A bodybuilding-based cult?

By ChulucanasGym

VISITOR’S DISCRETION ADVISED

The story is not probably new., but who tell it did look for  picturing it as featured on this post. It’s about the young farmer male, who doesn’t find opportunities to develop in his environment and decides to migrate to the big city. But instead finding progress, he finds much obstacles and multiple temptations  those put him in the edge of social risk, mainly crime and drug addiction.

Then, a solidarian hand ddiscovers him at an eventual job that only provides him the necessary to survive, and realizes he has a potential to launch a career in bodybuilding. It opens him the doors of a gymnasium, the Young male wonders about the new world revealed to him and takes the opportunity. He begins to work out, grows up physically, changes his mind from conformism to competitiveness, feels motivated to contest, and eventually gets little-but-significant triumphs.

Itt’s evident the contrast between a life without goals and what seems to be the beginning of a career that promises achievements, and it could be the story of your own life. But the element that nobody would think is that the story were pitched to some magazines or websites specialized in bodybuilding, instead, it could have a religious use, rather. Yes, themuscular development of a bodybuilder becomes to use for enhancing a very little cult considering its followers, but what uses an ancestral symbology.

It happens in Jamaica, where the Church of Kyrios Christ, that proposes a big influence of the African culture in the three big religions of humankind, but what became invisible because of apparent race factors, has used the power of bodybuilding to make popular the cult for one of its orishas, a kind of demigods, named Olorun. The Church, which theology is based upon youruba  cults, also proposes the reinvindication of the African-descendant people into the world’s history, and it performs a ceremony every year when it renacts that orisha’s myth.

According to its parishioners, Olorun was made a slave during the colonial trafficking started in 16^th century (beautiful literary works have born from that time in the Americas). Once he lived at the barracks  of an estate located in the actual Chalacalá Town, near Sullana City, Peru, the orisha was a rebel mood, so the estate-owner used to punish by leaving naked and wearing a fetter with chains to humiliate to him, but Olorun, calling out divine forces, took the bold piece of metal with his hands and broke up by his own power.

A very ancient tactic

Independently this event was whether historically true or not, it’s enacted during this ceremony in Jamaica with the evident purpose that the parishioners not to forget about it, so reaffirming the cult values. And according to the Church, it looks for a model, usually Colombian or Jamaican, every year to perform the Olorun role, something that, as the organization’s leaders say, is accepted as a high honor by the chosen actor.

The idea of taking a real human being to remember or invoke an abstract reference or a belief is an oldest resource as  the art and culture of humankind. In Classic Greece, the Olympics’ winners used to be featured as the models for the statues of gods (and goddesses, because there were also  contests for women), and one of the philosophic principles at the ancient gymnasiums stated that the perfection of human shape was the closest way to look like a god or a goddess.

And that health-art-religion relationship has kept along the time, maybe hidden until the Renaissance (15^th century), but present up to today. Iff not, look around slowly when you go to the gym and have your own conclusions.

Good or bad?

So, only if the bodybuilder is aware he is actually training. It could be an interesting strategy  to reach constance, one of the values muchly hardworking to grow. But if the bodybuilder cannot take off the character of god or demigod, or celebrity, or famous person, or popular referent, it will be necessary professionalassistance with pairs advisory.

In this sense, the work of the trainer is crucial. It must not be reduced to care the athlete for doing the movement correctly, or complete the required reps or sets. He also has to take time to explore the psychology  of his pupil so giving him  the right support, and knowing to motivate him for continuing to overcome. Maybe, it’s not necessary to say him that he has to look like a god, but it’s important to feedback the goals  both proposed since the training began, and maybe this is one of the keywords – goals.

About the rest, the use of the religion to advocate a healthy lifestyle, only done with awareness and not falling into the fanatism, could result very positive. Many ancestral religions have very specific habits about feeding, for example, those have been incorporated as diet schemes accepted by international organisms, but stressing the basis of the variety and the balance.

And about the art-bodybuilding relationship, we think it’s an excellent combination only provided the bodybuilder assumes his artist stage as a dimension to set free in the whole sense of the expression, not like an obsession many times badly directed by some producers or career managers, who could be thinking the things more of audience or incomes matters. Like the food, everything in the right balance will be ever positive.

