Рriests of muscle

I was lucky to get backstage where they were preparing for the show. They were not the same as you see them on stage. They feel every protuberance under their skin and can flex any of them. And they do. In front of a mirror.

They rub down their biceps, triceps, shoulder blades, hips and bottoms with a sweet-smelling sticky brown lotion until they shine! Is it shoe polish? No, in fact it is very expensive makeup.

You might ask «Who are these people and why do they do this?» Why do they take methandrostenolone, retabolil, silabolin, Winstrol, Primobolan, Omnadren and other metabolic substances that are alien to the human body and train seven days a week? What, after all, do they do for living?

Serhiy Yatsiuk is a repeat champion, a world-class bodybuilding coach and a sculptor of his own body. There are very few such individuals in Ukraine, perhaps a hundred or less. He used to weigh 57 kg at a height of 1.74 meters. Today he weighs 114 kg and does not have a drop of fat.

«You train to burn fat and then shape your muscles. Then you have to sculpt every muscle individually. If you don’t have enough muscles on your shins, you work out and build them up. If your shoulders are too small, you work out and sculpt them into shape,» Yatsiuk advises. «This is not only a sport, it is life. I am not a professional, I’m an amateur, but I have to follow a diet,» he pointed out while eyeing plates of cheese cakes without flour or sugar, tuna, rice without oil and a vegetable salad.

«Ninety percent of us work as coaches,» says President of the Bodybuilding Federation of Ukraine Ihor Deliyev. «The main thing is to get a title as it gives the right to sell yourself as a personal coach at a higher price than the usual U.S $1,000 a month.

And though the main aspiration of every bodybuilder is to achieve the success of Arnold Schwarzenegger, deep down inside they understand how unattainable this goal is and simply aim for a more realistic goal, such as opening a private sports club for example. World and European Champion Oleksandr Bilous has already become one of the highest paid personal bodybuilding coaches in Ukraine. His next goal is to open a network of gyms.

But what are the goals of female bodybuilders? Do they also dream about opening a fitness center under their own name? «Yes, they do,» says Deliyev. «But believe me, I know this sphere very well and most female bodybuilders over 22 years of age are happily married. After all, men like them,» he added.

In the meantime, the signal for the beginning of the competition has sounded. Bodybuilders come out from backstage to go on the main stage and flex their muscles to arouse the passionate spiritual impulses of women in the audience and elicit the enthusiastic shouts of men. After the show they return to backstage and drink exquisite cognac. And they felt good.