Learning my Karma the First Time Around

As a personal trainer, fitness instructor, hip-hop dancer/entertainer, choreographer and overall fitness buff thoughout the outset of my career, I knew i had run out of goals to achieve and was wondering…. What is going to sustain me now?  I need a passion to provoke my need for speed and propel me to challenge myself.  But what or where will this impetus come from?

Well, it came from a desire to challenge myself in ways that I was driving and motivating my students/clients though exercise, diet and change.  Yes, once again, I  was going to hyper-focus all my life, energy and self-dicipline into training for the Ms Fitness Pageant, which was being held in my hometown, just eight months away.  I was being encouraged by boxing coach, supplement guru and brainiac from World’s Gym, Steve, who proved to have a life-long impact on the way I chose to deal with the unforseenable consequences of that event in ways movies only capture the re-enactment of what really happens “behind the scenes” but which really happened to me.

Let me preface, I embarked on a journey which felt like exercise bulimia towards the end of my 8 1/2 month training regime.  My daily schedule at the beginning involved training/working out clients  30 hr per week with a light training schedule for me which included taking gymnastics and training on weights 5 days per week with a 5 day per week cardio program (that was easy as i was teaching 15 aerobic classes per week.) I didn’t have to start dieting down until the last 14-12 weeks of the show, so I was basically doing the same routine, albeit i had my training/stretch coaches lined up and was attempting to become gym savvy since i was never an adept gymnast and knew this was my weakest catagory.  James Haran, Pilates instructor with  the Houston Ballet Company worked over all my stuctural defects and boy were there alot of imbalances to adjust.   Each month, counting down to the event, would be new hours of torture and sacrifice.  No one gets a free ride the first time around, you are your own sponsor, which means, everything you earn will be used for the creation of swimsuits, costumes, music, choreography, classes, nutrition counseling, tanning, supps and any other useful catagory which may enhance your chance to win top three in the Texas regionals.  Assuming that when I read the rules and spoke to the promoters, whom convinced me that this was going to be an “all natural” event and that long and lean bodies were going to be favored rather than body-building-ones.  I really thought i had a chance of placing and so I took the plunge.

Now fast forward to two months out and the most important element , DIET, which will certainly determine who has the most success with their muscle/leanbodyfat ratio in the shortest period of time.  And this is when taking short-cuts (drugs) to reach your immediate goal supercedes your ability to discern between healthy and unhealthy measures to ensure you look “perfect” on the outside, whatever the cost.  Sadly to say, this is the accepted, subteranean standard most women/men fall prey to, from the getgo and then continue gambling their bodies away, succumbing to such drastic ends to cop their immediate needs and on and on the cycle extends until they are so sick or injured, they can no longer compete nor realize they have become addicts to sports-performance drugs without any real consequence nor penalty from the panel of selected judges who put them their in the first place.  (breathe)  So here i was  feeling “ahead of the pack” you could say, i didn’t really see my competition at the gym or other operations of fitness pageant contestants for the first five months and then….. they slowly came out of the woodword and I thought I was right on course.  How wrong was I!!!!!
These young women were achieving their results so quickly, my eight something months seemed like a waste of time.  Their muscles were stronger, tighter, bigger and aesthetic whilst my body was becoming skinnier with few real muscles growing.

I’ll never forget my first opportunity to try steroids.  I didn’t even go out of my way and all of a sudden, this doctor/gym associate pinches my flabby triceps and says, ” I know i can help you get rid of this extra jig” as i am finishing a tricep routine.  “I’ve seen how hard you’ve been working and dieting but you just can’t seem to get rid of this last part of fat..as he squeezed my fat tissue in his fingers.  Ouch! I screamed silently, and it wasn’t one of those “aha”  moments, it was life as normal, relating literally and taking his biz card as a silent gesture of acceptance.  I showed Steve his card and he suggested I call him in order to procure something.  Steve had no problem with anyone taking anything, as long as you understood and read (with him of course) the side-effects as well as the pharmacology of the chemicals you were going to swallow, shoot or pay for and he had this special “insider’s” knack to procure whatever it is you needed.  Hmmmm?   Should i take Steroids?  I’m never going to win training at this rate.  Look at how ripped these girls are and they aren’t doing as much cardio as I am either.  Seriously, I saw the sudden positive-self-gratifying side effects (does anyone ever really want to face the truth?) and how I, at least had a chance if i started cycling,,, but I never relented… and so just like  the theme i lived as Nicky in http://www.no-pain-no-gain.com/, I soon learned that the real “behind the scenes” lifestyle was not going to reward me internally.  A crippling blow, just two weeks before the contest takes place and I felt like I was going to “break down”  and throw in the towel, once my apartment HR guy informed me  I had to move out, no questions asked.   It wasn’t like I was getting evicted because i worked out an intercambio with him:  I taught a slew of classes for montly rent, like the fitness director of the complex.  What timing?  I later found out my aquaintance, Gloria, had slept with this Lebaneese man after I recruited  her as my sub for the last two weeks of training.   Traitor to our cause, I thought.   She was escorted into my apartment within a week’s time and I moved into Arthur Garcia’s, my novio who lived near Woodway by his photography studio.     I was too shocked to believe I had such an enemy, after helping another human being but i felt betrayed and was existing on too few carbs that  I didn’t have the brain glucose to obsess on this setback.