Shive Roy is featured as the model of this post. Photographs provided by Dwight Foster.

Do you have a similar story to share? Let us know it at chulucanasgym@gmail.com, our Twitter account, or using the comment box below.

Required certification

A proposal to face the informality on physical training.

 

We’ve already spoke up about the apparent lack of control on the manners how the pupils are treated at the gyms of Piura. From a supervision absence in the training methodology to the anabolic-steroids trafficking, passing through an adequate psychological advisory, the issue did not interest to the correspondent authorities.

 

Meanwhile, men and women use the service ignoring if the investment they do will bring them some benefit to their life or it won’t. The appearance of a franchise in the cities of Piura and Sullana  have introduced a service that all the gyms doesn’t have – nutritionists. Although the consultations are included in the cost of the membership, this is over the most can pay.

 

A way to face the problem is the certification of trainers, but a search we did to have an interview that allows us to put this query in perspective with somebody had no results. In the other hand, the Piura Bodybuilding Federation did have summoned to specialized trainings with certification, but it’s ignored if there is an evaluation that allow to know if the learned in those courses is applied and how.

 

Despite, Piura has turned a place of this sport, and every March, it’s organized the Mister and Miss Piura contests to award the people who based on their word, and some –extra—help, have reached aesthetics and plasticity, although not necessarily good health.

 

The united, the stronger

César Campos was chosen as 2011 Mister Piura after years of continuous work for having a recognizement in bodybuilding. During the national phase –Mister Peru—he reached the fourth place in the general classification. Since 2007, Campos Works in a known gymnasium at Piura Downtown, after doing it since he was 20 in his native Sullana.

 

Before he moved looking for a better professional future, he was committed to create a bodybuilding federation in Sullana. His main concern was the lack of certification for trainers at that town. Neither the authorities, neither his most colleagues supported him because they didn’t understand the importance of the process or simple commercial envy. Join the competence and becoming one only front to demand a better labor treatment too was not well seen by the Sullana’s mastership.

 

The gymnasium where he worked in Sullana was part of the franchise that was introducing new practices in the way how the pupils are treated. Once upon a good time, we tried to have an interview with the trainer in charge to explore this issue, but we got no answer.

 

Yes, but…

This was not a difficult to talk extraofficially to other trainers. The most of them recognize that the certification and professionalization of their jobs is necessary, but very few have the money to invest in the courses, or their gyms are not interested in granting them, when the benefit is for the own business.

 

And obviously, there are who have no interest in studying and certifying because they are trainers due to labor chances. This means if they get a better job, they will quit in the long term. In Bellavista, Sullana, there is a dude who eventually works as a trainer at a downtown gymnasium. Unlike his most colleagues, he has Physical Education official pedagogycal studies, but his goal is not staying to work there but to have a job at some school. The reason why he accepted the job was to pay his studies.

 

Butt, analyzing well the issue, could this be a choice to get an official certification? In other countries (like Spain) and Lima, this is a key requirement to work not only at gyms but everywhere that requires to monitor the physical activities of people, no matter their age.

 

Before it turns a public health problem, authorities, store operators, trainers, and pupils should consider the need to assume this issue for the good of community. So, the physical activity will be really constructive and it will develop adequately one of our dimensions as human beings. The indifference to the issue won’t bring positive consequences.

 

Winning fair

An infallible guide to triumph in sports – and life.

 

We’ve already introduced you Ronald Jonathan Benites Rangel, a Laws student with three diplommas in criminal issues, extrajudicial conciliator, ecology activist, and fan of bodybuilding and biking too. His sport journey began in 2010 when he decided he wanted to improve his physical condition through power training, and he didn’t stop until participating in three Mister Piura contests in 2012, 2013, and 2014.

 

“I did it because I wanted to prove myself how much I’ve could advance and comparing my level to other Piura bodybuilders, and, why not, everywhere,” he affirms. “Also, I wanted to prove it can participate any contest, then passing the anti-doping tests without fear to objections or accusations.”

