Pump it
Deep in the Oxford City Boat Club complex “Hang your Ego at the Door” adorns the lintel to Unique Bodies Gym. With thirtyone year-old owner and professional bodybuilder Mike Sheridan presiding, members sit at a table in the reception idly discussing body hair removal or the next operatic performance. Mike ensures that proper gym etiquette, listed on the wall, is observed. At this testosterone tea party I feel dwarfed.
The setting for this peculiar gathering is compact, lacking the odour and hostility of other Oxford gyms. There is no MTV or lycra and the members — plumbers, doctors, even the head chef at Quod — interact liberated from a pair of white earphones. The atmosphere is calmed by the gender ratio, one female to ten males, minimising the preening and prancing of young steers. Few Oxford students use this gym as Iffley Road already seems far enough.
But many would have seen Mike around and not even have realised. You could easily be forgiven for taking him at first glance to be a regular billy bunter. When summer rolls round, however, and the layers become fewer, it is quite impossible to hide the fact that you have arms the size of watermelons. It is when you are walking along the High Street, and a woman comes up and starts groping your arms (Mike’s pecs involuntarily jump in annoyance).
“I wouldn’t mind so much, but I’m not allowed to touch back”, he protests. This is just one annoying facet of being nineteen-and-a-half stones of solid muscle. While the larger female may have access to maternity dresses and possibly dungarees, men’s high street retailers do not cater for people like Mike. “I’m not the Hulk, but I do tear my clothes, just by accident.
He also confesses that in Michaelmas last year he misjudged his rate of descent onto a lavatory somewhere in town, pulling the whole cistern off the wall. Bodybuilder Dysmorphia, or Bigorexia, is the opposite to quotidian anorexia, where sufferers believe that you cannot be big enough.
Depression, anxiety, and over-training are just some of the symptoms that drive them ever onwards to purge themselves of self-loathing, as “however hard they train and eat and grow, they can never get rid of that small, out-of-shape man inside”. Mike identifies the internet in particular as the major contributing factor to this problem. “Ignorant blokes sit in front of computers and give teenagers and beginners wrong advice.
Whilst Mike himself was spurred into training due to an exponentially expanding teenage waistline, he seemed most concerned about the number of young men who are taking performance enhancing drugs, readily available online. “It is naive to think that steroids are not an intrinsic part of the sport, but [at that age] you’re not ready for it, physically or mentally.
Mike readily confesses that most bodybuilders are “thick as shit”, but they have coaches and trainers to explain the in depth ramifications of their lifestyles and are able to minimise the damage to their bodies. Nevertheless Mike is far from a dribbling meathead. As the interview continues, it is readily apparent that although he did not have access to the best education, not one of today’s eighteen egg whites has addled his brain.
The quick solution, he jokes, is to move to Los Angeles, sell your hairless buttocks to the corporate juggernaut and wait until you hang up your posing pouch before you can escape back to Blighty. Mike, however, insists on staying comfortable in his gym by Donnington Bridge, surrounded by his trophies. One of the most striking of this collection is a miniature version of the Farnese Hercules that all the while looks down upon us at the table in the reception.
The original sits in the Italian National Museum in Naples and depicts the demigod resting on a tree stump with his left hand, whilst hiding the prize of his labour behind a set of enormous shoulders with his right — a gesture of staggering humility. In his aim to educate the masses about bodybuilding, it is not the arms or abs or back that is most striking, but this attribute readily apparent in both.
I therefore suggest that the next time you feel the urge to hit the gym and scream until your sphincter splits that you take a trip and learn from a pro.
18th May 2006