Building a Champion

Date: 03-02-2004 Posted by: Anabolic Info TeamUnited States

The first thing you notice are the biceps. Massive, 17-inch biceps. Like two baked potatoes stuffed with sinews, fibres and five green veins. Follow a vein down the right arm and next you notice the tattoo. A dagger handle, with two roses entwined in it and then a blade, running straight down the huge forearm and disappearing by the wrist into a weightlifter's black glove. Follow a vein up and through the ball of muscle that is a shoulder and you're staring at the pleasant face of 39-year-old Pamela Howard, top female amateur bodybuilder in Canada.
Go ahead and stare. It's nothing new to Pam. At competitions, wearing a posing suit that shows off every inch of her muscles, the judges are watching her. And her muscular physique draws stares off stage too. You might recognize her from a Frank's Red Hot sauce commercial filmed in November, 2003. That's attention most people would find unnerving, but Pam is confident in her body and in her desire to be a bodybuilder.

Pam stands at the head of a grey slanted bench. Along with the weightlifting gloves, she wears a sleeveless t-shirt that cuts off just before the top of black splash pants, showing off another tattoo - a rose that curls over her six-pack abs. She is inside Fitness Fanatix in Mississauga, a spacious facility with a blue rubberized floor that hosts futuristic looking weight machines, a rack of dumbbells and some treadmills.

"Good job. Six, seven," Pam counts, leaning over the bench, her hands near the elbows of her husband Shawn Howard as he presses two 70-pound dumbbells. They met at a gym - of course - in 1997, and have been training together ever since. Today is day two of five workouts this week for Pam, in preparation for the Canadian National Bodybuilding Championships in August, 2004.

Shawn finishes his set and takes his time getting up to return his weights.

"I feel really weak today," he says.

"Me too," Pam agrees. They're still hungover from yesterday's brutal leg workout. But instead of dwelling on their weakness, Pam appraises Shawn's leg muscles.

"You're almost getting as big as me," she says. Shawn smiles, shaking his head as he puts his dumbbells back on the rack.   "Just kidding," she says.

"You know you want these sexy calves," he says with a grin, turning to give her a side profile of his burly frame and looking down at his left calf muscle. "Well, maybe not as hairy."

Pam laughs and sits down on the inclined bench. "That wouldn't look good on the stage."

"Unless it's the European tour," Shawn quips, then does an Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation as he pretends to announce a competition: "The East German European Championships."

This joking and talking keeps Pam and Shawn going on a day when they'd just as soon stop. Her wrist is hurting. She thinks there is inflammation of the joint, but nothing short of a neck or back injury will stop her from training. Still, Shawn has told her just halfway through their workout, that whenever she wants to leave, he's ready to go home and have some ice cream.

"We'll go when we're done," she says softly, almost absentmindedly, as she picks up a pair of fifty pound dumbbells. Ice cream is a rare delicacy for Pam. In the "off-season" she can indulge in sweet foods occasionally, but within five months of a competition, she practically starves herself while working out twice a day, five times a week. By the time the Nationals began, Pam was eating five times a day but only getting 1500 calories. Her body could not function properly for four weeks after the show.

Her next show in August, 2004 is the National Championships in Edmonton, Alberta. Howard placed third at them last September. Being a Canadian National champion and getting pro status has been Howard's goal since she started training. If she wins in August, Pam will be awarded an International Bodybuilding Federation pro card. From there she can pursue her bigger goal of becoming Miss Olympia, the highest achievement for any female body builder.

That's why she's lying on a bench, pressing fifty pound dumbbells, breathing in, "Sssss," and out "Pshhhhhh," slowly on each press, concentration and pain etched on her face as each press jolts her injured wrist.

Pam knows most people can't do what she does. Everything in her life revolves around body building - from her marriage to her diet. Which is why you have to be extra careful when talking about food around Pam. Say the word Timbits and she gets noticeably excited. Her mouth starts watering, her eyes flash, and bodybuilding is forgotten. Shawn puts Pam's dieting struggles into perspective best.

"That's Timbits. A bodybuilder's crack-cocaine."

Timbits may be a bodybuilder's drug, but for Pam Howard, doing a pose on stage is the ultimate high.