Win or Lose by Evan Centopani, 2006 NPC Jr. Nationals Champion “You win, you win. You lose, you still win.” - Joey LaMotta in “Raging Bull” I can remember the first time I gave serious thought to competing. I was training in a gym in my hometown and there was this new guy who I started seeing more and more. There were a lot of people in the gym and to be perfectly honest with you I only took notice of two types of people. The first being the guy who both looked and trained like an animal. The second was the guy you couldn't help but notice because he was so incapable of performing an exercise correctly that you had to stand by in bewilderment and ask yourself what muscle group the guy was actually trying to train. This guy happened to be a monster. He was about 6 foot, 280 lbs and had a back so wide that his lats just hung there like as if you just nailed two big slabs of meat to his sides. I could tell he took notice of me 'cause I would see him looking at me through overlapping mirrors. I have to admit, I usually could give a shit what someone else is doing but when you see someone this big, you subconsciously try and take some notes. One day I got to the gym and he was just sitting in the front. I assumed he was waiting for the guy he usually trained with and asked him where his buddy was. He replied “I don't know this dude is always late.” I always trained alone. The feeling; even the thought of someone slowing me down drives me nuts. I can be pretty damn impatient. But lookin' at this dude I didn't ever get the feeling it would be a problem. “Whadaya got today?” I asked. “Arms. Wanna train?” So we did. We didn't talk much. I pretty much lead the workout and he followed. We both trained harder than I think we were used to for fear that one of us would think the other was soft. Drop sets, super sets, and some heavy ass weight. Once we finished I was sucking down a shake and we were bullshitting. He asked me if I had ever competed. I told him I hadn't but that I always wanted to. Yeah, I busted my ass in the gym everyday, never partied, ate strict as shit, and made it my mission to get nine hours of sleep every night. I lived my life like I was getting ready for a show. I just had no clue how to actually do it. He told me that if I looked the way I did, I knew a hell of a lot more than I thought I knew. In any case, we decided to train together. “What about your partner?” “Who?” We trained together for a couple of months. It was the first time in my life I had ever trained with someone on a regular basis. On top of that, I had never trained with someone who was as strong as me and, in some areas, stronger. I made it my job to kill his strength with my intensity. I never saw myself as a competitive person and when I trained with Ron I did not try to outdo him. Rather, I think that having someone there made me more aware of the fact that, unchecked, there was the possibility that I had become complacent or less driven. Training next to someone else makes you more aware of yourself. It was time for me to progress. And I did. We did. I think that in those couple months I made more progress than in the whole year prior. “You know you need to do a show?” Yeah that sounded fine and dandy but I didn't think I was ready. “You're definitely ready” Okay, so say I wanted to do it, I didn't know what show or when or how to go about it. You're talking to someone who never had a bodybuilding magazine subscription in his life, had never gone to a bodybuilding show, and no I didn't own a single training DVD or video. “The Bev Francis Atlantic States is the show for you” Yeah okay, whatever that is. Sounds great. “It's an NPC show in early June so you'll have 10 weeks to diet.” I didn't know what NPC meant. I didn't know shit really. All I knew was that I had spent a lot of hours in the gym and had made a lot of progress over the years and just wanted to pull it together and see how I looked. So, I started dieting ten weeks out. June 4, 2005 was the date of the show. I put together a diet based on how I had dieted in the past. It was conventional; six meals a day, high protein, low carb, low fat. I did cardio a couple times a week for the first couple of weeks and then bumped it up accordingly. Anyways, that isn't what this is about. The diet and training were coming together and I was four weeks out from the show. A friend of mine brought me up to meet the owners of the Gold's Gym in New Haven, CT and told me that I had to train at their gym because it pissed on all the other gyms in the area. He was right. The place was great. Dumbbells to 200 lbs, 5 squat racks, 2 donkey calf raises, tons of 100 lb plates, and a whole bunch of that good equipment from the late 1980s and early 1990s. All that plus the three Italian brothers who owned the place, love bodybuilding, and let me know from day one that it was my gym to train at whenever I wanted to and to do whatever the hell I wanted. I remember Jerry telling me “Ev, if you wanna break shit break it, you wanna hang from the ceiling I don't give a shit. You can scream, walk around with your shirt off, whatever you wanna do you do.” I liked that. That made me feel good. Kenny, one of the trainers there offered to help me with my posing. Good thing because I knew nothing about it and this guy was a genius. I had plans one Saturday afternoon to work with Kenny on posing. I remember the day perfectly. I was training calves and hamstrings. I told my cousin, who I hadn't seen in a while, to come by the gym and check me out. I was doing some stiff legs when he walked over to me. He just stood there and smiled and when I racked the weight he goes “Dude, you look sick”. He started going into all this shit about, you're gonna win the show, you're gonna blow people away, you're gonna be a pro bodybuilder one day and he went on and on. I got a lot of the same from friends and the guys at the gym. Do I love all these guys for the support they gave me and the fact that they believed in me? You're damn right and that means a lot to me. But I wasn't really hearing what they were saying. There's something you gotta understand and it is the reason I'm writing this; I did it for me. I didn't decide to do a competition to win. I didn't give a fuck about winning. I wanted to get up on stage and look sick. I wanted to shock the shit out of people. I wanted to look back on photos from the show and say to myself “Yeah that's me”. I wanted a feeling a satisfaction. I wanted all the time I spent in the gym and the nights I stayed home while my friends were out getting hammered and all the other things I sacrificed to look that way to scream out from the photos. I wanted proof of my dedication, hard work, and sacrifice. That's it. For that, I didn't need to win. A lot has happened since my first show. It's only been a couple of years but fortunately, they've been very productive. Lately, since I've been on the boards and have been getting emails from people and so on, I hear a lot of people talking about winning. My friends want to “win” their shows. Who's gonna “win” the Olympia? Will I “win” the Nationals? I must admit, when winning begins to have some serious rewards attached to it, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell yourself that winning means nothing. I'm not gonna bullshit anybody, it's nice to win. You bet your ass it feels good. I feel better. People are a little bit nicer to you. Shit, even the food tastes better after winning. All that and I still insist on saying “Who cares?”. Winning still doesn't make you. You're not the placing on your trophy. You are the trophy. You're the product. I'm in it for me. I'm in it for what matters. I have my own goals and priorities. I know a few people who are considered champions but don't mean shit to me. Aside from winning they never did anything for anyone. They certainly never did anything for the sport of bodybuilding, let alone anything mentionable outside of the sport. I never made winning my focus and I refuse to start now. I was a bodybuilder before I ever competed. It's who I am. With or without anyone's approval it's who I'll always be. Winning or losing isn't gonna make or break me. I live by my own standards. It's just me against me. “You win, you win. You lose, you still win.” - Joe Pesci, as Joey LaMotta “Raging Bull”