New Goal for Manute Bol: Beef Up and Limber Up for the Bullets’ Season

If the idea was to put weight on Manute Bol’s 7-7 frame and keep it there, this city, with temperatures consistently hovering above 90 degrees, would seem to be the wrong place to do it. If the idea was to find a taskmaster to put the Washington Bullets’ center through his paces, Mackie Shilstone--all of 5-8 and 143 pounds--would appear to be the wrong man.

Yet, as was so often the case during Bol’s rookie season in the National Basketball Association, things aren’t always like they seem. The unlikely alliance is approaching the halfway point of a six-week training program and already has produced some impressive figures.

Bol weighed less than 200 pounds at the end of the 1985-86 season but is up to 207 since coming here. Over the course of his two-a-day, five-days-a-week workouts, Bol also has increased his strength; in the squat, he has moved from 170 pounds to 205.

While Bol’s legs still resemble exclamation points, the numbers are indicative of what the Bullets expected when they approached Shilstone, who, with his own line of vitamins and a local television show, is rapidly becoming the Richard Simmons of professional sports. After working with female tennis pro Leslie Allen, Shilstone made a national mark by bulking up boxer Michael Spinks for his heavyweight fights against Larry Holmes.

Spinks went from 187 pounds to 200 over an eight-week period under Shilstone, who projects Bol’s training camp weight between 215 and 220 pounds.

“Initially, the Bullets said to just put the weight on him and not worry about anything else, but maybe weight isn’t the most significant factor,” said Shilstone. “With Michael I felt like it was a life-or-death situation; he had to be able to defend himself against a much bigger man. Manute is in a position where he’s being manhandled and has to do some of that himself, but he also has to be conditioned and able to function and accomplish the things that a basketball player has to do.”

Bol’s routine here isn’t quite what one would expect. The training table, for example, doesn’t consist of four or five enormous feasts a day. Instead, his three squares are meted out in normal portions but are supplemented with pills--close to 40 assorted vitamins and amino acid tablets daily. There is a caloric supplement that Bol adds to milk with each meal, and even the water he drinks while working out is spiked with nutrients.

There is little lifting of weights in the workouts. Shilstone said an evaluation of Bol before the conclusion of the NBA season found him to be “an injury waiting to happen” because of tightened muscles, particularly his hamstrings and in his back, and the result was a lack of range of motion. Just lifting weights would only compound the potential problems, Shilstone said, so instead there is as much of stretching and movement exercises as of pumping iron.

There also is running. So much of it, said Bol, “I feel like I’m trying out for the 1988 Olympics.”

But Bol, who marvels at the diminutive Shilstone’s ability to lift weights far beyond his body size, works diligently. As a result of the efforts, Bol’s body doesn’t seem bigger but longer, with the muscles better defined and somewhat elongated.

Jay Murphy, a former Boston College center-forward who will be in the Bullets’ training camp, and Billy Ray Hobley, a member of the Harlem Globetrotters, also are working out with Bol and say he has a kind of strength they compare to Ralph Sampson or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

“We play every day,” said Hobley, “and there have been times when I’ve held his arms down, and he’s taken me and the ball right up to the basket.”

Asked what he hopes to accomplish in his time here, Bol immediately recalled a key play in the second game of last season’s playoff series against the Philadelphia 76ers, when he lost the ball in being shoved out of bounds by Terry Catledge, now a Washington teammate. “I don’t want that to happen again,” he said. “I will still be skinny, but I’ll be very, very strong.”

Ironically, the trade with Philadelphia, which also brought all-star Moses Malone to the Bullets, could severely curtail Bol’s playing time. Bol led the league in blocked shots after replacing an injured Jeff Ruland in the starting lineup for much of last season.

“The coach has a job, and I don’t have to tell him I want to play, but I think I would be hurt if I didn’t play after working this hard,” Bol said. “This is too hard to not play.

“I don’t care about coming off the bench. The game is the same, that makes no difference. I think that I can play very well after I gain this weight. If I sit all the time that would hurt a lot.”

In his hotel room, Bol reads a letter from a cousin in his native Sudan and laughs aloud when the relative asks how his schooling is going. Of course, Bol has long departed the University of Bridgeport for the NBA, yet his education in the world continues.

Earlier this summer there was a three-week trip to Africa. But, because of limited passage in Sudan owing to civil strife there, Bol was unable to see his sister, the only living member of his immediate family.

His sojourn here has been less eventful, but a landmark nonetheless: this is his first extensive trip without a member of the Bullets organization serving as chaperon. Describing the week he spent alone before the arrival of Murphy and Hobley, Bol said, “I just hung around and tried to meet the people.”

Bol never has had trouble either attracting attention or charming those he meets. Crossing through the hotel lobby en route to a recent workout, he came upon an elderly gentleman equipped with a rod and reel. After the man said he was going fishing, Bol looked askance at the surroundings. “Where will you fish,” he asked with a grin, “in the swimming pool?”

For Bol in New Orleans, the possibilities seem endless.