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That is, until bodybuilding was admitted into the sporting fold in 1976, and proved to be a goldmine on which at least two golds could always be depended ….

EVER since the inauguration of the South-east Asian Peninsular Games in 1959 and, later, the South-east Asia Games, Singapore could count only on swimming - and a bit on yachting, bowling and athletics - to contribute to our gold-medal tally.

That is, until bodybuilding was admitted into the sporting fold in 1976, and proved to be a goldmine on which at least two golds could always be depended upon at every meet.

In 1983, when Singapore again hosted the biennial event, bodybuilding scored a 100 per cent success by grabbing all six gold medals at stake - a record unprecedented in our history books.

But, despite its strong potential in regional, Asian and Commonwealth meets, the sport was almost devoid of commercial support - unlike football, athletics, bowling, squash and badminton.

This was partly due to the lack of popularity, spectator participation and media hype, coupled with the belief that the sport has an association with drugs and doping.

The Singapore Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation’s biggest boo-boo was the Jojo Sinclair affair of 1995, when Sinclair, the first Asian woman to win a world title, was nominated - inadvertently - for the Sportswoman of the Year award, and then later found guilty of doping and banned for life.

This was followed by corruption charges instituted against SBBF president Paul Chua by Singapore’s 1993 world middleweight champion, Azman Abdullah - Sinclair’s Mixed Pairs partner.

Chua was hauled up by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau for investigation and the allegations were found to be false.

Despite this, Chua showed his magnanimity 10 years later by welcoming Azman back into the bodybuilding fold.

One would think that all the ripples that the sport - and Chua - had created would surely be enough to diffuse one dark lining.

But, no. The Singapore Sports Council and the Singapore National Olympic Council thought differently.

The SNOC banned the SBBF for one year, and the SSC froze funding for the SBBF for six years.

Chua admits today that he then had to fork out money from his own pocket for six years to fund athletes’ participation in regional meets.

These were the years of ‘hellish nightmare’ for the now-65-year-old.

‘My life was simply torn apart by the scandal and controversy in the newspapers, on TV, everywhere,’ he said.

From that point onwards, drug testing became mandatory for every major competition - even the nationals.

and the SBBF even organised their own workshops, with qualified speakers and experts on the subject of doping, drug testing and steroids.

‘The SBBF seems to be the only sports body with access to world-class personnel on such matters,’ Chua said.

‘and we have conducted such programmes for our athletes and officials by tapping on these experts.

‘We even wanted to do it for the SSC but they don’t seem to be too keen.’

In fact, at a press conference conducted under SSC auspices three years ago, following a spate of positive drug-test results of juniors, it was revealed that the ‘downturn’ could be attributed to the extreme vigilance of the SBBF, and nothing else.

