Copyright MUSCLEMAG INTERNATIONAL Magazine
Tales From the Weightroom
 WINNING MR. IXTAPA
Was There Life After A Winter's Training Layoff...and a Broken Heart?
By Terry Strand

THE BEGINNING
    She walked into the gym looking good. Really good. Good enough to make a bishop kick out a row of stained glass windows. And I was feeling about as low as a Chicago guy can go, but squinting my best Clint Eastwood squint into the weightroom mirrors. My heart had been pushed through a meat grinder, the particulars I won't describe. Now at 6:00 A.M. on a Labor Day Weekend Sunday morning I checked off the damages done: gut hanging, tan fading, cuts going, smile gone. Baggy Crazee Wear sweats hid my body, laid waste by 9 months of uninspired, haphazard training, and enough fast food to kill a billy goat. My once steely physique, the result of years of discipline and heavy lifting, and which had won a shelf full of trophies, was now just yesterday's news. I knew that at this point Bogart would have made the ultimate allclass exit, disappearing into the rainy airport fog. But this wasn't Casablanca. It was the hard-core iron gym of the Leaning Tower YMCA on the outskirts of the Windy City, only now the place just looked to me like the last stop on the line to Palookaville. So then this new girl had walked in. Of all the gyms, in all the towns, in all the world, she walked into mine. I looked away, not wanting to stare at her. What was a gorgeous woman doing on our calf machine, while the rest of the city slept off their Saturday night sins?
     She came right up next to me, making me sweat like Tom Platz's squat routine.
     "Hi," I ventured, "What are ya' workin' today?"
     A dumb thing to ask. I mean I didn't have to be Einstein to figure out what muscle a person might be exercising on something called a calf machine.
     "Calves" she said. "My name is Julie."
     She held out a well-manicured hand.
     Trying to recover I asked, "So you come here early much, or what?"
     Man! I couldn't believe I was standing there talking like a cut rate Sly Stallone. I tried to force out some veins on my neck to impress her, knowing full well how all women crave veiny necks. She smiled, and I felt her cutting me some much needed slack.
     "I like to train early before work."
     Curiosity got the best of me and I asked, "What do you do that you have to punch the clock on a Sunday?"
     "I'm a travel agent."
     WOOMP! There it was. BIRTH OF AN IDEA Travel. It was just what I needed. To get away for a while. Somewhere tropical. Pounding surf, cold drinks and blazing sun. Maybe Florida, California, the Caribbean, Mexico? Mexico! Yeah, that was it. I'd wanted to go down there for years, but something always had come up. Now I had a little extra cash, and some vacation time that was overdue me. Could Julie help me out with this?
     She was back pumping her gams on the calf machine. It was made out of boiler pipes and it was ancient. John Grimek must have welded this one up personally in his basement.
     After her set I propose, "Try superseding your regular heel raises with toe raises. Put just your heels on the machine, and then pump those toes up and down. Very intense, and it'll make your lower legs gnarly."
     She looked at me funny, but I could tell that it was because in her heart of hearts she knew that she had finally met a man who grasped a woman's primordial needs: veiny necks and gnarly calves.
     Later as Julie was leaving, I asked if she could fill me in on Mexico. She promised to bring some travel brochures for next time. "Don't forget," I yelled after her.
     Seven days later, and true to her word she reappeared in the weight-room with glossy pamphlets full of attractive couples walking sugar-white sand beaches. Tough choices. Cancun? Too crowded. Cozumel? Possibly. Acapulco? Too touristy. What's this Ixtapa place? I never heard of it. It was a former coconut plantation on the Pacific coast with a few great hotels. One hotel, the Krystal, advertised a restaurant on the property called Bogart's, with a Casablanca motif. Gotta have it. I knew I could get some time off from work the week before Thanksgiving.
     "Book me!"
     But wait. I looked like hell, and Ixtapa was only two and a half months away. Have to tighten up on the diet, kick in the blitzkrieg workouts, and get back into the game before someone invoked the slaughter rule. It was time to grab the reins. How? I had to create a bulletproof plan. THE MASTER PLAN! Even the greenest rookie knows that 50 percent of any bodybuilding progress depends upon optimum nutrition.
     So the next day I stopped by Taco Bell to pay off my tab and close the account. At work I opened up my desk drawers, and because a man's got to keep his priorities straight, to make room for the real necessities, I pitched out all the job-related stuff. I shoehorned in cans of tuna fish, rice cakes, low fat pretzels, protein bars, apples, a bag of Starbucks coffee, and a bottle of vitamins. The drawers closed harder than Roseanne's girdle. Then it was over to the office refrigerator to push my partner's pastrami sandwich and DingDongs to one side, and cram in four tubs of fat-free cottage cheese. I was good to go.
     Now to devise the ultimate workout routine. Not being on "the juice," [steroids] meant that it would be very easy to burn up hard won muscle mass if I overtrained, especially on a reduced calorie intake. I mentally reviewed my old workout schedules to find the most effective one. I'd once made good gains with an oddball routine attributed to Franco Columbu. He worked his arms and legs together in one workout, and then his chest, back, and shoulders the next. The only trouble was that my arms tended to get overworked. Another possible arrangement was a chest with back day, then a shoulder with arm day, finishing up with a leg day. Lou Ferrigno used to use this one, and it does give the bi's and tri's more growing time. Maybe the best schedule of all had been the popular push-pull schedule constructed of a push day for the chest, shoulders and tri's, followed by a pull day for the back and bi's, and then finally the leg day for quads, hams, glutes and calves.
     Indecision never got me anywhere, so I wrote up a push-pull schedule that went like this: Monday: Midsection Mauler. Tuesday: Leg Megathon. Thursday: Back and Biceps Blowout. Saturday: Chest, Shoulder and Triceps Triathlon. I would do my cardio after every workout, heating up the Lifecycle and my heart to incandescence for 15 minutes. Abs would also have to be strafed each time.

