The best shape of his life...?

Earlier in January, I was browsing through the magazines in the sports section of my local newsagent when I noticed a familiar face on the cover of Ironman.

My first thought was "Hey, Michael O'Hearn is still kicking around!"  Which was promptly followed by "What has he done to himself?"  As he was actually featured in an article, not just gracing the cover, I flicked over to see it was titled something like "The Best Shape of His Life".

2004 was the year I discovered body building.  I didn't actually take up body building (as photographic evidence will attest) - I just suddenly became aware of it as something beyond "body builders look weird".  I had developed a strong interest in 1960s Italian Sword and Sandal flicks (Hercules Unchained, Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World, that sort of thing) as well as Tarzan films, and it turns out that a lot of the actors involved in these films (well, the ones who played the leading men, at any rate) were from the American "body culture" scene.  The good old "Muscle Beach" set.

Now, these fine fellows (Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott, to name a couple of my favourites) looked pretty darn muscle-y, but they didn't look like the steroidal monstrosities I had previously associated with body building.  I investigated further, and worked out that the "look" I didn't like in body builders was actually quite recent in the world of body sculpture.  The "classic" body builders of the 50s and 60s looked quite all right, really.

At about the same time I found the short fan film World's Finest, which starred Michael O'Hearn as Superman and Clark Bartram as Batman.  I thought these two men also looked "not completely ludicrous".  They weren't covered with straining, snaking veins trying to escape skin that looked like oiled-up sandpaper.  They didn't look like (to borrow a phrase) "a condom full of walnuts".

When I knew you could still get body builders who looked like this:

I got it.

I realised that body building - or, rather, "body sculpting" - wasn't just about building bigger muscles "no matter what" and constantly pushing beyond the levels of normal human muscle mass. There was an element of "art" to it because the people involved could aim for a particular kind of physique, rather than just constantly trying to be bigger.

It was like when I realised I didn't hate all abstract art - I hated certain styles of abstract art.  Other styles were brilliant.  I don't think all body builders look like they've completely forgotten what human beings are supposed to look like, just a certain style of body builders.  Mike O'Hearn was one of the people that made me realise there were different "looks", and some weren't half bad.

Well, now he looks like this:

The pictures in the article showed a lot more "definition", as they say.  He looks... well he looks like the other guys.  The ones I didn't like.  It's like Dylan going electric.  He's sold out, man.  He's jumped on the "bigger is always better" bandwagon, when I liked him for being more balanced and refined than the other guys.

The article was all about how he's in the best shape of his life, and it doesn't matter what age you are, you can still be bigger, more cut, more ripped - kick it up another notch, find the reason to push harder and heavier...

But, dammit, I liked the shape he had ten years ago. I think he looked better when he was going for quality rather than . "Best shape of his life"? I guess that's subjective.