 

“You don’t know the sensation someone has going up the stage and contest! It’s an emotion you only can describe in that same instant,” he comments so proud while his eyes shine by satisfaction. “I didn’t win but I dared.” The journey is not simple. The obstacles appear everytime, and the most difficult is the indifference to sports. “One thing concerning me is the bodybuilding has no sponsorship from companies and my town’s institutions,” he claims quiet but convinced.

 

The genetics and natural feeding that still can be gotten in an agricultural community like Chulucanas, Peru, made possible he grew, muscularily speaking, not needing to run to synthetized supplementation. “I eat everything I can but balanced, plus my exercises routine,” he tells.

 

Although in the beginning, his family didn’t see well his hobby, they realized soon it was getting benefits to him. “I like to go out with my friends but I don’t smoke, I don’t drink alcohol, I sleep enough, oh!, and I neither make drugs,” he explains. Also, Ronald has a good academic performance, he’s a student leader, and he has discovered an insight as a conferencist and motivator, getting to catch his public’s interest.

 

At a workshop for youth in Sullana, he got to convince his audience on the need to grow and consume healthy food. After the presentation, he was one of the most required speakers by the attendants to make a picture.

 

The RJ Strategy

Based upon his own experience, we thought what things worked to Ronald that could work to you, and we found a quite exigent pattern, but if you follow it up, you culd also be proud of your own results, and playing fair.

• Find the reason inside you – Almost all the people motivate to begin a fitness plan if someone else goes with them. It helps for sure but it creates dependance. So, the idea is that the spark to begin, continue, and get must break out inside you. If nobody wants to follow you, move on. The triumph or the defeat will be your own responsibility.
• Set yourself clear and realistic goals – Yes, it’s necessary you set up a personal plan –look, personal—that points out wwwhich your sport goals will be and what adequate procedures will be to reach them. Take advice from a reliable specialist to see which ones will allow to optimize your own energy without underworking or overworking. Ronald also can advise you, and we’ll have this contact below this article.
• Get away what they will say – The people have right to opine, but never forget you have right to improve. Empower your convictions, and learn to manage the critic, wwhat means valuating it depending on who comes it on. Obviously, don’t listen to who doesn’t know anything of this – it’s losing worthy time.
• Apply honesty to your own plan – Believe it or not, there are people who try to cheat themselves even when they work out. Don’t do that mistake because you’re gonna frustrate or you’re gonna do an unrecoverable damage. Don’t accept the abounding magic recipes. Everything in life is gotten by working hard, and that’s the way it is. It can take you years even, but if you are patient and perseverant, you’ll se you’ll get it, and nobody could question your triumphs.
• Penalyze and award yourself – wait! This doesn’t mean you begin to hurt yourself, but you set up appropriate penalties and awards to your goals. So, you will learn to valuate your own effort. Your coach or Ronald can advise on this issue.
• Register your process – Are you going in progress? And according to what document? Remember there are advance indicators for every sport (anthropometrics, speed or weight records, etc). Then, take some minutes to have your own statistics and so having your own objective tool indicating if everything goes OK or not. Even it can be funny you design your own personal sport database, for you to set up progress scenarios.
• Share your experience – You don’t know the huge existent disinformation, even at gyms, about physical training strategies, so it’s necessary the people who have known to follow a plan, and prove it works, can do a sort of pair advisory complementing the specialized sport advisory. Plus, you’ll feel the satisfaction to see that all your effort was not in vain.

 

Ronald is available for customized training sessions and sport advisory, as well as speaking and conferences through Ronald_27_89@hotmail.com, his Facebook account, and our Twitter account.

 

You can control this way if your body improves or not

By ChulucanasGym

Everyone who goes to the gym or does any type of training  is expectant about his or her progress. Have I overcome something I couldn’t overcome before, am I on the same spot when I started, or, in the worst scenario, am not I closer where I started neither?

The problem about measuring our progress is how much objectivity we put to our appreciation. In that sense, the first mistake we use to commit is trusting in the bare-eye, in what we see on the mirror, and almost never the diagnosis we get is reliable. Then, the prognosis we set uses to be wrong.

Is there any objective form to control our progress? Yes, there is. The anthropometrics is the discipline that helps us to have information adjusted to the reality on we can do our analysis and set up our strategies for improving or correcting our physical achievement. This information must be key for your and your trainer at the time to define if it’s necessary to adjust the training routine, the diet, the lifestyle in general, or everything.

