmeal:  Bodybuilder Hubby buys rolled oats in 25-pound bags.  He puts oats and a little water in a bowl and microwaves it so that it comes out in a semi-solid disk.  Most often, he crumbles the disk into the bowl of scrambled egg.

Once he tried to turn the oatmeal disk into a mini pizza, topping it with tomato sauce and shredded mozzarella.  I haven’t seen him do that again, though, so it must not have worked very well.

Meat:  Most of Bodybuilder Hubby’s meals include some sort of lean meat.  He goes through massive quantities of chicken breast.  He’s figured out some good ways to get discount prices, including finding out what time the butcher block sections of the grocery stores close so he can show up at exactly the right time to get end-of-day specials.

He sometimes chooses ground turkey instead, or lean ground beef which he drains and rinses to make even leaner.  He cooks the meat in large quantities once or twice a week to make it easier to throw together individual meals.

Flavor:  “Healthy” meals without much, if any, fat or salt aren’t exactly known for tasting very good.  For a long time, Bodybuilder Hubby added flavor with this amino acid stuff.  He said it tasted like soy sauce, but, oh my, the smell… I refused to eat in the same room when he used it.

Now he relies on one of his favorite food ingredients: hot sauce.  When we were dating, we frequented a burrito restaurant that had a “Wall of Fire,” shelf after shelf of different varieties of hot sauce.  In his mind, a good meal is one that burns enough to make his eyes water.

So that’s it: eggs, oatmeal, meat and hot sauce.  All together.  In a bowl.

The breakfast of this champion.



A Bodybuilding Story

Bodybuilder Hubby competed in his first contest less than a year before we met.  We met at Christmas time, the off season, so he wasn’t in his best shape.  He told me about his first contest, showed me some pictures and his trophy, but for some reason I just didn’t get it.

He proposed on a beautiful, chilly spring day in the mountains as we were snow-shoeing along the edge of a frozen lake.  He wouldn’t let me hold the ring because he was afraid I would drop it in the snow.  Which was annoying at the time, mostly because he was probably right.

I started preparing for a wedding; he started preparing for another bodybuilding contest, which was held a month before our wedding.   My parents attended that contest with me, wanting to be supportive of their soon-to-be son-in-law.  When the women bodybuilders walked out on stage to start the show, my mom’s comment was, “I should get on stage and show them what a real woman looks like!”

Over the next several years, Bodybuilder Hubby competed almost every year, and almost every year, he took 2^nd or 3^rd place in his weight class.  His abs, back and arms were always amazing, but he had a harder time getting his legs to “come out.”  At that time, there were two guys in particular who seemed to win every year.  They were big guys, intimidating guys.  I thought of them as being unbeatable.

Every year, Bodybuilder Hubby made changes to his routine, to his workouts and his diet.  He did a lot of research, talked with many other competitors, and figured out what worked best for him.

Then in 2005, everything seemed to just click.  Bodybuilder Hubby looked the best I’d ever seen him: abs, back, arms, shoulders, and even his legs.  He won his weight class that year at the local contest, which thrilled me.  But to win the “Overall” award – the top prize – he would have to beat out the winners of the other weight classes, including one guy who was 50 pounds heavier than he was.

Those guys were on stage posing and turning and posing and turning for seventeen very long minutes while the judges deliberated.  I thought Bodybuilder Hubby might end up with 2^nd place, which would have been fantastic.  But instead, they read the name of the other guy for 2^nd place.  Bodybuilder Hubby had won.

I screamed.  A lot.  I have video to prove it. 

I was so excited.  I loved seeing all the time and effort he’d spent paying off.  Secretly, I also figured this would end up being his last contest.  After all, once you’ve won the whole thing, what else is left?

Then they added the Pro division.

Because Bodybuilder hubby won that Overall award, he can now compete as an NGA Pro.  He again ended up with several 2^nd and 3^rd places in his first Pro contests, but in his last three competitions, he’s won 1^st place every time.

He’s beaten both of those guys I had thought of as “unbeatable.”

Bodybuilder Hubby no longer competes in the big local contest.  Now he runs it.  He took it over in 2009, and it’s already grown tremendously.  It takes an incredible amount of time and energy to put that contest on each year, but he’s committed to it, and, by default, so am I.

I would never in a million years have imagined that natural bodybuilding would end up being such a prominent part of my life, of our life as a married couple.  But I can’t complain.  I have an award of my own.

At my five-year college reunion I won a prize for “Most Unique Experience:” Painting my husband with fake tan to get him ready for a bodybuilding competition.

Benefits of Being Bodybuilder's Wife

I am married to a professional bodybuilder.

Not one of the gross ones, the steroid guys that look like the Incredible Hulk with those disgustingly huge veins snaking around under their skin.

Nope.  I got one of the good ones.  A natural, drug-free one.  A really hot one.

Did you see the cover of Men’s Health last spring with Ryan Phillippe?  My first thought when I saw it was that my hubby’s body is even better.  Oh, yeah.

There are some obvious benefits to being married to a guy with a better body than a movie star, three in particular.

Benefit #1 to Being Bodybuilder’s Wife: His Abs

Bodybuilder Hubby has amazing abs.  Perfect, beautiful abs.  We’ve been married for over 13 years, and I’ve never seen him without six-pack abs.  Sometimes they’re softer and rounder, and around competition times they are rock-hard and chiseled.  But they are always there.

At his 20^th high school reunion last year, some of Bodybuilder Hubby’s old female friends wanted him to take his shirt off and be in a picture with him.  Didn’t bother me a bit.  Admire all you want, I say, those abs are going home with me.

Benefit #2 to Being Bodybuilder’s Wife:  He doesn’t expect me to be in the same kind of shape that he is.

I’m not a total slacker, mind you.  I weigh a little less now than I did before our two kids (now ages 2 and 3) were born.  I have, in my opinion, fantastic arms and shoulders, thanks in part to lots of push-ups (100 in sets of 10-20, twice a week), pull-ups (2, twice a week, because that’s all I can do so far), and the fact that whenever I go on a walk I push 85 pounds of stroller and toddlers along the way.

I flexed for Bodybuilder Hubby to show off my arms.  He sort of chuckled and suggested I work a little more on my delts.  I’ll probably try to do that as soon as I figure out what that means.

But really, he loves me now, and he loved me thirty pounds heavier post-babies.  And that’s a really great thing.

Benefit #3 to Being Bodybuilder’s Wife: Bodybuilding makes him happy.

There was a bodybuilding contest in town this past weekend.  Bodybuilder Hubby spent the entire day there, helping some of his friends and clients (he recently bought a personal training studio), and then getting in a workout himself mid-day.  Since the contest, his phone has been ringing and chirping like crazy with calls and text messages.

The funny thing is, a few years ago, I couldn’t convince him he needed a cell phone, and actually went out a bought one for him without telling him, just to get him started.  He was convinced he would never need to use it.  Now he uses many times more minutes and texts than I do each month.  Which means, of course, that I was right.

I love listening to those post-contest conversations.  He’ll spend an hour on the phone with someone talking about recommendations for their diet or posing or whatever he thinks will help that person do better in the next contest.  It’s absolutely his passion, the thing guaranteed to put a smile on his face.  And when people come to him asking for advice because he’s had success, that’s the icing on the cake.  Even if he doesn’t get to eat it.

All the more for me.