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Efford Rogers is one of the many athletes who will compete at the WNBF Mr & Ms Universe Bodybuilding Championships at the Lions Centre on Saturday. Rogers, 27, is from St Vincent and the Grenadines. The 5ft 7in police officer has won many titles, including the 2007 WNBF International Lightweight Championship (Kansas). He was seventh in the WNBF World Championships at middleweight in New York last year. “I believe in a low volume high intensity technique incorporating rest pause in the off–season and drop set pre–contest,” Rogers said. “off–season I do no cardio but do so first thing in the morning on an empty stomach pre–contest. My cardio of choice is walking. Pre–contest I train five days per week.” He eats five to six meals daily both off–season and contest. In the off–season he eats whatever is available. “Pre–contest I start my diet with 250 grams of carbs comprising brown rice, oats and peas. Protein starts at 250 grams and increases as the prep proceeds and comprises of fish, chicken breast, egg whites. His advice to kids: “Whether bodybuilding or in other sport you must be disciplined and patient in order to succeed. Pay special interest to your academic education and educate yourself as much as possible with the sport you love.”

I started to cry. I haven’t cried in a long time. I don’t know why it happened, but something about his story leveled me. It made me horrified, saddened, inspired and reflective, all at the same time. Maybe you’ll feel the same way. Adam Frey, a junior and Cornell wrestler, has always been a man of incredible physical and mental strength. On March 25, only a few days after competing in the NCAA championships, Adam was in a car crash. A car came at him in the wrong lane, and going 55 mph his car fishtailed, rolled, hit a tree and sent him flying to the back of the vehicle. The first time I read the words describing this, I was sitting in my chair at my desk, unaware of what I would learn next. It was Thursday, two days after the accident. Luckily, the account of the accident was written by Frey, and it had good news to tell. “My whole body was numb except for an incredible pain in my neck. After realizing I was not paralyzed, I exited the car and called my roommate to come pick me up. My stuff was scattered as far as 50 feet out the back of the car from the roll and my car [was] totaled.” Those are the words from Adam’s blog. In fact, Frey barely had a scratch on him, just some whiplash. The doctor who checked him out at the hospital marveled that he must be one of the toughest, strongest people around to have survived a crash like that. Just to be sure though, a CAT scan was preformed, and came back negative for injuries. It’s amazing, I remember thinking. He’s so lucky. and then my heart sank, because Adam Frey’s negative CAT scan changed his life forever. You see, the scan came back negative for injuries. It came back positive for something else though: cancer. Advanced, Stage III, metastasized cancer, with tumors on his lung, liver and between his kidneys. “At the age of 22, and with never smoking, chewing, doing drugs, and being as healthy as anyone in wrestling shape, I have cancer.” (His blog again.) I stopped reading right there. I think I put my hands on my cheeks, went numb and lost focus, but I don’t really remember. Eventually, I stood up, and sat back down. Then I cried. I have never met Adam Frey. I have many close ties with Cornell athletics, but really none with wrestling. I didn’t really know much about him at that point, other than what I heard from Sports writers and read in the paper, just like many of you. Yet, here I was, crying. To this day I think about it, and I still can’t tell you why I cried. I can’t even explain why I have the emotions I feel now. Maybe it is the thought of experiencing such a life-threatening event, surviving in almost superhuman fashion, and then finding out you’re on the verge of death again. Perhaps it is the irony of needing to face death in order to save your life. Maybe it’s because Adam is someone like me — about 22 years old, college student, healthy, never smoked — and it just didn’t