compare bumps on the school bus every morning and banter about who could do the most push-ups. This is not to say muscles and fitness are still not important to me. Other than a brief hiatus while in college and shortly after, I have exercised continuously. I can’t imagine not. And yes, new bumps can still emerge When I was a young boy, muscles were the coolest thing to happen to a guy’s body. Seeing a bulge here and there was really exciting. If a vein popped out a little that was even more awesome. There were no fitness centers or gyms to amount to anything back then (sounds like the Stone Age, I know). Comic books had ads for Charles Atlas paraphernalia to help turn the cards on the guy who kicked sand in your face on the beach last summer. But when I was young, getting strong had to do more with labor like working on the farm and carrying blocks for construction. Muscles from work seemed more legitimate and less vain than “artificial” muscles from exercise. So I did lots of farm work and construction, but leaving nothing to chance I also cheated by building my own weight set with a pipe that I would insert into the holes of cement blocks.

My dad was of the school that I had better be careful or I could get all “muscle bound” if I exercised too much. I guess he must have worried as he saw me in the backyard hoisting my pipe with blocks dangling from each end. But I loved the sense of strength that exercise brought and reveled in the pumped feeling and look.

Sorry to sound so narcissistic. But it’s the way all of us “guys” thought. We would even compare bumps on the school bus every morning and banter about who could do the most push-ups. This is not to say muscles and fitness are still not important to me. Other than a brief hiatus while in college and shortly after, I have exercised continuously. I can’t imagine not. And yes, new bumps can still emerge

s for Charles Atlas paraphernalia to help turn the cards on the guy who kicked sand in your face on the beach last summer. But when I was young, getting strong had to do more with labor like working on the farm and carrying blocks for construction. Muscles from work seemed more legitimate and less vain than “artificial” muscles from exercise. So I did lots of farm work and construction, but leaving nothing to chance I also cheated by building my own weight set with a pipe that I would insert into the holes of cement blocks.

My dad was of the school that I had better be careful or I could get all “muscle bound” if I exercised too much. I guess he must have worried as he saw me in the backyard hoisting my pipe with blocks dangling from each end. But I loved the sense of strength that exercise brought and reveled in the pumped feeling and look.

Sorry to sound so narcissistic. But it’s the way all of us “guys” thought. We would even compare bumps on the school bus every morning and banter about who could do the most push-ups. This is not to say muscles and fitness are still not important to me. Other than a brief hiatus while in college and shortly after, I have exercised continuously. I can’t imagine not. And yes, new bumps can still emerge

al” muscles from exercise. So I did lots of farm work and construction, but leaving nothing to chance I also cheated by building my own weight set with a pipe that I would insert into the holes of cement blocks.

My dad was of the school that I had better be careful or I could get all “muscle bound” if I exercised too much. I guess he must have worried as he saw me in the backyard hoisting my pipe with blocks dangling from each end. But I loved the sense of strength that exercise brought and reveled in the pumped feeling and look.

Sorry to sound so narcissistic. But it’s the way all of us “guys” thought. We would even compare bumps on the school bus every morning and banter about who could do the most push-ups. This is not to say muscles and fitness are still not important to me. Other than a brief hiatus while in college and shortly after, I have exercised continuously. I can’t imagine not. And yes, new bumps can still emerge

too much. I guess he must have worried as he saw me in the backyard hoisting my pipe with blocks dangling from each end. But I loved the sense of strength that exercise brought and reveled in the pumped feeling and look.

Sorry to sound so narcissistic. But it’s the way all of us “guys” thought. We would even compare bumps on the school bus every morning and banter about who could do the most push-ups. This is not to say muscles and fitness are still not important to me. Other than a brief hiatus while in college and shortly after, I have exercised continuously. I can’t imagine not. And yes, new bumps can still emerge

compare bumps on the school bus every morning and banter about who could do the most push-ups. This is not to say muscles and fitness are still not important to me. Other than a brief hiatus while in college and shortly after, I have exercised continuously. I can’t imagine not. And yes, new bumps can still emerge although I focus primarily on exercise that will help me to stay in shape for the competitive sports I play.

I bring this up not to brag or appall you, but as a backdrop for the current situation in the sport and bodybuilding world. Now that we are off the farm, exercise is a perfectly legitimate way to replace the physical activity lost with modern living. The use of hormones, however, is a perversion of what should be clean and healthy personal development. Anabolic hormones totally miss the point of it all. The freaky bodies that are created are unnatural aberrations yet magazines are filled with photo spreads as if they are icons we should emulate and aspire to. Particularly dangerous is the influence on the young. It is the brave new technological and synthetic world gone amuck. It is one thing to create a new fitness machine to facilitate a workout, it is quite another to tinker with what we know so little about, the infinitely complex human body machine.

Aside from the fact that natural bodies and developed talents should compete in sports, not drug regimens, here is the real tragedy. And there is a lesson here for anyone taking hormones for any purpose. Of all the drugs I used in practice, it was the hormones that scared me the mos