I knew that she was a mother of three and had built her life around being fit. She managed to look great and stay on top of working out and training others while also taking care of her 21-year-old son Brandon. You see, Brandon was not expected to get to 21—he was born with cerebral palsy and Dandy-Walker syndrome, a congenital brain malformation. Through very proactive care by Juliet, however, Brandon is now a young man, and he’s even going to Las Vegas with his mom for his 21st birthday. Along the way Juliet became an advocate for other families facing dire health-care problems. She even ran for Congress.

One secret, however, was something that Juliet kept hidden; it was too painful for her to revisit. At one point she weighed 239 pounds. Taking care of her son, raising her family and working to help so many others had taken its toll—and Juliet wasn’t taking care of Juliet. Bad eating habits and no exercise racked up the bodyfat. Every time the kids heard the doorbell ring, they would yell, “Pizza!” Finally, Juliet took her life back.

A change in diet alone took 60 pounds off her right away. Then she fell in love with working out, which eventually led to her being a trainer and even standing onstage and winning trophies in figure competition.

“JulietArtThou” tells me that she knew that there was a “goddess within,” and the photographs here really tell the story. She believes in the art of our own selves both physically and spiritually, and I think there is much to say for the spirit of Juliet Banks.

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

Kelechi became part of the elite helicopter expeditionary force “Evil Eyes,” which ultimately found its way to Afghanistan right after 9/11. He often worked out with sandbags, eating nothing but MREs. A shower after a workout—or at all—never happened. These days Kelechi is a specialist in aviation electronics, working primarily in helicopter systems, a job that takes him around the world.

Back to 1996 “MadTitan” couldn’t do even one pullup at the gym. Boot camp cured him of that, and pretty soon lifting in the gym became natural for him. His first real gym training came from a free week with a personal trainer in 1998, and it was then that Kelechi started reading IRON MAN and other bodybuilding publications to learn about diet and get more workout ideas. He attributes much of his current conditioning, which is obviously fantastic, to his reading.

Kelechi’s workouts are different from those of many, perhaps most, of the people I interview. He works out five days per week but builds each day’s routine around heavy compound movements—squats, overhead presses, chinups and the like. He adds work on individual body-parts like biceps around the compound exercises. He also wears a heart rate monitor while working out to keep himself from slacking off, maintaining his heart rate above 85 percent. Kelechi describes his diet as “nonlinear” and eats more carbs on the days he does heavier workouts.

So check out Kelechi Opara on BodySpace over at -BodyBuilding.com. He is that “MadTitan” loving what he does so he never has to work.

—Ian Sitren

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

A track and cross-country star, Laura can also hurdle, play volleyball and soccer, throw herself around in gymnastics and dance. She’s an athlete who was told at age 14 by her volleyball coach to start working out. After coaching track in 2004, she joined a gym to “get back into shape,” saw the physique of her new gym trainer and decided to build herself one like it. Her trainer also introduced her to the world of figure competition. Now at age 33 Laura’s taken that physique onstage at 25 figure competitions—as she says, she’s “a competitor at heart.”

A college instructor in psychology, sociology and philosophy, Laura decided in 2001, after finishing her doctorate, that her calling was teaching. She’s a lover of travel, and she’s quick to laugh at herself. Laura says she would move to Costa Rica if given the chance.

She has another passion: writing. That brings us to BodySpace, where she is one of the all-time most popular members of the online community at BodyBuilding.com of more than 500,000 people who have the common interest of health and fitness. As “Jumper11” she writes interesting posts on her BodyBlog, sharing experiences and ideas with other BodySpace members. Both “encouraging and motivating” is how Laura describes BodySpace; and it’s certainly how she is described by everyone there. That brings up another theme that runs through the online talk about her: “Love her.”

So go to “Jumper11” on BodySpace.com, and between her writing, running, lifting, competing and traveling, spend some time with her; it will be time well spent. That’s for sure.

