Bodybuilding is a serious sport for Scotland's competitors

Vicky McCann

To a soundtrack of blaring dance music, they lift barbells weighing up to 190kg, squatting slow and low before rising with a crimson grimace and placing them back on the rack. "If you don't concentrate, that weight'll bury you," Kaye observes. "What you feel is a mix of adrenaline and fear."

McCann, 41, owns this gym, The Body Factory, and has been one of the top female professional bodybuilders in the world for several years. Kaye is 27 and lectures in English at Dundee College. Beneath his shirt and tie is a physique of astonishing, almost cartoonish muscularity.

There is a touch of Clark Kent about this young Dundonian. Many of his colleagues and students would be surprised to learn he is Mr Universe.

It is arguable, therefore, that McCann and Kaye are among Scotland's top athletes. They should be well known and admired except that bodybuilding is regarded with suspicion and derision by many people.

Also, they operate within a little known and misunderstood branch of the sport; they are "natural", meaning they compete without the aid of anabolic steroids, growth hormones, testosterone and insulin injections, muscle implants or any of the other underhand and risky ways of increasing bulk with which bodybuilding is associated in the public mind.

McCann runs the British Natural Bodybuilding Federation, an organisation that is staging the UK championship next Sunday at the SECC in Glasgow. Kaye will be one of the judges. The BNBF was set up ten years ago in order to allow bodybuilders who chose not to take steroids to compete against one another. According to McCann, it is simply impossible to go up against a chemically assisted bodybuilder and hope to win; "naturals" cannot achieve a comparably extreme muscle mass.

"For me, it comes down to a matter of principle," says Kaye. "I don't have a problem with people who use drugs. I've got many friends who do that. But I like the notion of being natural, whereby your sense of accomplishment is true. It's real. You know what you've done is through your own hard work. I wouldn't like to win a competition and wonder how much of an advantage the drugs had made. As soon as you cross the line and use substances, it starts to come down to who has got the best drugs and how much money you have to spend on them."

There are an estimated 300 people involved in competitive bodybuilding in Scotland. The BNBF final will feature around 90 competitors, from all parts of the UK, ranging in age between 17 and 74. Bodybuilding deserves more attention than it gets, and arguably much more respect, because it is a difficult and distinctly odd activity.

Success requires a mix of intensive training and prolonged dieting. The latter is needed to acquire "condition" – a lack of body fat that causes the muscles and veins to stand out. As contests draw near, competitors reduce their calorie intake, trying to achieve a point of balance at which they are as lean as possible but their muscles do not start to waste away. Bodybuilders are hungry all the time and sometimes dehydrated. Often, as they stand there looking strong, they feel quite weak.

"The diet is more tortuous than anything any other athlete has to deal with," says McCann, who began lifting weights in her mid-teens. "It screws your head up a little bit. You eat six small meals a day, but there is never that feeling of being full and satisfied. Three weeks out from a contest, your whole life becomes that. You are tired. You can't go out for a meal with friends. Everything you eat is calculated, weighed, measured."

First thing in the morning, she has oatmeal and a protein drink. For the rest of the day, she eats portions of chicken, potato and broccoli or spinach. Sometimes, as an exciting variation, she has rice. This is the typical diet of a serious competitive body- builder. It is dull, repetitive and requires a considerable investment in Tupperware. All the pleasure of food is sacrificed to the cause. But there is some satisfaction, says McCann, in feeling in control. She believes this is comparable with the psychology of anorexia.

Female bodybuilders are still in a minority. Out of the 90 competitors in Glasgow, 15 will be women. They have to work twice as hard as the men; lack of testosterone and a greater amount of body-fat makes it more difficult to attain peak condition. "We're designed to be small and soft and weak," says McCann. Also, there is additional pressure from a cultural prejudice against women looking that way. While the bodybuilder physique is an exaggeration of the way men are "supposed" to look, it's the opposite of what is expected of women. "But then," says McCann, "I've never wanted to do what is expected."