NPC Northern Colorado Bodybuilding Championship shows strength The AXis LABS 2008 NPC Northern Colorado Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure Championship is an event where people with biceps smaller than their own head may feel like outsiders. Walking into the Boulder Theater on the evening of April 5, it was an oddity to have pale skin, to have calf muscles that didn’t cleave down the center and to be a stranger to the local gym. As brochures and samples of protein powder were offered from various sponsors, it was bewildering to discover the powders and elixirs necessary for a body to achieve maximum muscle mass. It was depressing to think that Vitamin Water failed to fulfill the daily requirement of medium chain triglycerides. The audience mainly consisted of the competitors’ family and friends, who vigorously cheered for their star. Screams of encouragement echoed for every flex, every popping vein and every grimace of strain. Sponsors said they are glad to support the athletes in this field and recognize the effort it takes to sculpt the perfect body. “I am proud of all of our athletes, as it takes an extraordinary amount of discipline and dedication to get on stage,” said National Physique Committee Chairman Jeff Taylor. The first events focused on women’s fitness, which showcased workout routines that looked like cheerleading routines in martial arts form. The athletes paired pushups, flips and flexing with gleeful pop tunes. The women’s figure competition took the stage next. Bronzed women in carefully designed bikinis stood in line, one after the other, each posing and flexing to show their best muscle definition. The women were classified by age and then by height so they could compete in each specific body class. Wardrobe seemed to be just as important as the muscle definition for the women. According to the contest rules on the championship’s Web site, contestants must wear high heels in the swimsuit rounds and tennis or athletic shoes in the fitness round. Jewelry may also be worn in the swimsuit rounds, but thong swimsuits are not allowed. After an intense competition, The Figures Masters Award went to Kelli Dominguez, and the Figure Overall Award was earned by Lee Ann Ellison. For Charlotte Talent, trophies came in two forms. After placing in the E Class competition, her boyfriend and fellow bodybuilder Tyler Collins proposed to her on stage. She accepted to a cheering crowd. After an intermission, the Men’s Teen and Masters competitions hit the stage. Unlike the women, the men were classed by age and weight. To add to the excitement of each performance, the men chose a song to pose to. Most picked heavy metal and pumping rap that complemented their ferocious moves. A competitor favorite was “Ladies and Gentlemen” by Saliva, which was used at least three times. One standout was Kurt Pichon, who at 72 years old flexed with a smile to “Rock Around the Clock.” Brad Helm took home the Men’s Masters Overall trophy. As a treat for the audience, pro bodybuilder Darrem Charles posed for the audience by strolling up the aisles to give everyone a close view of his massive muscles. The Men’s Novice Overall trophy was given to Jonathan Proctor, who also won the Men’s Open Light Heavyweight class and Novice Men’s Middleweight class. Since this was his first competition, the crowd and his family were excited to see him receive so many awards. “I’m overwhelmed,” said Proctor’s mother Martha Proctor. “I’m just so proud. This is his first competition, too.” The Men’s Open Overall award was taken by Brad Helm, which ended a competition that is all about the power of the human body and spirit. Contact Staff Reporter Carolyn Michaels at Carolyn.michaels@colorado.edu.

Einstein once said, “Every child is born a genius.” But the reason most people do not function at genius levels is because they are not aware of how creative and smart they really are. I call it the “Schwarzenegger effect.”