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

Now 26, James continues to wander Yosemite. He gets out among the Sierra Nevadas; has hiked San Gorgonio, the highest peak in Southern California at about 11,000 feet; and is planning to do Mount Whitney, the highest summit in the continental United States at more than 14,000 feet. He’s also planning to hike the 211 miles of the John Muir trail to experience the adventures he reads about in the writings of John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, from the late 1800s.

In high school, James was the skinniest kid in the weight room at just over 6’ and 135 pounds. Joining the Air Force at 18, he eventually found himself in Diego Garcia, where his buddies kept nagging him to work out despite his embarrassment about being so skinny. He kept going at it, but with the new idea that he needed to eat everything in sight to gain some weight. “Too many carbs” took him from skinny to fat, says James. At 212 pounds he started looking to magazines like IRON MAN for information. He started doing cardio and worked on eating right, and eventually he saw a miracle of nature, his abs!

Still serving in the United States Air Force Reserve as an aircraft maintenance scheduler, he continues to train and also enjoys swimming. At 178 pounds James is no longer embarrassed—he’s looking good! He calls BodySpace at BodyBuilding.com his new home. It’s “fun meeting and talking to people who are all interested in health and fitness.”

Visit James on his BodySpace page and keep up with his adventures.

—Ian Sitren

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

I knew Nick had put on some size and muscle, but that was just the visible change. Since being featured here, he has picked up industry sponsorships, appeared in endless magazines in a BodyBuilding.com ad and done many interviews. He’s achieved his goal of being a successful trainer. And he’s tied the knot with his fiancée, Shannon, whom you’ll find with him in the gym.

Nick says the exposure in IRON MAN “did wonders” for him and has been very surprising. In the gym, at shows and expos people know him. Even at “grocery stores, drug stores and gas stations” people walk up and say that they saw him in a magazine. Nick always wanted to be a “positive influence and help people,” and he’s found the recognition to be a positive influence. It also keeps him on track and away from what he describes as a wrong path in life.

Sadly, the past two years brought the passing of Nick’s mom; however, she did see the positive impact that a life of health and fitness had on Nick, and she was very proud. Her last words to him were, “Keep taking care of yourself. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

Nick took that seriously, and he has more goals to achieve. He’s starting a line of gym wear. He’s planning to compete in a bodybuilding show this year, a lifelong dream, and he hopes one day to open a gym. If the past two years are any indication, I expect Nick to reach every one of his goals.

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

Steve worked at various jobs along the way and credits the gym for keeping him out of trouble as a kid. It was his outlet in life for a better way of doing things, a lifestyle of health and fitness. Interestingly, marine biology turned out not to be his real calling, at least at the moment. He did take to the seas, however, and has worked for a cruise ship company for some time now.

His jobs have taken him on almost 30 cruises, and he says the ships have some really nice gyms. Along the way he’s seen Barcelona, Croatia, Ipeta, Nice, Cannes, Mykonos, London, Saint Thomas, Haiti, Seattle, Hawaii, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Bangkok, Australia, New Zealand, Alaska, Florida, New York and Tahiti—and those are just the places he names off the top of his head. I’d say that’s pretty cool. A great way to go to the gym.

In the meantime, as he was searching for better prices on supplements, Steve found BodyBuilding.com. That quickly took him to BodySpace, where he found “like-minded people focused on what I like to do.”

So click on over to BodySpace.com, and look for “ChenSteve”—that is, BodySpace
.com/ChenSteve. See what he’s up to and ask him about his travels and his other favorite sport, scuba diving.

—Ian Sitren

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

Ken started drinking in high school, and over the years beer and vodka became central to his free time and his social life. For so very many like this 39-year-old, it was never actually a problem until a fateful day three years ago when he woke up vomiting blood. That event and his subsequent three-day stay in the hospital “scared the hell out of me,” says Ken. The doctors told him that he had to change his life—no more 12 beers a day and hard booze—or he would die young.