Bodybuilding is a monastic life: early rises; long walks; ritual, self-flagellating visits to that devotional space, the gym. There is even something of the Latin Mass about the names of the muscles – flexor carpi radialis, pronator teres, and the holy trinity of vastus lateralis, vastus medialis and vastus intermedius. This beautiful nomenclature is translated by bodybuilders to a slangy incantation – glutes, delts, lats, quads, abs. Bodybuilding is full of jargon. "Guns" are the biceps. "Wheels" are legs. Being "shredded" or "ripped to the bone" is to be in excellent condition.

The total commitment demanded by bodybuilding can leave little space in one's life and head for anything else. Earning a living, for instance. "As a lecturer, I'm teaching and dealing with students, and that's tough," says Kaye. "When you get near a show you're very tired and you almost just want to sit in a dark room and not speak to anyone."

Personal relationships, too, are tricky. "You have to have a very sympathetic other half," he says. "And my friends are pretty understanding that when I am preparing for a show they won't see me that often."

McCann is married to Guy. He is also a bodybuilder, though he does not compete. Is it common for bodybuilders to get together? "I think it's probably easier," she says. "The amount of guys that come in here to the gym and then have to rush home because their wife or girlfriend wants them to go out."

There's also the question of physical attractiveness. As a schoolgirl, McCann was told by a male PE teacher that men wouldn't like her if she had big muscles, but she has never been bothered by that argument. "I always liked muscle. I had pictures of Sly Stallone as Rambo on my bedroom wall when I was young. I think I would find it strange to go out with someone who doesn't train."

McCann is small – five foot three – but you could hardly call her petite. She has a muscular physique with sweeping shoulders and thighs providing the X shape that is the bodybuilding ideal. She isn't manly, though. One of the reasons she has always avoided steroids and testosterone is a horror of becoming increasingly masculine.

To many outsiders, bodybuilders – even "naturals" – can appear freakish. They just look wrong somehow. What's fascinating, though, is that, to them, mainstream society seems oddly puny. "I find it very strange when I look at people and they have no muscle," says McCann. "When I see girls in backless dresses and their backs are totally smooth, I think it looks so bizarre."

She recalls being on a night out with a crowd of bodybuilders when a young woman walked past in a short skirt. Her legs were attracting admiring glances from male passers-by, but the bodybuilders just didn't get it. "She's got no hamstrings," said one, disdainfully.The great irony of competitive bodybuilding, given the austere and intense training, is that the day of the contest involves coating yourself in fake tan, putting on tiny trunks or bikini (thongs are banned) and throwing shapes on stage. There are good reasons for all of this: the costume reveals as much of the body as decency allows; the tan shows the contours of the physique despite strong stage lights; the poses accentuate the various muscles the judges wish to scrutinise. But there is no doubt the overall look is fairly camp.

No matter. A bodybuilder may have worked for months in the run-up to a competition, so for them it is a great moment of truth. "Ah, it was one of the best feelings I've had in my life," says Michael Rodger, from Edinburgh who, in May, won the teenage category at the Scottish championship, his very first competitive event. "I was buzzing the whole day and then I couldn't sleep."

Rodger is 19. He's a good-looking lad in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. He works in McDonald's at weekends, spending his wages on protein supplements and visiting the gym. He trains several times each week, three times on Mondays, for instance. His great ambition is to compete against bodybuilders who take performance-enhancers and show that they can be beaten. "Winning Mr Olympia would be the ultimate dream," he says. "It would prove that steroids are nothing." Muscles inflated by drugs are too perfect, he thinks; natural muscles look better.

In the meantime, Rodger will content himself with competing in the BNBF final in Glasgow. There will be six teenagers taking part, none younger than 17. According to Rodger, teenage boys feel under pressure to develop their bodies in line with prevailing cultural ideals. Put more simply, girls fancy Cristiano Ronaldo, so the closer you can come to having a body like his, the more chance you have of getting a snog.