WEEK ONE
     Monday started out pretty well. I'd wolfed down my tuna fish and rice cakes at work like a good boy, but was already fantasizing about twenty-ounce steaks and icy crystalline, orange screwdrivers. At the gym I felt around under my T. Michael ragtop for my alleged abs. They had to be in there somewhere under that subcutanean waistland. I sat down in the abdominal crunch machine. It looked like the electric chair with its leather arm straps, but I could produce far more pain. I performed set after set of penance. It was payback time for me, and the interest had been compounding daily. Then sidebends, twists and hyperextensions until it was time for the cardio. I finished up on the bike, and went to look around for a place to go die.
     Tuesday all my plumbing hurt, but it was a leg day and the show had to go on. I stormed the squat racks for endless sets of full squats to forge those thighs back into thighranasaurs. Then I blasted out countless reps of leg extensions, leg curls, stiff legged deadlifts and calf machine work until my whole life flashed before me. My legs felt like putty. Can we get a wheelchair over here for this gentleman? Somebody call 911.
     By Thursday the healthy nutrition and muscle memory were starting to kick in. It was a pull day. Time to work the back and bi's with all forms of rows and curls. I pulled until my arms hung limp at my sides. It would have been nice to have a cycle of steroids running through my veins to help. It would have also been cheating. Real men don't get their muscles out of a syringe.
     Saturday was the push day. I was up at dawn and down at the greasy spoon drinking pre-workout hot coffee for some legal stimulation, orange juice for the carbs, and skim milk for the easily digested protein. All three beverages also contained the water necessary for the muscle hydration that produces that good full pump. Then an old song came through the crackly radio stirring up some bad memories. It was time for me to head out to the gym. As planned, this was the day to do all the push movements like benches, presses, and dips. I blitzed everything thoroughly but carefully to avoid starting new injuries, and to coddle some old ones.
     Week one was finished. I felt like death. Get me Doc Kevorkian on the line.