Wondering what to do with his time without drinking, Ken realized that there was a gym right across the street from where he lived. So he picked himself up, went over and joined, and it changed his life. Choosing the better alternative, he devoted himself to learning and lifting. He learned from talking with other members and devouring all of the magazines, including IRON MAN. His recovery wasn’t easy in the beginning, but the exercise and consistency made the difference and kept him on track.

Working out revealed the “KenStar” underneath it all. In high school he’d excelled in football and baseball, and he’d always envied and imagined himself having a gym-built body. While pursuing that dream, Ken discovered BodyBuilding.com after seeing a T-shirt someone was wearing. That led him to become a member of BodySpace, the online community of people interested in heath and fitness. Now he shares advice, inspiration and motivation with other BodySpace members.

Ken’s life change has given him something besides his health. It has given him a “future that is bright,” he says. He can now plan 10 years ahead and think of himself owning a company like the one at which he works, and he adds that he can see himself finding the right woman to be his soul mate. I have a lot of admiration for Ken, and I hope you do too. Visit “KenStar” on BodySpace.com—or go directly to BodySpace.com/Ken
Star.

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

Born in Houston, Xa has been a marine for 11-plus years and has seen duty in Iraq, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Okinawa and mainland Japan. He also served aboard the USS Rushmore, which transports Marine Corps hovercraft. A champion basketball player on base, he’s also a champion in every sport he plays, including football and rugby. And now he’s moving ahead as a champion bodybuilder, placing in a number of shows despite discovering bodybuilding only last year.

Suffering from chronic migraines during his tour in Iraq, Xa found that lifting in the gym helped control them. He kept lifting on his return to the United States, when a trainer told him he should give competing a try and helped him refine his lifting and diet. It was in Iraq that Xa found BodyBuilding.com—when he saw all the boxes coming in for other marines. On BodyBuilding.com he found BodySpace, which he calls a “community reaching for the same goals you are.” He says he really likes the innovations on BodySpace, like the workout plans, but most of all he likes the inspiration he finds there.

How Xa finds the time for everything he does while being a full-time single father is really impressive. He manages to work out daily, sometimes twice or three times, doing double- or triple-split routines. In the mornings he cooks up his five to six meals for the day, mostly chicken, beef, tuna, brown rice, oats and egg whites. And he always stays lean, currently at 6’1” and 205 pounds.

Xa is planning on eventually pursuing a career in music producing, having deejayed base concerts, having owned his own studio and having been in MTV Source. Even so, he remains Staff Sergeant Xavisus Gayden, marine career counselor, and very proud of it. In the bodybuilding world he is looking to doing some more shows in 2010 and putting on some more size, always trying to look his best.

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

She’s always stayed fit and active, part of a prescription for her well-being following a diagnosis of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. In college she was asked to teach aerobics and has been working in gyms ever since as a fun part-time job alongside her career as a dental assistant. Whether training people in the gym or working beside the dental chair, Kathy loves the opportunity to “help people make better choices” in their lives. At a show a few years ago Kathy discovered BodyBuilding.com and then BodySpace.

Aside from purchasing supplements from BodyBuilding.com—and she says her amateur-bodybuilder husband buys a lot, so they appreciate the great prices—Kathy found the BodySpace community to be a great resource. Having written in her profile that she suffers from gastroparesis, an unusual digestive disease, she started getting messages from other BodySpace members who suffer from the same problem. They became their own support group, sharing ideas and experiences and learning about their disease and symptoms.

Kathy says she’s going to keep doing shows and hopes to open her own training gym in her hometown of Pocatello, Idaho. Visit Kathy on BodySpace—look for “KathyFit.” While you’re there, start your own BodySpace profile.