matter. Maybe it’s because Adam just isn’t like me though: he’s an athlete, one of national prominence, so strong that he can enter a bodybuilding competition, deadlift more than 300 pounds without a problem, has eight inches of back muscles to penetrate on his biopsy instead of the usual three and survives a high-speed car wreck with little more than a neck strain. At the time, I guess all I could do was cry when I thought about it all. I sobbed awhile, and then did the only other thing I could think of: I called my Dad, who specializes in drug resistance in cancer patients. Since then, doctors have confirmed Frey has testicular cancer that spread around his body, but is not in his testicles. It’s genetic: he was born with it, and there was no way to prevent it once that happened. It’s also very aggressive, but fortunately, very treatable if caught early. I have read his blog every single day since then. He updates it daily, despite undergoing the most aggressive chemotherapy offered. I have come to know and admire Adam through his blog, through his ups and downs. I got the opportunity to speak to Adam yesterday, one month after his accident. “I walked out of that car accident Josh, and I felt like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable. Then I walked into the hospital …” Frey said with a pause. “You’ve got to keep your chin up. You’ve got to be positive. … The support I have really helps me to stay positive. The blog helps me to stay positive. … I can help people. I can help share my faith in God. and I can raise awareness of this disease. Maybe that’s why I’m here. Maybe that’s why I got it, because it’s kind of hard to help people when your only ambition is beating the hell out of them on the wrestling mat.” This is one of the biggest reasons I admire Adam Frey. Sure, he has some bad days that get to him, like the day he found out the potential consequences of his cancer and the side-effects of its treatment, or the day a few people yelled at him and one of them called him “lazy” for being in bed at 11 a.m. For the most part though, his positive outlook on seemingly the entire situation, along with his humor and self-disclosure of personal and sometimes incredible events (read the April 6 post, for example) has been truly remarkable. It’s not just me who has grown to admire and support him. The outpour of goodwill has been seemingly endless: over 3,000 people have joined the “Adam Frey Support Group” on Facebook. His blog has received over a million hits, including 500,000 in the 14 days after his accident. Hundreds, if not thousands of comments can be found around the site, wishing him well. Talking on the phone from home, he spoke adamantly about wanting to spread awareness of testicular cancer — which is highly treatable when caught early — as well as all cancers, and hopes his blog and newfound attention can help him do that. He also spoke about being a role model, and even an inspiration for some people. More than anything though, he feels the whole situation has changed his perspective. “Sometimes it’s a struggle, sometimes it’s a blessing in disguise,” Frey said. “It’s kind of strange to think how close I was to dying. If they didn’t catch it until a month later, it would have been,

‘ve just read Aimee Gelwick’s “Surveying for the Homestead” in MOTHER NO. 34 and would like to suggest some shortcuts for use when accuracy isn’t essential. Around here, do-it-yourself surveying—most of it pretty crude—is very common. Kentucky law allows any person to measure land and enter his findings on a deed. There’s no need to hire a professional or to use standard instruments. In fact, to judge from the look of the average record, the fellow who did the work never even saw the property he was laying out . . . much less a compass. You’ll often run across “official” boundaries that cross themselves or fail to close by thousands of feet. Other states quite likely have higher standards for surveys to be placed on record. Be that as it may, you’re perfectly free anywhere to locate the corners of a tract with the help of an old-timer and measure the land for your own purposes. and, believe it or not, you can do so