The body pneumatic

A decent amateur bodybuilder today could blow Arnold Schwarzenegger out of the water. All it takes is time, dedication, and a whole lot of chicken.

by Stephen Heuser

It is Sunday night at the Berklee School of Music auditorium, and Shane O'Hearn is standing on-stage in a pair of satin trunks about half the size of a Speedo, nudging another man out of the way with his flexed orange biceps. The other man scoots under O'Hearn's arm and partly blocks him from view, but O'Hearn -- a first-time competitor -- gamely keeps hitting the poses he's practiced: the front double-biceps, the front lat spread, the Crab Most Muscular. O'Hearn shows off his deltoids and his triceps as the four other men on stage jostle to put their biggest guns in the spotlight: quadriceps, lats, trapezius. The stage is a bumping nest of orange bulk that would have seemed alien to me a week ago. Now, six hours into the New England Body Building Championships, I'm pretty blasé about it. More blasé, anyway, than the thousand people around me, who hoot and whistle and shout in the excitement of it all.

For O'Hearn and the other light-heavyweight finalists on-stage, the day began with a weigh-in, then hours of cattle-call judging before a sparse crowd. At 8 p.m. the lights went down, the auditorium suddenly filled, and the show began: a 90-minute finale where the top contestants executed their choreographed posing routines, culminating in a series of group posedowns like this one.

Whoever wins O'Hearn's posedown will be the light-heavyweight champion, and will enter another posedown to determine the overall winner of the show. The overall winner earns an invite to a huge national bodybuilding competition. There, the best body in each weight class will be awarded a pro card, and then, maybe -- just maybe -- he will begin to earn a living doing this.

On to part 2

Stephen Heuser can be reached at sheuser[a]phx.com.