—Ian Sitren

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

As I learned, there’s more to racewalking than going out and walking as fast as you can on some track. It’s a long-distance Olympic event in which one foot must be in contact with the ground at all times. The resulting reduced stride makes the racewalker keep up the cadence of an Olympic 400-meter sprinter. That will get your heart rate up.

Richard discovered racewalking about 10 years ago when he participated in a cancer fund-raising event. He’s now done 20 events around the country, from half-marathons to marathons—even a 132-mile team racewalk that took 33 hours to complete. You even have to learn how to eat and drink without stopping and losing your pace, Richard says. Along the route you also get “glucose shots” to drink so your body doesn’t become depleted at that tremendous pace. He says that the foot strike in the special walking shoes is the equivalent of doing thousands and thousands of calf raises—as he learned painfully in his early training walks and races.

StachedWalker’s health and fitness goals aren’t just racewalk-directed. Richard is interested in being fit, staying healthy and building strength. His unusual working hours as a technical-marketing engineer at Intel in Portland, Oregon, sometimes put him in the gym late at night. He works with weights to build muscle and strengthen joints and ligaments for racewalking as well as for aging healthfully. The weightlifting is also combined with work on the treadmill at racewalk speed, typically for an hour or more. Weekends bring actual training on the streets, up hills and on routes that simulate what he might face in upcoming meets. His goal for 2010 is to get his speed up to a 2 1/2–hour half-marathon.

A racewalker is unusual on BodySpace, but what’s not unusual is why Richard is a member. He found BodySpace as a customer buying supplements from BodyBuilding.com. He was impressed by the many members who were as interested in health and fitness as he was. Now, when he starts thinking that something might be too hard to do, he can check with another member who’s overcome real obstacles to meet a goal, or with people who are a little closer to his age—52—to see what great changes they’ve made in their lives. As StachedWalker says, there’s a lot of motivation there when you need it.

Go on over to BodySpace, and see what Richard is up to lately. You can find him at “StachedWalker” or go directly to http://BodySpace.com/StachedWalker.

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

For starters the 27-year-old from San Diego is a Navy corpsman. That can be one serious job; corpsmen serve in military hospitals and clinics and provide primary care for sailors aboard ships. Jeff is studying to be a doctor.

And there’s more: He is married and a dad, devoted to his church and community service. Add that to a work schedule that can suddenly change to longer hours and different shifts, and you find a guy who can thrive on almost no sleep and still get his workouts in and pay strict attention to his diet.

Jeff can find himself in the gym at 1 a.m., 5 a.m. or even 10 p.m. He manages to do it six days per week. Needless to say, he gets a lot of support from Tricia, his wife of seven years. To stay ripped, Jeff eats six to eight times per day, sometimes even nine. He varies his diet to achieve different goals, but he carefully controls proteins and carbs, and he supplements with whey protein, vitamins, NO products, creatine and omega-3s.

Currently he’s 5’10” and 192 pounds, but he was once 40 pounds overweight. There came a day that he just decided that he no longer wanted to be fat, and he discovered BodyBuilding.com and BodySpace, where people who make health and fitness their lifestyle get together online. “BodySpace is motivating, provides positive feedback and is always uplifting,” says Jeff.

Staying in the Navy is certainly his course, as is one day being a medical doctor. In his physique goals, Jeff is looking to get as big as he can naturally. Visit on BodySpace at BodySpace.com/DicedOne.

—Ian Sitren

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

As a kid Dan was picked on by bullies and plagued by more than 70 allergies. “Weight training saved my life. If I hadn’t started weight training, I’d still be the sickly, underweight guy I was,” says Dan, who also took up wrestling as a youngster even though he started at only 121 pounds.

The other thing that saved him from the misery of his allergies was his embrace of learning and research. The University of California, San Diego, medical library became a home for him. As he learned about his allergies, he learned about how to mitigate them with the right foods, huge amounts of vitamin C, Chinese herbs and yoga.