Einstein once said, “Every child is born a genius.” But the reason most people do not function at genius levels is because they are not aware of how creative and smart they really are. I call it the “Schwarzenegger effect.” No one would look at a person such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and think how lucky he is to have been born with such tremendous muscles. Everyone knows that he, and people like him, have worked many thousands of hours to build up their bodies so they can compete and win in bodybuilding competitions. Your creative capabilities are just the same. They actually grow as they are used. But you don’t need to spend thousands of hours to increase your creative-thinking abilities. By practicing a few simple exercises and applications, you can start your creative juices flowing, and you may even amaze yourself at the quality and quantity of good ideas you come up with. Let’s start off with the definition of creativity. In my estimation, after years of research on this subject, the very best definition of creativity is, simply, “improvement.” You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or an artist to be creative. All you have to do is develop the ability to improve your situation, wherever you are and whatever you are doing. All great fortunes were started with ideas for improving something in some way. In fact, an improvement needs to be only 10 percent new or different to launch you on the way to fame and riches. It has been estimated that each year, driving to and from work, the average person has about four ideas for improvement, any one of which could make him or her a millionaire. The problem is not that you don’t have the ideas you need to accomplish anything you want, but that you fail to act on those ideas. Most people dismiss their own ideas because they think those ideas cannot be very valuable if they were the ones who thought of them. Thomas Edison, arguably the most successful creative genius in human history, once said that creativity is 99 percent perspiration and only 1 percent inspiration. Extensive research on creativity tends to bear him out. There are four generally accepted parts of the creative process: There is preparation, where much of the work is done. There is cerebration or rumination, where you turn the matter over to your subconscious mind. There is realization, where the idea or ideas come to you. and finally, there is application, where you work out the creative idea and turn it into something worthwhile. of the four, preparation seems to be the most important, and it involves gathering the right data and asking the right questions. Your success in life will be determined largely by the quantity of ideas that you generate. It seems that the quality of ideas is secondary to the quantity and that, if you have enough ideas, one or more of them will turn out to be prizewinners. You can begin building your creative muscles with focused questions. Here are a few examples: * What are we trying to do? * How are we trying to do it? * What are our assumptions? * What if our assumptions are wrong? All improvements begin with questioning the current, existing circumstances. If you are not making progress for any reason, stop and think, and begin asking yourself the hard questions that will stimulate your mind to consider other possibilities. When they were doing the research to land a man on the moon, scientists were stumped for months and even years. They could not figure out how to send a rocket to the moon with enough fuel to land on the moon, blast off, break the moon’s gravity and come back to Earth. The problem was that if the rocket had that much fuel to start with, it would be too heavy to take off from the Earth in the first place. Finally, they began to question the assumption that the lunar rocket ship had to land on the moon. When they questioned that assumption, the scientists concluded that a main rocket could orbit the moon while a smaller module dropped to the surface of the moon and then rejoined the orbiting rocket for the trip back to Earth. The mental logjam was broken, and the rest is history. Asking focused questions—hard questions that penetrate to the core of the matter—is the real art of the creative person. The next step is to have the courage to deal with all the possible answers. Once you have come up with a possible solution, ask yourself, “What else could be the solution?” If your current method of operation were completely wrong, what would be your backup plan? What else would you or could you do? What if your current procedure or plan turned out to be a complete failure? Then what would you do? and what would you do after that? All of those questions will force you to think further and come up with better answers. The second way to build your mental muscles is with intensely desired goals. The more you want something and the clearer you are about it, the more likely it is that you will generate ideas that will help you to move toward it. That is why the need for clearly written goals and plans for their accomplishment is repeated over and over. Any intense emotion, such as desire, stimulates creativity and ideas to fulfill that desire. and the more you write down your goals and plans, and review them, the more likely it is that you will see all kinds of possibilities for achieving those goals. The third generator of creative-thinking muscles is pressing problems. A good question to ask ism “What are the three biggest problems that I am facing in my life today?” Write the answer to this question quickly, in less than 30 seconds. When you write the answer to a question in less than 30 seconds, your subconscious mind will sort out all extraneous answers and give you the three most important ones. When you have your three most pressing problems, ask yourself, “What is the worst possible thing that can happen as a result of each of these problems?” Then ask yourself, “What are all the things that I can do, right now, to alleviate each problem?” If you have a problem that is worrying you for any reason, think about what you could do immediately to begin alleviating that concern. This is a prime use of your creative powers. So a key to success in creative thinking is clarity. Take the time to think through, discuss and ask questions that help you to clarify exactly what you are trying to accomplish and exactly what problems you are facing at the present moment. Just as fuzzy thinking leads to fuzzy answers, clear thinking leads to clear answers. A second key is concentration. Put everything else aside and concentrate single-mindedly on focusing all your mental powers on solving one single problem, overcoming one particular obstacle or achieving one important goal. The ability to concentrate on a single subject without diversion or distraction is a hallmark of the superior thinker. A third key is an open mind. The average person tends to be rigid and fixed in his thinking about getting from where he is to where he wants to go. The creative thinker, however, tends to remain flexible and open to a variety of ways of approaching the problem. The average person has a tendency to leap to conclusions and determine that there is only one way to achieve a particular goal. The superior thinker, on the other hand, tends to be more patient and willing to consider a variety of options before moving toward a conclusion. There is one other creative concept that can be very helpful when it is used in combination with what we have already discussed, and it is called the “limiting step.” Between you and any goal you want to achieve or any problem you want to solve, almost invariably, is a limiting step or a “choke point” that determines the speed with which you move from where you are to your destination. This limiting step may be another person, a particular obstacle, a specific difficulty or even a lack of some information or skill. Invariably, there is a particular factor that determines how fast you get there. Your job is to think about it and decide what it is, and then go to work to remove it. For example, if you are in sales, your limiting step may be the number of prospects you have. If this is the case, then your job is to use all your creative capacities to increase the number of prospects until that is no longer a problem. Then, of course, there will be another limiting step, and your job is to go to work on that. If you have a business, your limiting step may be the number of qualified people who are responding to your advertising. If this is the choke point that hinders the amount you sell and the speed at which your company grows, it behooves you to concentrate your mental powers on relieving that bottleneck. You must concentrate your very best thinking abilities and the thinking abilities of others on increasing the number of qualified prospects that your advertising and promotional efforts attract. In relationships and misunderstandings between people, there is almost invariably a sticking point or subject area that needs to be resolved in order to bring about harmony again. Your first job is to identify this limiting step and then find a way to alleviate the difficulty to the satisfaction of everyone involved. You are a genius, and you were born with the potential for exceptional creativity. But creative abilities are latent. They are like muscles that grow with use. You can increase your creative powers by using them, over and over, in every situation, deliberately and specifically, until creativity and a creative response to life is as natural to you as breathing in and out is. There are very few things you can do that can have a more powerful positive impact on your entire life than becoming excellent in creative thinking. and you can if you think you can.