Rodger is getting there. His biceps resemble the Pentlands. His abdominal muscles are a work in progress. A 12-pack is the goal. He'd like to be spotted at a bodybuilding contest and offered work modelling for Men's Health.

He started going to the gym at 16. "Ah, I was skinny. My whole arm was about as thick as my wrist is now. I was very unhappy with it. I looked like a lamp-post."

At school, he was being bullied. He started weight-training in order to stop that happening. Did it work? "Aye. I started getting a wee bit of respect." As he grew in size, he also grew in confidence and self- esteem. Now his greatest challenge is to persuade his mother, Susan, to rub him with fake tan and keep providing the meals he needs for his dietary regime. "Chicken, chicken, chicken," she laments. "I tell you what, I'm fed up cooking the same thing."

Also preparing for the BNBF final is George Kerr, a 53-year-old gardener. On a sunny morning in Irvine, with seagulls perched on the chimney pots, Kerr is hard at work in the gym. A shade under five foot six, with glasses and silvery hair, he is known as "The Razor" on account of his sharp condition. The veins on his arms stand out like rope and his back is as broad as a sea-chest. He points out grooves on his pectorals and explains this is known as "striation", a term more usually applied to rock. His waist is just 27 and a half inches. The weightlifting belt cinches like the corset of an Edwardian lady.

Kerr seems joyful in the gym. He's enjoying the feeling of blood and endorphins pumping through his body. Before his hour-long work-out, he swallowed four capsules of an "anti-catabolic" supplement to prevent his body breaking down muscle for food. He washed them down with "Morrison's version of Red Bull". After the work-out he has a further four and a drink to restore glycogen.

He began bodybuilding in 1980, inspired by the documentary Pumping Iron and by childhood idol Steve Reeves, the bodybuilder and actor. Kerr has been competing since 2004. He has won the Scottish championship in his age class four times, and would dearly love to win the British. He has in mind a routine involving a headstand and doing the splits.

Suffice to say he is living a life quite different from most of his generation. Sometimes he bumps into someone he knew at school and can't believe they have become an old man. He isn't fighting growing old – "I'm actually quite proud of my age" – but is trying to stay in the best shape he can, especially as he has a six-year-old son. "I think I look better now in my fifties than I did in my early twenties."

Weakness and frailty are not inevitable, he believes; "only if you let them be". The Razor intends to stay sharp for a good while yet; longevity is in his genes. "My dad's 80 and he teaches two dance classes a week," he laughs. "You should see him at weddings."

It's clear from watching Kerr go through his gym routine that the best bodybuilders are able to mentally step outside their own bodies and consider them objectively and in detail. They see themselves as a collection of separate components, each of which can be fine-tuned like motor parts. This flies in the face of an argument against bodybuilding – that it's about vanity. In fact, the best bodybuilders, far from being narcissists, are hyper-critical and able to suppress their ego.

"In the gym, I don't parade around in a little singlet and show my muscles off," says Kaye. "It's a serious sport. I've competed internationally at both swimming and athletics and there is no sport that's close to being as demanding as natural bodybuilding."

It is suggested from time to time that bodybuilding should be represented at the Olympics. McCann, however, thinks not. "To me, it's more like an art form than a sport. You've sculpted your body into the best shape you can, then taken it along and presented it to judges."

That debate will continue, as will the many controversies around bodybuilding. What's clear is that for its adherents it is a passion verging on obsession. For the rest of us, there is much to enjoy in an activity which combines the physical rigour of ancient Sparta with the dress-code of the Playboy Mansion. Vicky McCann has it about right. "I love bodybuilding to bits," she says. "But it is seriously weird." n

BNBF Finals, SECC, Glasgow, 19 September, 01738 446 006, www.bnbf.co.uk

This article first appeared in Scotland on Sunday, September 12, 2010