Dan discovered powerlifting back in 1984, but he dropped out for about 12 years, spending time in the gym but alternating his training with yoga and mountain biking. Once he got back into heavy lifting and excelled in it, he started setting records and then breaking those records. Next, he says, is the squat record: “My new goal is to improve my strength at the bottom of my squat. I haven’t been training deep enough.”

Dan’s workout schedule includes yoga, bicycling and lifting five or six days per week. His diet is low in carbs and high in protein—about 200 grams per day, including supplemental whey protein about four times per day. He also takes glucosamine-and-chondroitin supplements, MSM, a tribulus blend and lipoic acid for balancing his blood sugars.

And where does Dan get his information and do his research now? BodyBuilding.com and BodySpace.

“People are able to review experiences with supplements and get real answers,” he says. “I originally joined BodySpace because other social networks were more about finding where the nearest party is. People on BodySpace are more active and responsive. They’ve actually sent me notes of encourangement for my effort in the gym. BodySpace is now my social-network home for life.”

Dan has set his sights on being a strength trainer for mixed martial arts fighters. Visit him at his BodySpace, “DanStrongman,” at http://BodySpace.com/DanStrongman.

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

Being out of shape wasn’t going to fit in with his goal of becoming an officer in the United States Army. So the very next day Domenic took him into the gym, and the workouts started. Leslie also found BodyBuilding.com and magazines like IRON MAN to help supply the information he needed about diet and lifting. Now he’s 178 pounds and has a full ROTC scholarship at the University of San Francisco.

Once upon a time, Leslie spent all his spare time playing games on the computer. Now he spends that time on BodyBuilding.com. Reading up on fat loss was once his focus, but now he’s more interested in bulking up—which is a little more difficult because of school demands and because he does lots of running. He uses supplements and whey protein from BSN and Gaspari.

Leslie now finds himself in the spotlight. On BodySpace, the online fitness community at BodyBuilding.com, lots of people ask him for advice about trimming down and want to know how he did it. He also recently found himself featured as BodyBuilding.com’s “Teen Transformation of the Week.” That’s quite a distinction, as the online community has some 400,000 members.

When I told Leslie that he was going to be the IRON MAN BodySpace Physique of the Month, it was the day before his dad, Leslie McCampbell Sr., was due home from Iraq. Both Leslies came to the photo shoot, and Dad says he’s sure proud of his son and what he has done to get healthy.

I can tell you something else: Leslie is sure proud of his dad.

You can visit Leslie McCambell Jr. at his BodySpace on BodyBuilding.com. His moniker is “ogdefense.” Just go to www.BodySpace.com/ogdefense, say hello ­and find someone to take away your popcorn.

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit www.Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

In the process, Tiffany earned the coveted title of BodyBuilding.com’s Female Transformation of the Year. And given all of the great people on BodySpace who live and love fitness, that’s no small accomplishment. At her favorite gym in Portland, Oregon, she now trains other people to build their fit and healthy selves.

Tiffany is always busy—creating her own recipes for healthful foods, planning and cooking her meals, prepping ideas, writing books and doing her own video series on BodyBuilding.com.

In between she holds down a job in the hotel business and travels a great deal. “Any excuse to get out of town and see new places,” she says. Among the new places Tiffany has seen on her fitness travels are Los Angeles for the FitExpo/IRON MAN Pro and Columbus, Ohio, for the Arnold. Next up, the Team Universe in New York and shortly thereafter a visit to the Olympia in Las Vegas.

You’ve probably seen Tiffany in the ads for BodySpace here in IRON MAN and other magazines, but she’s somewhat new to modeling. Physique of the Month is one of her first professional photo shoots, so I hope you enjoy the results. Visit Tiffany on BodyBuilding.com at http://BodySpace.com/31233. That’s right—her screen name is 31233, so be sure to ask her what that’s all about.

—Ian Sitren

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit www.Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

He owes a lot to his wife Kim, who’s also on BodySpace as “VicsAngelKim,” and on the fitness journey in life with him. The rest I can sum up as motivation, organization and consideration.