I fainted at 4:00 am two days before contest line-up, it was a combination of the Clen, Winstrol (pill form) only two the entire time (remember  my flabby triceps) and my diurectic.  I also pulled my hamstring in gymnastics doing my last flip-flop during rehearsal so I could barely walk after our first round (judging- thank god!)  All in all, i felt flaccid, deflated, somewhat hopeful, nervous and excited all at the same time.  I had my golden- gilded- glassed-floor-length- evening dress -custom-made for my body for the Q & A round, my Tina Turner Leopard two-pieced Dance ensemble for “Rollen Down the River” and my two piece “Black Lightening” Brazillian cut swim suit, the skimpiest of them all, yet not a G-string.  You were automatically disqualified if you wore a G-string.  Most of the contestants were:  Fitness enthusiasts, teachers, trainers, dancers (caberet), dental assistants, body-building chicks who dated the Roided-out Buffmeisters or stay-home mom’s.  I hired a makeup assistant and hair stylist, Tanya, who Saved the Day for me when the going got rough as the day got going you could say.  On our final day, Sunday,  all of a sudden I started feeling like Show Time had finally reared it’s competitive head and although we were judged the day before for all three catagories, the difference was today we had a live audience.  My dad wasn’t there of course because he knew this type of contest was below me and he didn’t want to support me emotionally nor financially whatsoever.  My uncle Joe, twin brother to my dad, was all about the support, emotionally that is.  He was a huge work-out buff and was there in the audience with his friends, my new fans.

I hit my head on the ground during my Final Fitness routine (with the torn groin from the day before.) I couldn’t extend/stretch my hip flexor and I merely bounced (off my head) back to standing position, but yet I knew i had flubbed my routine and wasn’t very proud.  As we were prepping backstage for our Q&A round, after lunch, I noticed a significant change in the personality and the intensity of steroid-produced muscles from the effects of their shots during our lunch break.  Tanya and I died laughing (at one another) as we saw several of the contenders jump down to the floor and master pushups while feigning ladies.  The other “bulked-up” women were hammer-curling 30 lb dumbbells  in each hand as I was day dreaming of these rock-hard- animals eating me alive.  I was so puny in comparison but I decided to “decompress” my own way and walked in unnerved, relaxed and easily won first place with my public speaking/ answers.  Haphazardly looking for our scantilly made bikinis, I realized, a little after the fact, that my bikini bottoms were deliberately stolen from me.  Not only this,  during the final call of the last seven contestants, my name and number were announced from the loud speaker  and I couldn’t even strut out on stage as practiced over and over.  Another sticky situation (one of my high-heel sandals was taken) circumvented me from being on stage as the real time MC was improvising, trying to buy me time.   Tanya and I frantically searched in every suitcase, as many gym bags as would warrant us the time,  combing everyone’s cosmetics until we had no time available whatsoever.  It was her suggestion for me to forget about wearing my own suit and don one which was a G-sting (remember, disqualifier) whilst borrowing Kim Forbe’s size 9 high-heels. ( I’m a 7 1/2)  I flip-flopped across the floor, late and out of turn,  “Quarter turn,”  Keith Klein says, “quarter turn,”  as soon as I heard those words again, my back and booty  turned directly in front of the entire auditorium and everyone  jeered, shouted, whistled and teased as my bare ass hit the spotlight’s beaming rays.  I was so  humiliated and also extremely disappointed in my fellow woman; knowing someone purposefully singled me out and felt  so  threatened, she had to sabotage me in the end game by harassing me.  It made me feel so violated and I vowed from this day forward, that I would never enlist myself in any future fitness contests yet still continued to teach and  choreograph routines for future fitness candidates.

Moral of this story;  Never assume I have had a charmed life:  most of the events which happen to me are not hype, but real stories, which never happen to ordinary people.

There come’s a time in every trainer’s mind/heart when “training alone” or “training all one ” is no longer motivating you to push yourself.  If i had the extra money, i know i would spend it on someone like me as well because let’s face it….. having someone physically push you beyond your expectations:  mentally, physically and psychologically on a routine basis is a gift of life you are paying for, on all fronts.  So… as i was saying….. Houston, TX 1997 Westheimer Apts near the Tollway