This may appear to be an unlikely story, but its really quite true.

A few years ago when I was the photographer at what was then one of the largest gold gyms in Asia if not the world, I had the pleasure of meeting a massive gentleman who worked in the capacity of a janitor at Golds Gym.

This rather large but quiet gentleman had the ability to move silently and quite invisibly around the gym. You never noticed him until an errant weight left to long on the floor suddenly wasn’t there anymore. Solid rumours indicated that the gentleman was highly consistent in winning regional and even national body building awards.

The odd thing was that no one had ever seen him workout. I was working my magic with the camera there on a near daily basis and I saw him lift weights only when he was putting them back on their respective stands.

It seemed that the more he DIDN’T work out was the more he won. I shouldn’t say it was natural for the talk to move in this direction, but human nature being what it is, it wasn’t long before people ( mostly guys ) had had it up to their ears with this janitor who was continuing to win body building awards without working out. The talk about illegal drugs and this guy’s name were starting to make the rounds. It took more than a month before I actually found him in a position that looked like he had just been lifting weights.

I couldn’t help myself, so I thought to query him as to how he managed to win, win, win and yet this was the first time I had ever seen him just finishing a workout.

“How can you continue to win regional and even place nationally in such a consistent manner if you don’t lift weights?, I blurted out

I thought he was going to give me the evil eye, and for sure my heart stuttered as I imagined he was going to get seriously angry. Instead he pointed at the sweat on the seat and coolly said, “Trevor, drugs particularly steroids are for fools, don’t believe the rumors”.

So, I waited patiently for him to tell me his story, but he just turned and went to pick up another stray weight on the rubber floor. It took me another month before I could corner him again on the topic.

This time, I found him studiously doing a preacher curl with one arm as he examined the striated muscle group. As he finished, I went to him and exclaimed ha ha, so you do lift after all. He looked at me oddly, and as if continuing the conversation from a month earlier, he said, I never claimed not to.

He was talking, but not quite about what I and the rest of the gym really wanted to know, so I tried to gently steer in the direction of — how did he do it?

I couldn’t help myself, I smiled as I thought he was finally going to tell me something earthshaking. Something so profound that the rest of the guys in the gym would just marvel. With earth-shattering stillness, he simply said the difference was in the interval. Oh yes, I thought to myself your interval is like once every 30 days. Aloud, I said patiently, is that so?

Quietly, he then revealed that the difference was in the workout interval.

He works out, monitors his heart rate and never works out again until his heart rate is back at “rest mode”. If that takes 2 days or 3 or 4 he doesn’t care. He simply waits. When his heart rate is back at “rest”, he intensely works out a different muscle set.

Does this work for everyone? I can’t say, but when I left Asia, this unassuming body building janitor was continuing to un-reluctantly body slam contest after contest to the near complete befuddlement of his competition training in the exact same gym. Gold’s gym in this particular Asian country produces more body builder champions than most of the other Gyms combined.

Ahhh, I hear some of you saying this is a non-story because you have yet to leave a few gallons of sweat on a weight bench and perhaps more promises will be made after thanksgiving and Christmas dinner about getting to the Gym some time. But the point here, is really not about the weight lifting ( or lack thereof so don’t sweat that ) but more that too many times, so many of us “professionals” can be oh so sure that there is only one way to “skin the cat”. And that one way, or for some “My way or the highway” leaves us battling for change that is more than simply elusive.

So, we have all seen the tunnel visioned friend who is working hard at doing exactly the same thing he has been doing all along and hoping, yes even praying that his future plans which contain more of the same old methodologies will finally bring him that much needed change. Oops, would that be too much to expect?

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