Vic has always been an achiever. As a 1989 graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, he spent his time in the Navy working in nuclear power and had the honor of serving at the launch of the USS Maryland, an Ohio-class submarine. He was also on the judo team at Annapolis, which led him further into the discipline of martial arts.

After the Navy, Vic married Kim, started a family and worked in the family business, but he’s now found a home as the chief operations officer at ECommLink, an electronic prepaid debit-processing company. Located in Las Vegas, Vic and his family have embraced a lifestyle of doing as opposed to talking about what other people are doing. The entire family spends time together hiking, traveling—even if it’s just day trips—and exploring. And both Vic and Kim are devoted to the gym, although on different schedules.

Here’s the consideration part: Vic and Kim both understand each other’s schedules and what it takes to get to the gym. Vic sometimes goes twice a day, in the morning for cardio and then after work for some lifting. Kim, as a full-time mom, gets to the gym after the kids are off to school. There is another consideration, the one that involves Vic’s job. ECommLink trusts him to get his work done even when he must adjust his schedule to get to his workouts. In return, Vic gives his utmost attention to getting things done at his job.

The organization part is something you’d almost expect from a chief operations officer. His diet is laid out on a spreadsheet, enabling him to make continuing computer entries. Organization actually got Vic into BodySpace. He was looking for a way to do tracking, journaling and goal setting, and it was all there.

Vic likes the community of like-minded people on BodySpace as well as all the information, such as the many training videos, especially those by world-famous trainer Charles Glass.

So click on over to BodySpace.com, BodyBuilding.com’s community of fitness-loving people, and visit “SuperVic2007.” Maybe you’ll find even more tips on how to get it all done.

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

Can’t disagree—running a four-hour marathon every four months sounds like it’s on its way to serious. After the Los Angeles Marathon in 2007 Ali decided to move to strength training and high-intensity cardio.

She discovered lifting in high school and found it fun and challenging. She reached the level of being able to bench-press her own bodyweight. Ali went on to college, which included studies at the University of St. Francis, Purdue University and Oxford.

When she was at Oxford, she made her way up Mount Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales, where Sir Edmund Hillary trained to climb Mount Everest.

Ali discovered BodyBuilding.com through her sister, pro volleyball player Angie Akers, and then decided that she should start a BodySpace profile for herself. She wanted a place where she could meet like-minded people, talk about mutual interests in fitness and learn about and have a support group for her new interest, figure competition.

She loves being in the gym and working out, but she’s found some differences in training for figure competition from what she had already done. Diet is the biggest issue; she used to be able to eat anything, although she always ate healthfully. Ali thinks that training for a marathon or volleyball was easier than figure competition. It’s been six years since she’s had a Dodger dog, she says. The L.A. Dodgers will never be the same.

You can visit Ali on her BodySpace at http://bodyspace.com/AliHarris.

—Ian Sitren

Editor’s note: To obtain more BodySpace bodies and info, go to www.Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

John was interested in working out, as were many of the crew, but when he found BodySpace, he discovered a place where people could share their interest in getting into better shape. John found articles about how to lift and how to build muscle—and he got answers to his questions about supplements.

“We would be offshore, and the heli would come in with the mail with as many as 100 boxes, all from BodyBuilding.com—only three days after placing an order. Other companies would take forever.”
John is looking forward to doing his first show. He’s lifting hard and loves it. He especially likes to work arms, shoulders, chest and back at least three times every week.

His diet is clean, but he knows he has to tighten it up to be onstage. Protein from Muscle Milk and VyoTech 17HD are among his favorite supplements. Beyond his aspirations of getting bigger and getting onstage, he one day hopes to open a gym.

What else makes it fun for John? He often works out with his wife, Jamie, and they are expecting their first child any moment. For more on John, check out his BodySpace, “john22perry,” on Body
Building.com.

