Pumped Up : 44-Year-Old Bodybuilding Contestant Is Already a Winner

On Christmas Day of 1959, 13-year-old Robert Bitonte of Youngstown, Ohio, woke to find an unexpected gift next to the family tree: a set of barbells and a copy of a bodybuilding magazine.

He’d expected to find something from Santa waiting for him that morning, but hardly anything like that. Short and overweight, Bitonte was a bit too pudgy to be the 97-pound weakling of the Charles Atlas comic book ads. He wasn’t exactly an athlete; nor did he aspire to be.

But there was no electric train to set up or new bicycle to ride, so he sat down and looked at the magazine, perusing photos of one well-developed physique after another. He could hardly imagine himself ever growing into one of those musclemen. Still, he tentatively picked up one of the weights, hefted it back and forth, and he was hooked.

This August, nearly 32 years after that fateful morning, Dr. Robert Bitonte of Dana Point will take his 44-year-old body with its bulging biceps, clearly defined quadriceps and rippled abdomen home to his native Youngstown, where he will compete for the title of Mr. Youngstown, not with the schoolyard bullies of his childhood but with men who weren’t even born back then. If he wins, he’ll be eligible to go on to the Mr. America competition.

Even if he loses, Bitonte figures he’ll still be a winner. Weightlifting gave him not only physical strength but also self-confidence through high school and college, and the interest he developed in the human body--and muscles specifically--led him to medical school and his specialty in physical medicine and rehabilitation. These days bodybuilding is his refuge from the hectic pace of his work, and the structure of his highly disciplined workout routines seems to make everything else fall into place.

“That’s the thing about this sport: You can’t lose,” he says. “Everybody, regardless of what condition you’re in when you start, can improve their physique with consistent application of proven methodology. It’s guaranteed. How much you get out of it just depends on how much you want to put in.”

In most competitive sports, Bitonte’s 5-foot-6 stature would be a disadvantage. But bodybuilding, he points out, has a way of putting participants of all ages and sizes on an equal footing.

Bitonte, an assistant clinical professor in the department of rehabilitation at UCI Medical School, divides his time between his office in Los Angeles and his home in Orange County. He works out at Lou Gaudio’s Studio in Dana Point and at a studio in Hollywood six days a week.

Monday is leg day, Tuesday is chest and back. On Wednesday, he concentrates on arms and shoulders, and then on Thursday he begins the whole cycle over again. Meanwhile, he also works in abdominal exercises.

Even though he’s training for a competition, he keeps his workouts to less than an hour a day.

“Anything more isn’t all that productive, and it puts too much of a burden on the rest of your life,” he said.

On Sundays, he rests, “unless I feel really good, and then I treat myself to another workout. But I never push my body to the point where it’s telling me it’s being overdone.”

He first flexed his muscles in competition only six years ago, placing second in a national competition held in New Jersey. After that he competed for three straight years in the National Bodybuilding Championships. He didn’t win any titles, but “I did well against myself.”

Now that he’s taken a couple of years off, he feels ready to compete again.

He’ll be up against men half his age, but Bitonte says that doesn’t worry him.

“It’s relatively rare for people my age to compete,” he acknowledged, “but that’s only because most of us feel we can’t. And it shouldn’t be that way. The body’s ability to do it is there, as long as you have the will and desire. I can’t claim to be the same as a 22-year-old, but that doesn’t really matter.”

When Bitonte was at that peak age for competition in his 20s, his interest in bodybuilding was at its lowest ebb. Having made it through medical school, internship and residency, “I almost abandoned it totally. I was distracted by things I thought were more interesting, like night life and overeating. I even took up smoking cigars for a while.”

But then he took a long hard look in the mirror and “definitely saw that I didn’t look like what I wanted to look like. I decided it was time to get back to work.”

The sport of bodybuilding began around the turn of the century, in part as a reaction to the industrial revolution, which took people away from the physically demanding rural life and put them in sedentary positions in factories.

For most of its history, bodybuilding has been surrounded by criticism and misconceptions. According to the most popular myths, bodybuilders may look good, but they become “muscle-bound,” sacrificing flexibility for strength. Some critics also say the larger muscles that result from weightlifting only become so because the muscles are injured and develop scar tissue.

None of that’s true, Bitonte says, and in the past few years medicine has begun to recognize the benefits of weightlifting.

“It’s pretty much the consensus now that two sessions or more per week of strength training can be very beneficial. It can prevent the muscle atrophy and softening of bones that comes with age, and build strength reserves for all tasks,” he says.

And as he sees daily in his work, properly supervised weight training can also help rehabilitate those who are recovering from injuries.

“But beyond the physical benefit, strength training even at levels much lower than this can help people have a good sense of well-being,” Bitonte says.

Even though he started out with no instruction other than the magazine that came with his weight set, Bitonte advises against going out and picking up weights at random.

“Get a qualified instructor to help you,” he says. “It’s very much like learning to play the piano. Maybe you could figure it out on your own, with a lot of mistakes and wasted time. But if you really want to do it, you need someone to teach you.”

Bitonte is already looking past the August competition toward another goal. He wants to find ways to make bodybuilding more accessible to men and women of all ages.

“You don’t have to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger,” he says. “Most of us don’t. And that’s not really what’s important. What matters is that at any point in anybody’s life, you have the ability to make a decision about the status of your health and your appearance. You can improve yourself, no matter where you start. You don’t have to go to a gym. You don’t even have to have weights. I’ve seen some very well-developed bodies that were the result of nothing more than chin-ups and dips at a public playground.

“The only thing that can stop you is if you really don’t want to (improve yourself). But if you do, you can.”