quite easily—with very simple equipment—and still come up with reasonably accurate results. (A 10% error in acreage is acceptable under state law, but I like to keep the limit to 5%. My surveys generally check out to about that if I pace the distance up a steep mountain through briers, and to about 1% if I use a tape measure.) OK. if you accept a 5% error in area, your distance measurements will automatically be off by 2-1/2% and your angles by 2В° 50′. One practical result is that you won’t need a transit . . . much too accurate (and expensive) a device for this kind of less-than-perfect work. You might as well forget the several hundred-dollar instrument and lay out angles with a Silva Ranger compass (No. 15T from Recreational Equipment, Inc., 1525 11th Avenue, Seattle, Washington 98122), which will cost you $19.30 and do the job just as efficiently. Accuracy to 1В° is normal, and you can get error down to 1/2В° with some care. Other advantages. The compass is nearly indestructible (no fancy carrying case is needed), fits into a pocket, and uses you for its tripod . . . a fact you’ll appreciate after you’ve hauled a transit up a couple of ridges and through a blowdown. Speaking of ridges, Aimee’s Fig. 7 showed how to measure distances accurately on an incline with the aid of a plumb bob. This can also be done by taping the distance from top to bottom of the hill, determining the angle of slope, and figuring out the horizontal distance by means of trigonometry. Then again, given the tolerances I’ve set, you can duck the whole business most of the time. If you ignore a vertical angle of 12В° 50′, for example, you’ll end up with a 2-1/2% error in distance—always on the long side—for that stretch of ground. This is acceptable for practical purposes . . . and in my neck of the woods you’ll still be doing a lot better than the guy who carried out any previously existing survey of the property. If you need to measure vertical angles, you can easily do so without a transit. An Abney level ($9.95 from Surplus Center, 1000—1015 West “V’ Street, P.O. Box 82209, Lincoln, Nebraska 68501) will give you accuracy to 20′ (10′ if you’re careful). There’s also a Silva Ranger compass (No. 15 TCL with a clinometer, but in my opinion it’s not worth the money. Distances are best measured with a fiberglass tape. An alternative is a 100-foot steel tape (available from Sears for $11.39). Cloth measures, clotheslines, etc., are OK, but beware of stretchy fabrics and cords. It’s often accurate enough just to pace off a distance (and this has the added advantage of being a one-man show). My own pace is, conveniently, six to the pole . . . the word we hillbillies use instead of “rod” to mean 16-1/2 feet. We also replace chaining pins with pieces of flagging tape or rags tied to handy trees or fenceposts. One nice thing about these markers is that they’re still there when we come back the following weak. Be sure to keep the compass at least 5 feet from the steel tape when you’re out in the field, and check other metal items (belt buckles, eyeglass frames, etc.) for their effect on the instrument. The influence of barbed wire or the like can be eliminated if both compass man and target man move two steps away from a fenceline. I like to survey in short shots (that is, I take a new compass reading every 100 feet or less). This is a personal preference I developed when I mapped a large cave during my first year of “homesteading” . . . back before the word was recoined. In any case, it’s a good idea to work in loops to increase your confidence or catch gross errors, and to plot your data with a protractor and rule. Acreage of irregular tracts is most conveniently determined by counting squares on graph paper. To sum up: A Silva Ranger compass, Abney level, and hardware store tape measure will give me results that are accurate to 1% . . . good enough for any of my purposes. The compass alone—plus my two feet—are the only surveying instruments I really need, though, since I can live with a 5% error. If you don’t demand absolute precision and would rather avoid the expense of buying or renting a lot of fancy equipment you may find my methods a useful alternative.

