Bodybuilding is really beginning to piss me off and you might even describe the feeling as having hemorrhoids. I am constantly being swamped by journals and articles about how poor physique standards have become and what really gets at me are the concerns about professional contests judging results.

I have been around the bodybuilding scene for many years now and have experienced a number of changes at competition level. There is no doubt in my mind that the standards have hit new levels for everyone concerned in an event and that the evolution of my sport continues and that the results seen will always get better.

Although always having a private opinion as to who should or should not have won or been placed. Despite suggestions and offers, I have never had either the conviction or more important the courage to judge others.

Thus the following notes are in no way a criticism of those braver souls whom set themselves up as easy targets when they sit on judging panels, the results of which can make or break physique careers in the competitive jungle of the body beautiful, with all its commercial offspring’s. Advertising, sponsorships, film careers even FAME.

To be honest I haven’t got a clue what exact percentage of bodybuilders actually train with the sole object of competing in physique contests. The answer I suspect is just a tiny minority, with most weight trainers having varied and alternative targets, from rehabilitation, to improving their chosen major sport, get fit or stronger, or simply as most do, to improve their own standard of physique, gain or lose weight, and add some muscle

Few are like Arnold, who reputedly intended from his first squat and dead lift, to become a bodybuilding champion. For most weight trainers, physique contests as such, are something that goes on in the background, that takes up perhaps too much space in the muscle mags, and possibly an event they may attend just once in a while, usually locally to support a fellow gym member, or nationally to see in the flesh some legendary bodybuilder they have seen in the journals. Almost every gym has its own local hero whom most guys agree should at least enter, if not win the area ‘Mr Muscles on a Cake’ award or even national fame. (Coming Soon Part 2)