Entering bodybuilding at age 63: It was lying in my mind that I always wanted to try bodybuilding. Obviously when you’re 63, there isn’t much time left, and if you’re going to do it, you better do it now. Mind-set from his Marine Corps days: One of the things that was hammered into you was you’re not allowed to quit. You are trained to think that way: ‘Don’t give up, do not quit,’ and that attitude rings in your mind always when you’re approaching something that’s difficult. You force yourself through. From babying to bustin’ a move: You’d think there’s no way a 65-year-old person’s body could tolerate [bodybuilding], but one of the things I’ve really learned is the capability of the human body. About eight years ago, I had arthroscopic surgery on my left knee. The doctor said, ‘You’ve got two years before you need to replace it,’ so I babied it and it hurt. Then I started lifting with the leg and the leg got stronger and stronger and that knee never bothered me anymore. The body adapts so well developing muscle — it’s an added feature we don’t realize until we go there. Workhorse payoffs: The problem in society is we don’t work our muscles. The only way to do that effectively is through weight training, and this really is a fountain-of-youth type thing where it maintains your body. I do not have the numerous problems other people in my age group do because I go through the training. What drives him: Pride is one thing. Pride in yourself. Uniqueness in yourself. The thing about this is you’re creating and sculpting this physical being. We do not have to accept the aging process the way we do, we can do something about it. My objective is to demonstrate to others, through bodybuilding, that we can build and maintain muscle mass and bone density as we age. Yes, it does take determination and effort on one’s part. Looking ahead: I want to go to the nationals and win my age group in the NPC (National Physique Committee) contest. The competition is very stiff. Normally what I do [locally] is compete in the 50-year-old category because there’s nobody in the 60-year-old category. But there were about 20 guys there last year in their 60s at nationals.

Bikinis, Speedos and flexing muscles filled the stage in a packed Hughes-Trigg Theater on Wednesday as contestants vied for the coveted titles of Mr. and Ms. SMU. Fans, family members, sorority sisters and fraternity brothers all cheered on their favorite candidates through all three stages of the bodybuilding competition. For both the men and the women, the contest began with a mandatory posing stage, followed by individual posing routines and concluding with competitive posing. The contestants showcased their months and years of hard work on stage while judges tallied points for categories ranging from posing to appearance. When all the votes were tallied, the judges claimed that this was the closest competition for both the guys and the ladies in the seven-year history of the contest. At the conclusion of the contest for each sex, the awards were given out and a winner crowned. Kim Alverez took home the award for best poser as well as the coveted title of Ms. SMU. She was closely followed by Tina Deljavan who took second place as well as Carrie Pinkley in a close third. For the men, Jonathan Jones took home the title of best poser as well was awarded as Mr. SMU. Jones, a bodybuilder by hobby, is a world-renowned clarinet player by trade, and even used some of his own clarinet music in his individual competition song. Mere points separated the next three contestants from the winning title. Taking the silver second-place trophy was Kevin Lavelle, with a narrow margin over third-place Jordan Bolch and fourth-place winner Daniel Montenegro. After the competition, some of the contestants were seen devouring McDonald’s Big Macs and Krispy Kreme doughnuts to celebrate their accomplishment as well as the end of their extreme diets.