Mercedes Sayagues
`I sing the body electric,” wrote Walt Whitman. I am reminded of this line as I watch the bulging biceps, palpitating pecs and throbbing quads of Vaughan Carl, Mr Zimbabwe Bodybuilder 1998.
Harare’s 700-seat Seven Arts theatre is half-full for the finals of Mr and Ms Zimbabwe Bodybuilder.
Mr Zimbabwe 1996 is the master of ceremonies, looking dapper in a tuxedo. “Here, ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure, to show the importance of systematic exercise, a balanced diet …”
This does not tally with what I learn in the next hour. Serious bodybuilding leaves me perplexed.
Why on earth would normal, sensible men and women do the following to their bodies: go on a crash diet eight weeks before the contest to lose subcutaneous fat and make muscles prominent; exclude fat, starch, salt, sugar, artificial sweeteners, junk food and essential elements like potassium and the 22 amino acids a healthy body needs daily; and live on steamed veggies, rice, chicken and fish?
If you are not an accomplished dietician, add expensive nutritional and energy supplements, or you could look like people in the latest news clip from southern Sudan.
In normal people like you and me, between 20% and 25% of our bodies is fat. A serious bodybuilder has only 5% body fat. At these levels, just like with famine victims, it affects your health.
“Some of those guys are barely able to strut on stage, do a few poses, and wander off,” says a judge.
Because they do not train as rigorously and obsessively as foreign bodybuilders, the Zimbabwean contingent has more than 5% body fat.
After the contest, when bodybuilders go back to normal habits , their deprived bodies balloon. “You wouldn’t recognise these guys in three months,” says a judge.
Serious bodybuilders take steroids that burn fat and blow up muscles to Herculean proportions.
Steroids are illegal. But it is not possible to build such body muscle without them. Steroids shorten life spans, lower resistance to disease and kill sex drive. Women bodybuilders on steroids grow extra body hair, their voices change, their breasts shrink and they stop menstruating.
Muscled young black men in the junior category (under 21 years) strut on stage, a bit shy about showing off their oiled bodies. The audience claps and whistles as they strike seven compulsory poses, their “most muscular” pose, and a one-minute routine.
At the instruction “relax” from the master of ceremonies, their pneumatic muscles collapse like balloons.
The show gets serious. Light and middle- weights parade, smiling, more poised, more inflated bulges – more steroids, perhaps?
The heavyweights, with more than 90kg of solid muscle, are the kings of the sport. Carl (37) is about to be crowned Mr Zimbabwe Bodybuilder for the second year in a row. Undoubtedly, even to a lay person, he has the most pneumatic body on stage.
He has bleached peroxide hair and has either been frequenting a tanning bed or lying right under the hole in the ozone layer. He looks like a good contender for skin cancer.
Sweetest of all is Ms Zimbabwe. Rita Penelope Jay (26) is in tears as she is crowned. Petite and delicate, she is a sales representative at a catering company and has two young children. For the last eight months, she trained three hours a day, six days a week, before and after an 8am to 4pm job.
“Why are you into bodybuilding?” I ask several contestants. They grin and say they like it.
Each to his or her own. Still, I am perplexed.