GETTING THERE
     I pushed on relentlessly through three more weeks, and by week five I was hitting my stride. Firmness was replacing the bloat in my muscles, and I had lost nine pounds, mostly off the midsection. I put the word out in the gym that I'd be looking for Arnold next month in Ixtapa for a showdown on the beach - if he dared.
     My workout poundages were creeping up to near those of the old glory days. I could hear the thunderous waves of the blue Pacific crashing on distant shores. I had to keep going. The worst part of the job so far was the almost constant feeling of hunger as I curbed my diet for maximum leanness and cuts. It works on your mind. It makes you crazy. It makes you cranky. You pass up all the delectable rich food that your body and soul craves, with precious little support from most of your friends who just think you are cracked. Who really cared about this whole bodybuilding thing, besides me? At times, when the hunger pangs were bad, I would take the airline tickets out of my dresser and focus on them. Eyes on the prize. It helped.
     With the workouts in the groove and the cuts returning, I decided to buy a package of sunbed sessions to ditch my Draculaen pallor. I don't like fake sun, but by October it was the only game in town. I wanted to condition my skin to be able to spend the five days in Mexico outside, and not hiding under thatched cabanas and number 95 sunblocker. If the extra exposure caused a few extra facial lines during my golden years, I'd rub in some saddle soap and forget about it. Worked for John Wayne.
     I ran into Julie again in the weightroom, and she seemed genuinely surprised by my progress. Was she just stroking me, or was the improvement really that evident?

DOWN TO THE WIRE
     After eight weeks there was no doubt of the progress as my abs had reappeared, and my jeans now required a belt. A seamless, sunbed tan emphasized the newly revealed muscle detail in the full length of the bedroom mirror. Next to the mirror my suitcase yawned wide open waiting for a few shorts and shirts, my razor and a Walkman.
     Back at the gym my workouts hit fifth gear, and hurtled on dangerously into that terrain where injuries, overtraining and progress plateaus lurked. I stoked myself with more coffee, eggwhites, hot sauce and firm resolve for the final week of kamikaze attack on any muscle fibers that remained unravaged. I intended to spend my week in Mexico without any iron workouts. It would be a time to just run the beach, swim and listen to good music. There were no gyms down there anyhow. They had only recently gotten gravity put in. Besides, Frank Zane himself advised taking a week off occasionally from lifting to allow the body to regroup. I could use that. My left shoulder was starting to sound like a castanet, and I had somehow pulled a bicep showing off to a member of the opposite gender. Friends were still seeing improvement and asking if I was going to compete in a physique contest. Yeah, I was, but not against any lineup of juicers who would swear up and down that they were "all natural". I would simply train to be at my best and pulverize Arnold if he rose to my challenge of a posedown on the beaches of Ixtapa.
     Suddenly it was the end of week ten, and the night before takeoff. Julie called to wish me bon voyage. I hit my rack and drifted off to the sound of a cold mid-November rain whispering against the window.

CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF
     I woke up early with anticipation, and waited for my taxi. On the way to O'Hare airport the old cabby expounded on the need for a man to get away once in awhile. An hour later Sade was singing "Smooth Operator" over the airplane headphones.
     A two-hour layover in Mexico City, and I landed to a picture postcard Ixtapan evening. During the short cab ride to the hotel I mused about what the coming week might bring.
     The Krystal hotel was elegant, and after registering I stowed my gear in a plush room, and found the open-air piano lounge that was situated overlooking the ocean.
     "May I get you something to drink, señor?"
     "Sí, gracias amigo. Bring me something strong with none of those paper umbrellas or straws in it, and make it a double, por favor."
     As I relaxed over excellent libations, I studied the vermilion sun setting into the Pacific, and enjoyed the primal evening moving in. A couple strolled easily through the cozy bar, hand in hand, with the spent satisfaction that is love's benediction.
     Tomorrow I would wake early to run off this booze, but for now I was Dean Martin, tanned and too anesthetized to care much about all the crap that life could hand out.
     The next day at dawn's first light I surveyed the pristine shoreline. Far off in the distance, down along the misty beach, someone had arisen before me to do his morning run. I wanted to catch and pass him, as any real guy worth his testosterone would I took off after him like a dog after the paperboy. Within a mile we were closer, but not by much. This guy was fast. My quads were on fire. I tried not to look ahead at the far off figure in the red shorts, shirt and baseball cap. No aerobics-jumping, sushi-sucking, Perrier-swilling Richard Simmons type would ever outdistance me. My feet beat a vicious tattoo along the hardpacked shoreline as the sand crabs scuttled sideways out of harm's way. My heart thundered triple-time and I felt one of those near death experiences approaching, but I kept my head lowered and charged head like a runaway locomotive.
     As I glanced up to gauge the interval that remained, the figure turned for the first time to look back at his pursuer. As he turned his baseball cap blew off. I had been looking down, concentrating too hard to take in any of the features of the runner. Now I saw them. Shoulder length hair spilled out from under the cap to frame her face. A face that looked good enough to make the Pope want to spraypaint graffiti all over the Sistine Chapel. I dived for her cap that was rolling and cartwheeling toward the breakers, doing a half-gainer onto my bad shoulder. Miraculously I'd snatched it from the waves and had quickly regained my footing to hand it back to her.
     "Thank you. That was kind. My name is Louise," she said in a voice sufficiently warm to end an ice age.
     "No problem." I said.
     "Are you O.K.? Let me see that shoulder. Good thing that you're in such great shape. The least that I can do is buy you a cup of coffee after our run."
     Our run? Thank you God, and thank you Julie.
     "So what do you say?"
     What could I say? "Louise, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
     We started back off down the shore through the salt spray of the pounding surf. And although Arnold never did show up, you can be sure that on this day, at least to Louise, I would be Mr. Ixtapa. But that's another story.

Copyright CHICAGO WINDY CITY SPORTS Magazine OCTOBER, 1996
CROSSTRAINED IN IXTAPA
Your Personal Trainer's guide to working out while "South of the Border"
By Terry Strand

    "Bond...James Bond," is what I was just busting to say in a thick Sean Connerian brogue to the pretty ticket agent at O'Hare, who was asking my name and stowing my baggage. I wanted to create a cover identity, something more covert than that of a certified personal trainer with his Chicago brogue, getting away from it all for a week down in Mexico.
     "Will that be a window or an aisle seat, sir?"
     I had to think quickly. What would Agent 007 choose? An aisle seat would be best to trip up terrorist bad-guy hijackers. But a window seat would get me right out onto the wing fast, in case I had to repair a sabotaged engine while we were in flight. It was my call.
     "A wing seat, please."
     This was my second trip down to the sunny little Mexican town of Ixtapa, on the Pacific coast, a hundred miles up from Acapulco. A friend at the gym had told me last year about this retreat off the beaten path, and about a great hotel, the Krystal. Now I had to get back to it again. Especially now, since I was feeling exhausted and badly over-trained, the result of too many take-no-prisoners workouts spaced too closely together. This would be a vacation of pure sloth, reading cheap novels and nursing expensive drinks on the beach.
     Unfortunately the flight went without the need for my heroics, but the next morning I took a seat in the open-air coffee shop of the hotel with Megan, an Apple Vacation rep, who perked me up nicely. I mentioned my personal training business, and casually inquired as to the whereabouts of any weightrooms in the area.

PUMPING IRON[Y]
     Bad idea, because a gym to me is like a playground to a kid. Or a saloon to a lush.
     Megan told me that there was a weightroom located a half a mile walk east in the Ixtapa Palace Hotel. There for ten pesos, or about a buck a throw, you can lift seven days a week from 7 A.M. to 10 P.M.
     I grabbed shorts and a tank top from my room, and a few minutes later was pumping iron with some locals at the Palace. Its 1500 square feet of basic free weights and machines wasn't fancy, but it's the place for a WINDY CITY SPORTS reader to get a hellacious lifting workout. Which is just exactly what I did.
     Megan had said that I might find Alejandro, an activities director for the nearby Sheraton Hotel working out there. I did, and we went head to head in a little friendly competition, trying to outlift each other and impress some female patrons who were looking on. It's a guy thing.
     I walked out of the gym two hours later congratulating myself. See, no harm done by a little vacation workout, even if I'd sworn I wouldn't. Time now to simply relax poolside. But then I saw them.

