It's been three weeks since I last sat down and aimlessly typed down some feelings and thoughts that overcame me in the wake of a tremendous day for both physical and personal accomplishment. That last little vignette was met with great applause and appreciation that I never expected nor sought. I put my feelings down on paper and for some reason I've not yet figured out, I put it in an email and exposed my real sentiment and emotion; something rarely done in our ego-driven and necessarily selfish industry. As I laid in the Emergency Room only hours after writing that first piece, I began to get some emails and texts saying. "I loved your article." It didn't totally register until I got home that evening and saw the response on the forums. There was no hate, no attacks, no negativity; every bodybuilder that decided to comment had related to what I wrote
Last year I did a feature on the 19st Gym in NYC, once owned by the legendary Brian Moss and known as ‘Better Bodies'. I looked at how things had changed for the gym over the years and what lay ahead for the gym in the years ahead. However, thi
ngs took a sharp turn back in November last year when the gym, without warning, closed its doors....was this the end of an era for the bodybuilding landmark?
As the weeks passed and the doors remained closed the future was looking bleak, that is until one Alex Reznik appeared on the horizon and embraced the ownership papers as if they were a long lost childhood friend. Alex knew the history of the gym and immediately saw its potential. A new era for the gym was about to begin and within weeks the gym re-opened under the name ‘Complete Body & Spa'.
Marius Dohne is a symmetrically-gifted IFBB Pro Bodybuilder from South Africa. He'll be making his pro debut at the IFBB New York Pro on May 8, 2010. Rx Muscle caught up with Marius after his guest posing down in North Carolina. The following interview will give you better insight into what makes this rookie pro so passionate and determined to make a mark on the IFBB.
According to the time on my wrist watch, I had four minutes. Four minutes
to find a parking spot, make my way to the automated ticket kiosk, cajole the thing into spitting out a ticket, then climb up the long stairway to the platform to catch the 4:39 train to Penn Station - not the 4:40 mind you; the 4:39. And they mean it. Each step of this required sequence presented its own unique challenge that could make it the determining factor in whether or not I'd spend the next 40 minutes waiting on an empty platform for the next train. Missing the train would really mess up my program because it meant it pushed back my meeting with Victor Conte. On a day like today where his latest courtroom exploits in boxer Shane Mosley's $12 Mil defamation suit against him hit cyberspace, throngs of reporters from all over the world were "blowing up" his cell phone. A delay in getting there would give him the chance to involve himself in yet another interview, which in turn would further prolong my time away from home, which exponentially raises the fee for Max's babysitter.
When I recently told an acquaintance that I had started to use the sun beds at a local tanning center my ‘confession' was received with the kind of look normally reserved for confessions of some bizarre fetish!
Granted, the recipient was one of the ‘new age environmentalist' brigade who had shunned her cell phone fearing brain tumors, thrown out her micro wave oven and had long since lost the ability to trigger the ‘on' switch on her TV set...but come on....this was hardly a shocking statement!