—Ian Sitren

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

On-the-job strength and endurance are his two big reasons for lifting in the gym. Being in shape keeps Eric out of jams because the extra edge of self-confidence it gives him—and maybe just looking the part—calm some people down before they decide to try something stupid. Of course, that 100-pound dog helps keep the peace too.

Eric’s 14-to-16-hour workdays make it tough for him to stay in shape. A very high metabolism means he needs to eat a lot of good clean food, but he does get some meals that aren’t the best no matter what he does. So he works that much harder in the gym. Soon Eric will be working to help others in the gym, too, as a personal trainer.

“Helping people out, especially people who can’t help themselves at that moment in time” is why Eric says he likes being a cop. If you think about it, that’s what works in the gym as well. Sometimes we all need extra help at some moment. Good thing we have guys like Eric. You can visit him on BodyBuilding.com, where he’s found a home with people who are interested in health and fitness and where he’s made a lot of friends. Check out his BodySpace at http://bodyspace.com/1tymz/. Tell him you saw him working out in IRON MAN.

—Ian Sitren

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

A construction tech for the Southern California Gas Company, Jerry works hard at his very physical job, but he still hits the gym regularly. He says that working out makes work easier and keeps him from getting hurt. Now Jerry is taking it further: He really wants to pack on some muscle. His job and a fast metabolism make it tough, but he’s progressing by taking lots of food to work and supplementing with whey protein and creatine. He’s also been trying out different supplements he learns about from other BodySpace members and reads about on Bodybuilding.com.

Born in Alaska to an Air Force family, Jerry was raised on good old Southern cooking, which means it tasted fine but was very fatty and not all that healthful. Now married, he wants to set the right example for his two kids. His older son is right in there, lifting with Dad and having a great time doing it. Jerry is also setting an example for his friends at work, who have started asking him about his diet and working out.

So watch out for Jerry. This “Riverside Rookie” wants to one day look more like his bodybuilding hero, ’75 Mr. Olympia contender Serge Nubret. Visit this hard-working guy on BodySpace and ask him the one question I forgot to ask: How does he fit it all in—working hard, being a dad and now being the latest BodySpace Physique of the Month? Check him out at http://BodySpace.com/Riverside
Rookie.

—Ian Sitren

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com

Born in Rochester, New York, Maine joined the Navy at 18, wanting to try something new and with the long-term goal of being part of making the future safer for his kids. That goal was tested a few years later, in 2005, when he received his orders to deploy to Fallujah, Iraq. Only days before he left, Hurricane Katrina hit the base in Gulfport, Mississippi, where he was stationed.

Elijah was evacuated to New York with his young family, but he lost everything in the hurricane and floods, even his uniforms.He was then sent to be a part of the rescue and relief effort. He felt good being able to help, he says, but it was tough because he needed help too.

Elijah has since done two tours in Iraq and has also served in Kuwait, Belize and Diego Garcia. Along the way he got into lifting weights in often makeshift gyms. Then he discovered BodyBuilding.com’s BodySpace, the online community for like-minded people looking for inspiration and motivation. There he quickly found new ways of working out and new people with whom to share experience and information.

Now, “SuperMaine” tries to talk with as many people on BodySpace as possible, finding most of them inspirational. In addition, he’s proud to hear that he’s the inspiration for others, which comes back to Elijah’s long-term goals. He wants to keep helping people and having an impact on their lives. He wants to be somebody people can talk to and maybe, even more, be someone who leads by example.
So visit Elijah on BodySpace at BodyBuilding.com; while his handle is “SuperMaine,” you can also find him as “1jz300” and online directly at BodySpace.com/1jz300. Tell him you saw him in IRON MAN and that you heard he made a long journey to get here.

—Ian Sitren

Editor’s note: For more BodySpace bodies and info, visit Bodybuilding.com.

Source: www.ironmanmagazine.com