4/28/2008 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) — Although self-described as “somewhat shy at times,” Master Sgt. Tina Robinson is anything but shy when it comes to powerlifting. The mother and grandmother with bulging biceps smiles her way through the halls of the C-130 Hercules operations building. Here, as a first sergeant, she has a reputation for mentoring, leading and taking care of “her” people. But, as nice as Sergeant Robinson is, her people also know she’s one tough cookie, who now boasts the title of the “Strongest (female) in the AOR.” Sergeant Robinson, a reservist deployed from Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., bench-pressed 250 pounds and squatted 300 pounds in a base-level strength competition recently. Her scores, which she grudgingly admits were not a personal best, were forwarded to the U.S. Air Forces Central level, where she took top honors against four other competing females. “of course, I’m really proud,” she said, although, she added, her numbers were higher a year ago. Last year she was able to squat 315 pounds and bench 325 pounds, but stopped lifting to focus her workouts on passing the Air Force fitness test. She had barely a week to prepare for the Strongest in the AOR competition. and this isn’t the first time Sergeant Robinson has competed and done very well on short notice. Although “powerlifting is different than bodybuilding,” she was talked into entering a bodybuilding show and walked away with a 2nd-place trophy even though “I hadn’t planned to do it until the day prior,” Sergeant Robinson said with a laugh. “I hadn’t been dieting or training.” Not bad for someone who considers the competitions “just a hobby” and “something she does for fun.” Although she said she now tries to work out at least four to five times a week, she doesn’t make specific weightlifting goals, and she eats “anything and everything.” In fact, she says she “didn’t do any sports before lifting in the year 2000, when my friends from the gym urged me to join an Amateur Athletic Union competition sponsored by Air Education and Training Command. They would say that I was genetically cut out for powerlifting and asked, ‘Why let a good thing go to waste?’” She has now competed in three AAU/AETC powerlifting competitions. But the spunky athlete is not “all brawn and no brains.” She earned her master’s degree in business administration management from William Carey College and two Community College of the Air Force degrees during her time in the Air Force. “That’s one thing I really love about the Air Force,” the Brooklyn, N.Y., native said. “Even though ‘the Air Force work place is 24 hours a day, seven days a week,‘ they [emphasize education],” which is part of becoming a better Airman. Although she is looking forward to the end of her deployment and going home to her family, she said she loves being deployed as a first sergeant because she gets to see a whole different world in the flying unit. “As a personnel instructor and mission support flight (first sergeant), I don’t usually get to see the ‘ops’ side of the house where Airmen are flying real-world missions,” she said. “It’s a whole different experience, and I love it.“

LOOKING at his pictures, it’s hard to believe that teenage bodybuilding champion Dean McLaughlin was ever bullied. But the 18-year-old, who won his first competition at the weekend, said it was being picked on that inspired him to go to the gym. He never imagined that four years later he would be named under 18s champion at the English Lakes Classic. Yet that is exactly what happened when Dean, of Abbey Street, Carlisle, took part in the prestigious Ulverston competition on Sunday. “It was all to do with bullying that I started, I just wanted to toughen myself up a bit and build my confidence. “I started lifting weights and it really grew on me. At first I didn’t take it seriously but as it went on I started to see a real difference. Now I’m addicted to it. I love it,” he said. Dean, who is studying sport at Carlisle College, trains at the city’s Bodytek gym. He started going with dad Paul, who used to be bodybuilder. Together with gym owner Mike Smith he has helped Dean build up his fitness and his physique. “Before Christmas I started dieting just to lose a bit of body fat and tone up,” he said. “It’s quite a basic diet. Lot’s of tuna, chicken and potatoes. You keep it simple.” On top of that he has been training up to seven days a week to get himself in shape for the competition. The hardest part was having to deplete his body of carbohydrates and fluids prior to the event, which some days left him so exhausted he could barely get out of bed. He travelled to the event with his dad, mum andrea, girlfriend Zoe and more than 80 members of Bodytek gym. When he arrived, he discovered several competitors in the under 18s category had pulled out – so he had to get up on stage with the under 21s. “It was my first competition but I wasn’t really that nervous. “It was really hard work holding the poses on stage but I felt on top of the world afterwards,” said Dean. The teenager, who has just turned 18, now plans to take a few weeks off to celebrate with his friends eating junk food. He then wants to get back into it and aims to compete again in the under 21s category in two years time. Dean, who wants a career as a fitness instructor, said bodybuilding had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. “I’m really not a confident person but this has changed my life. It takes up a lot of time but it’s something that I really enjoy. It has taught me so much about devotion, motivation and willpower,” he said. Dean thanked everyone who helped him prepare for the event and all the people who supported him on the day. Two other Bodytek members performed well at the Cumbrian event. Carl McVittie, 31, of Morton, Carlisle, narrowly missed out on being crowned Mr Cumbria, coming second overall, while Claire Burrell was named Miss Cumbria. Another group of gym regulars were running the London Marathon, raising around ?3,000 for charity.