BIKE FEVER
     Ten shiny bright orange mountain bikes stood racked in front of the Motorent Pacifica, a Moped and bicycle rental place two blocks to the south on the main drag. The doorway gaped open, seductively calling, "Bike me, BIKE ME !" I'd only just barely stopped sweating from my Palace workout.
     Ricardo and Alicia Garcia, the owners, sized me up and lured me inside, knowing an exercise junkie when they saw one. Three dollars American gets a gringo a sturdy, if generic, six or eighteen speed mountain bike. They invited me to take one out. What the heck, maybe for just a few minutes.
     My command of Spanish was a little weak: I couldn't speak a word of it. So Ricardo explained in excellent English the three main biking routes: A right turn from the Motorent Pacifica takes you on a recreational sight-seeing ride of about four miles along the hotel zone boulevard to Ixtapa Island, containing the northernmost of the three beaches of Ixtapa. Or go left from the shop, and then immediately left again, to cruise central Ixtapa. But if you don't make this second left, and instead foolishly bear right, Heartbreak Mountain, as I came to call it, awaits you. So what would it be? I headed out for Heartbreak.
     This mountain road runs horizontally maybe four miles, and vertically, about a hundred. Straight up. The climb takes you high enough to see cherubim, and on the way down your watch will spin backwards. My heart was beating rhythms God had never intended.
     Miles later, back at the hotel at noon I sat relaxing in the cafe with a cup of Joe and a sandwich...looking out at three miles of prime Pacific coast, demanding to be jogged. I wouldn't do it. Absolutely not. No way. Forget about it!

HOT TO TROT
     Within the hour I was pounding sand barefooted and hard toward a rocky pier at the north end of la Playa el Palmar beach. Twenty minutes more and I had reached the pier, pausing to think of Louise, the girl I'd met last year while jogging this same stretch of solitary beach. But that's another story.
     Later I learned that for ultra long runs along uninhabited shoreline, Playa Linda beach to the north is what you will want.
     After the return dash back to the hotel waterfront, I cooled my dogs in the Pacific. The inviting Pacific. Somebody stop me!

OCEAN MOTION
     Stripping down to my running shorts I crashed through the rough surf to get offshore a ways. It is swimmable there, but too dangerous for swimming solo. Go to sheltered Playa La Ropa beach to the south for a safer ocean workout.
     Later I stroked back in to shore. There was just time enough before dinner to rinse off the sea salt with a little dip in the hotel pool. A tough gig, but somebody would have to do it. Guess who.

CHLORINE DREAMS
     I dove in. The water was clear as a vodka martini, and in a few strokes I had achieved exercise escape velocity, swimming in an orbit of giant laps around the pool island.
     I barely hauled myself up onto the deck, where Pat Sullivan and Laura Decorado, two nurses at Northwestern University Hospital, invited me to join them for dinner.
     We dined at Bogart's, a fancy bistro nearby, with a moody Casablanca atmosphere. I could hear the great Bogie himself, through his Camels and cognac rasp, "Play it again, Strand." And so play it again I did.
     Every day for the next seven it was lift, bike, run, swim, and then feast at another great restaurant.
     All too soon it was time to leave.

ADIOS, MEXICO
     At the airport I stood with souvenirs tucked under my arm, and my heart still back at the hotel. Two complimentary farewell cocktails and stratospheric levels of blood endorphins held me hostage.
     "Sir, excuse me...sir...SIR! Will that be a window, or an aisle seat today?"
     The vacation was over. I felt my perfect tan fading away, bleaching to fishbelly white.
     "Sir?"
     Now back to reality. Well...maybe not right now. In perfect Pierce Brosnanian tones I reply, "If you would be so good as to make that a wing seat, please."

BEST OF IXTAPA

Terry Strand B.S. M.A., is a Chicago area AFAA Certified Personal Trainer and former endorphin abuser. He is expected to recover fully. (Reprinted here with permission)

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