It’s 1 p.m. at Tropical Smoothie Café downtown and I’m sitting across the table from Sophomore Mike Harris and Senior Dan Oliveira. I’m sipping a cool Rockin’ Raspberry smoothie, laughing as the two hunky men across from me banter back and forth. Mike is working his way through a Peanut Paradise smoothie with a protein blast (“I knew you’d get that one! You have a thing with peanuts,” Dan said) while Dan downs a Kiwi Quencher. Both are giggling in a way I didn’t know men could as we get ready to do the interview. In front of them are two protein bars they brought from home.
Mike and Dan have been bodybuilding since the beginning of January, and are trying to do multiple body-building shows at the end of the summer. Dan will focus more on the ones in his home state of Mass. while Miami-native Mike tackles the Florida competitions.
“I’m working on getting bigger,” Dan says. “Just flat out.”
They are completely self-motivated.
“It’s part of wanting to being the best men we can be,” Mike says. “We also want to see how far we can take our bodies as a way to challenge ourselves.”
Mike and Dan do a unique “high intensity” workout.
“It’s the greatest training around. Everyone needs to do it, guys and girls,” Dan said. “girls, females can do this training too.”
The workout involves pushing whichever muscle you’re targeting as far as it can go with only one set of the exercise “to the highest possible intensity,” says Mike.
“When you do it, you go beyond as far as you can go,” Mike says. “To failure and beyond. Once you can’t do it anymore you have your spotter help you out, and you’re basically stressing out that muscle until you can’t do it anymore.”
This workout targets each muscle’s positive, negative and static strengths. For example, if you were doing a bicep curl with a weight, the positive strength is tested when pulling the weight toward you, static when the muscle is immobile mid-movement and negative as you release your arm to its full extension with the weight. This causes the muscle fibers to tear further, healing larger than a positive-strength workout would provide alone.
Dan happened upon the concept while reading Gordon LaVelle’s “Training for Mass.”
“I began reading it, and it said only do one set. I thought the book was a joke, so I threw it in the corner and didn’t read it again,” Dan says. “And then the last day of the summer I saw this video on bodybuilding.com…and I went home and read the book I had thrown in the corner and my mind was blown.
When he introduced the idea, Mike was initially skeptical, electing to finish his four-week method of training first.
“I felt like such an idiot for waiting,” he said. “It’s that big of a difference.”
The two work out five days a week, yet each workout only lasts about 40 minutes.
“Any more than that and you’re just wasting time,” Mike said. “Your body can’t really go beyond that point. People who try to…just become fatigued.”
The competition involves extremes. About 12 weeks prior to the show, they will begin a special diet of grilled chicken, grilled fish and a little bit of water. 24 hours before the show they stop drinking water so their muscles look more toned and the veins are more prominent.
For now, their diet is quite different.
“I’ll have 2 or 3 triple cheeseburgers with two pieces of pizza [for dinner] generally,” Dan says. “As long it has beef on it I’m okay with it.”
He’s not joking. In the “bulking stage,” this is exactly what they’re supposed to do.
“To put on muscle, you need to have an excessive amount of calories,” Mike says. “With an excessive amount of calories, you’re going to put on fat. So basically, if you’re going to build muscle you’re going to put on some fat.”
Next, the cutting stage, fat is cut out of the diet, maintaining the muscle that they have gained. Even now, though, they stay far away from sugary treats.
“The best analogy I ever heard was, ‘Think of your body as a gas tank,’” Mike says. “Think of food as fuel. When you’re putting it in the gas tank, you’re filling up after it’s already full [by eating sweets].”
To look their absolute best for competition, the boys will have to tan themselves and shave their bodies of hair.
“He is,” Mike said shaking his head. “I’m not [shaving].”
They’ll also be wearing nothing but a speedo. Is this something you already own? I ask.
“No,” they chorus. “Thank you for asking. We do not.”
Though most of their day is intertwined with training, underneath the rippling muscles the guys have a softer side.
“We do more than just lift weights,” Mike says.
Mike drives a Kona-blue 2012 Ford Mustang 5.0, the very same car we took to the smoothie shop. The very same car I nearly peed my pants in as he weaved in and out of traffic at 80 miles per hour. On week days, Mike takes it to the race track to practice drifting and drag racing, allowing only one friend to ride shotgun.
Dan is musically inclined.
“I play acoustic guitar,” Dan says. He’s been playing since he was a freshman in high school, but only knows one song. “But it works every time.”
Being such muscular men, there’s a lot to compliment. I asked each what the highest compliment they could receive was.
“Nice hair,” Dan says without hesitation. He has a special hair-care routine he does involving TRESemmé products, and rarely blow-dries his hair because “it’s bad for it.”
Mike’s came from his past.
“I used to weigh 270 [pounds],” Mike says. “I now weigh 200, but I went down to 180 before I went back up to 200. I’d say the biggest compliment for me is having people who know me say how I’ve changed.”
Both plan on continuing training even after the shows are over.
“No matter what,” Mike says, “I’m still going to work out the rest of my life.”