Coming up next, we introduce you those key indicators you can control from your home, inclusive, and those will give you that objective vision about what is happening to your body. Look at the data you get – they can’t be taken isolated but grouped. So, the conclusions you arrive and the action plans you take will be more accurate than acting by simple supposition or guessing.

Height

This measure is basic because it serves to calculate other body measures such as absolutes, indexes, and percentages, we will talk about later. You can use a stadiometer, that is the specialized tool in measuring your height, although you can also take the job to paste a measuring tape on the wall or to paint a number scale in centimeters (or feet and inches in the U.S.) setting the ground as the point zero.

Next, take off your shoes, raise naturally, stick your body to the stadiometer or the wall column. Over 20 years old, the height is unvariable for both sexes, at least until the senescence when it can reduce because you will lose bone and muscular tissue.

Body Weight (BH)

It’s a first progress indicator, but alone is not enough because it only will say us if we have increased or have decreased respect to the last measuring. However, it offers us first clues.

The manner of taking it is as easy as put you up on the weighing machine and waiting for the reading in kilos and grams (pounds and ounces in the U.S.). What you have to be careful for sure is  how you take your weight: you ever have to take your shoes off and put on the device; don’t worry about your clothes (if sportswear) because the adding increase is irrelevant, unless you’re a professional or contesting athlete or bodybuilder, and it will be actually necessary you take off almost all your clothes or get naked for having the correct number. Of course, it will depend on how much privacy the place has and how much you trust in the one who could be with you.

The bathroom weighing machines use not to be much accurate as the clinic weighing machines that might be at every good gymnasium. Some electronic devices are only reliable as much as the manufacturer warns it so; then, read the instructions carefully before considering it as reliable and compare many readings taken with different devices to know what is the most accurate. In the same way, we suggest you have a monthly or biweekly record of your weight. Some trainers probably will demand you to have a weekly control if you’re training for a competition. Obbey them.

Absolute Body Measures (ABM)

We call them absolute body measures or ABM because they give us advance or slowing down indicators what only apply to our body as much as parts of it have got wider or have got thinner than a previous control. For that, what interests us is to have countour or perimeter measures expressed in centimeters (or inches in the U.S.), those put in a table give us a mathematical idea of your body volume. Who are dedicated to be models or bodybuilders or athletes know perfectly what we mean. However, a proffessional physical trainer will have here compplementary information to the BW  through he or she can evaluate the effectiveness of the training plan, the diet, or the lifestyle.

The best manner to take these measures  is by using a measuring tape that is put over the skin, not stretching it or releasing it too much, but letting it adjusts naturally to the shape of your body. The precission of the measure gets when the tape makes direct contact with your skin. If there are clothes between them, the excess must be depreciated or definetly avoided. Another trick, if you want more precission, is taking the measure before having meals or starting your training session. And if you still want more precission, take three measures of the same zone and then go to have the average for eliminating the excess or default error.

The measures are taken on specific areas of your body. Remember we need to know the contours, in other words you have to take the measuring tape and round each part of the body, going around it. We are not interested on lineal measures (as taken in dressing), we want to have an idea about volume. The places where those measures are gotten:

