An Iron Will to Succeed : Bodybuilder Training for U.S. Amateur Championship

Rory Leidelmeyer had been at the Iron Rack, a Whittier gym, since 5:30 a.m. and it was now 10. As he raised on his toes, the stress of a weight machine’s 300 pounds made his calves balloon to a size rarely seen on a human leg.

“I’m known for my calves,” the former Mr. America said. “I don’t have any weaknesses, but my calves are extremely outstanding.”

Narcissistic? “I’m sorry if it sounds that way. I started off to build a symmetrical balanced physique, and basically it’s there.”

Leidelmeyer, 34, is preparing for the U.S. Amateur Bodybuilding Championships next month in Santa Monica, but he makes a living as a fitness and nutrition consultant.

His clients include police officers, firefighters, doctors, laborers, senior citizens and pro athletes. He has trained Mr. Californias and Mr. Teen-Age Americas, and takes pride in turning around young lives or raising self-esteem in “guys who in high school 10 years ago might have been nerds.”

An advocate of intense, accelerated workout programs, Leidelmeyer said he does not take steroids or growth hormones. “It’s a fool’s move,” he said. “Everybody’s looking for a shortcut, and in this sport there isn’t one.”

He recalled saying to his workout partners, in a gym in 1978: “If there was a pill that would make me Mr. America overnight, I wouldn’t take it.”

And so it took him 10 years to achieve that title. Intense workouts and huge amounts of food--he once ate 38 pieces of chicken at an all-you-can eat smorgasbord--were responsible, and a will as ironclad as the heavy plates that clank continuously in the Iron Rack.

He said his fast-paced, tough-it-out training methods allow people to get quick results by working out only 45 minutes at a time.

“People think you have to work out four or five hours a day and eat huge amounts of food to build muscle mass, but that’s not practical,” said Leidelmeyer, who supplements a balanced diet with protein drinks and would never again eat 38 pieces of chicken at a time.

A photo, taken when Leidelmeyer was Mr. America, shows him in brief trunks, posing his 6-foot-1, 230-pound body, looking sinister with a mustache and a black T-shirt wrapped tightly around his head.

“Some people think I’m intimidating,” he conceded.

But on Monday morning, in old workout clothes, with his curly hair flowing from beneath a cap, and without the mustache, he did not project a sinister image. His muscles, though not oiled as in the photo, were still as prominent, and his veins stood out like mighty rivers.

“I was 5 when I first walked into a gymnasium,” he said. “My father was a bodybuilder. I would hang around him and his friends. I would ask him to circle everything in the TV Guide that had to do with muscles, like Steve Reeves Hercules movies.”

In bodybuilding contests, Leidelmeyer is known for his dramatic, fluid posing routines, a flair he developed as a child. In old family snapshots, he is invariably seen flexing his biceps.

Born in Holland, Leidelmeyer came to the United States as a youngster. After living in various towns, wherever his father could get work as a welder, the family finally settled in Whittier and Leidelmeyer became a quarterback and kicker on the California High School football team.

When a leg injury ruined his dream of a pro career, he began to train in 1975 as a bodybuilder. He weighed only 143 pounds but envisioned, while poring over muscle magazines, the 21 1/4-inch calves and 22-inch biceps that he would eventually develop.

Four years later, he finished second in the Mr. Los Angeles contest. In 1980, he became Mr. California and was on the cover of three magazines. People said he’d be the next Steve Reeves.

“I was it ,” Leidelmeyer said.

Joe Valdez of Whittier, a bodybuilding judge for 17 years, agreed: “He always had the right genetics and a symmetry of proportion. That is, his calves, neck and biceps were all the same size. A lot of guys just lift weights and look freaky.”

But Leidelmeyer finished second in the AAU Mr. America contest four times before finally winning it in 1988. “There have been political reasons,” he said. “I was deserving (of winning) many times. I came into (the) sport with such a high amount of potential that people expected me to be perfect. I could be off just so much and it would wash me out totally.”

Joe Weider, a bodybuilding guru who is now 70 and publisher of Muscle & Fitness magazine, has always been impressed with Leidelmeyer. “He’s a great bodybuilder who is very knowledgeable, very personable and is a pretty good trainer,” Weider said.

But because of Leidelmeyer’s devotion to his wife, Cynthie, his 8-year-old daughter, Sasha, and his 4-year-old daughter, Ciara, he had not, until recently, considered becoming a professional bodybuilder.

And turning pro would require him to take time away from his consulting business to keep up with competitors whose living is bodybuilding.

“I believe in a balanced life,” said Leidelmeyer. “My family comes well before any competition.”

But now the sport has become financially rewarding, with some bodybuilders making up to $300,000 a year. “I have to deal with the fact my family needs to eat,” he said.

And he likes the idea of being on the stage when he’s 50, with his daughters watching him.

Leidelmeyer, a devout Christian who doesn’t drink or smoke, is an avid fisherman and aspiring actor. “I want to fulfill the potential of my physique and one day be on the great silver screen,” he said.

Leidelmeyer has trained Jack Youngblood, a former football player for the Rams, and Tony Mandarich, a lineman with the Green Bay Packers.

He also trained Mark Humbert of Ontario, a psychologist at the Youth Training School in Chino, and helped turn him into a Mr. Orange County.

“He’s very inspirational,” said Humbert, who had been warned about Leidelmeyer’s intensity and training method that sometimes includes 100-repetition exercises rather than conventional low-repetition exercises with heavy weights.

At their first session, Humbert endured hundreds of repetitions. “He wanted to know how strong a will I had,” he said. “He’d drag me to the next machine. I was dying. He gets right in your face. And what are you going to do? This guy’s as big as a house.

“When it was over, he threw a towel on my face and said, ‘OK, I’ll train you.’ ”

Humbert recently invited Leidelmeyer to visit the youth prison for juvenile felons. “He had an impact,” Humbert said. “The guys are still talking about him.”

They’ve also written to Leidelmeyer, saying he has inspired them to become dedicated, not only to bodybuilding but to a reformed way of life.

“He is real genuine,” Humbert said. “He’s not a typical bodybuilder who needs to condescend to others. He keeps his small-town kindness and generosity.”

On a day in 1986, Leidelmeyer saw a car go off the Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim, roll over and catch fire.

“The driver was trapped and the door was jammed,” he said. “Others tried to get it open but couldn’t. I stopped, went back and ripped off the door and dragged him across the freeway.”

And then the car exploded.

Leidelmeyer’s dark eyes looked down at his powerful arms and he said he had known then that that one Herculean effort would always be enough. That future titles would not matter. That his sport had fulfilled him.