• Shoulders: Take as reference the part where it is seen more prominent and put there the start line of the tape. Then, pass it under your two clavicles until arriving to the most prominent part of your another shoulder. From here, make the tape to run over the upper part of your backuntil meeting the pointwhere the tape begins. For you to have an idea if you have taken the measure correctly, if you’re a male and you’re 170 centimeters or 5 feet 7 inches height, your shoulders perimeter should be between 118 to 120 centimeters or 46.5 to 47.1 inches. However, this measure is relative according to your age, body shape, and sport goalds.
• Chest: Whether you are a male or a female, take as a reference the part where it is more prominent (probably the nipples in both cases) and go the tape around you including your scapulas. For the women, taking this measure will be easy because it belongs to the same like the bust contour, very required in dressing or beauty contests. If you’re a 170-cm or 5’7-feet male height, your chest contour could be between 106 and 108 centimeters, or 41.2 and 42.5 inches, but we remind you the measures are relative, as we clarified you on the previous point.
• Arms and forearms: The biceps and triceps allow your to know how you are in arms, so you will have to round them at the same time with the measuring tape and take the reading. If you’re a male 170 centimeters or 5’7 feet height, it is possible your arms grow until 38 or 39 centimeters, or 15 or 15.4 inchescontour. In forearms case, take as a reference its most prominent part and put you the tape around, although this measure is almost never used.
• Waist:    In the males, it’s taken as a reference a point 3 centimeters or 1.2 inches below your belly button, and in the females, the zone where it becomes strechest, 2 centimeters or 0.8 inches above the belly button in general. Then, you take the tape around including the lower back in the case of males and the medium back in the case of women. The World Health Organization recommends the males should not be more than 95 centimeters or 37.4 inches waist contour, and the females no more than 65 centimeters or 25.6 inches, although not much because of a beauty criterion but preventing many conditions caused by the overweight and the obesity.
• Belly: In the case of women it’s the same than the taken for waist in men. Basically, it looks to know how much flat your belly is, in mathematical terms, obviously.
• Hips: In male as well as female, it’s taken as a reference the most prominent part of your gluteus, rounding both sides where the pelvic bone is more prominent, passing over your pubis. If you’re a male (and adding the squads, your genetics helps you too), it is possible you reach 102 centimeters or 40.2 inches contour if you’re 170 centimeters or 5’7 feet height.
• Thighs: It’s the section of your leg that begins in your pelvis and ends in your knee. Look for its widest part and round it with the measuring tape. Look! You have to take just one thigh per measuring, never both at the same time. If you’re a male 170 centimeters or 5’7 feet height, your thigh can be between 59 and 60 centimeters or 23.2 and 23.6 inches at least, although it’s going to depend on your kind of training. What is clear, indeed, is that for every 3 centimeters or 1.2 inches of thigh you get, your arm can not be more than 2 centimeters or 0.8 inches.
• Calf: It’s the part of your leg between your knee and your ankle. Look for its more prominent part and round it here with the measuring tape. As equal as the thigh, both calves never must measured at the same time but one at once. If you’re a male 170 centimeters or 5’7 feet height, your calf can be 37 to 38 centimeters or 14.6 to 15 inches at least. Yes, at least.

Indexes And Body Percentages

If you think it’s too many Maths for today, we have not finished yet. There are more specialized indicators those allow you to measure your progress, especially if you are in a professional or competition training environment.

• Body Mass Index (BMI): Basically, it gives us a more accurate idea if you are your ideal weight, or if you are overweight or in obesity. It is calculated by dividing your weight in kilos by your height’s square. Let’s suppose you’re a male 170 centimeters (1.7 meters or 5’7 feet) and you’re 70 kilos (154.3 pounds), your BMI will be 24.2 – it’s inside the healthy.  If it would exceed beyond 30, we could talk  about obesity.
• Body Fat Percentage (BFP): It’s a more specialized measure that, as its name says, looks for knowing if there is a healthy balance between the body fat you need for your vital functions and the fat you store to do your elective functions –we mean- as training. Here Maths are not enough but we need to use special procedures and devices for having us a reading. It is obtained by multiplying the quantity of your body fat by the quantity of your body mass and all that divided by 100. Women will ever have a BFP greater than men because some fat is reserved for reproductive functions. About percentages, it is considered that athletes go from 10% to 15% depending on the physical activity they do. A professional trainer will educate you about how to control your BFP for optimizing better your training, although will combine it with diet and improvement in your lifestyle. In fact, it is probable this catch more attention.

So, if you only trusted in your mirror, your weighing machine, or your measuring tape, you see we have to combine all this and much more in the end if we want to measure progress. And, by the way, it’s not a bad idea you feed all your data on an electronic  spreadsheet that allow you to view graphically if you improve, you keep, or you need to work harder. Yes, it’s a lot of work but you deserve it well. It also will give you more conscience about you, especially if you add some psychological advisory to see if there is any motivation problem, or something like this.

Like everytime, we will be pleased to know your questions here on the comments, or on our Twitter account, or by writing us at chulucanasgym@gmail.com

The models featured on this post are Pedro Changanaquí, Fran Checa, Alfredo Rivera, and Anderson Sandoya