Interview With Teen Bodybuilding Champion Anthony Alayon

Background

I met Anthony prior to his first bodybuilding competition, the Mr. Cougar, back in Durant High School (Plant City, FL). Now he is a certified fitness trainer in college finishing up his degree in Accounting with top honors. So much for the stereotype that all bodybuilders are dumb.

Through the years I have seen how Anthony has used bodybuilding to greatly enhance his life. As a result, I decided to conduct this interview as I feel that his story will help many others out there see how they can use the values that the bodybuilding lifestyle teaches to get ahead in life.

Anthony, when did you decide to get into bodybuilding and why?

As a young child I was always interested in sports. I played sports such as baseball, basketball, and even karate. I would always do pushups, pull-ups, and squats to stay in good shape. I did not get started until my freshman year in High School when I began to learn how to lift weights.

When I transferred schools and went to Durant I really did not have much interest in playing sports, so I stayed after school and lifted weights with my cousin Ross. That's when I met Mr. Schertz, the head of the History department and the Iron Club.

With my interest in lifting I joined the Iron Club. Basically, in the Iron Club you max out on your bench press and divide that into your actual body weight to figure out how much you can bench press per pound of body weight. Then you measure your arms to see the gains accomplished each month. After a year, I got lazy and did not do much over the summer. However, at the beginning of my Junior Year, I noticed incredible gains in size and strength. I was number one in the Iron Club for an entire year. When Mr. Schertz started telling everyone about Mr. Cougar, a bodybuilding show held at the school, my interest got peeked by it. It was at that time that I talked to Mr. Schertz, and he expressed to me that I had the potential to win and later on become a National Level Bodybuilder. When Mr. Schertz said that, I decided to go for it.

Did you find the bodybuilding workout routines challenging?

The bodybuilding routines were tough but by no means the hard part. The bodybuilding diet was by far the hardest part of the equation.

What were the results of such effort?

After 3 months of eating a diet which included 6 meals a day consisting of low carbs and high protein, I began to lose body fat and gain muscle mass rather quickly. After 3 grueling months of pre-contest bodybuilding workouts and diet, it was finally time to display the goods; it was show time!

To my surprise, I ended up winning my weight class on my first bodybuilding show as a lightweight. I did lose the overall title to an awesome middleweight competitor that was super defined, called Ray Bowman. While I felt great about the outcome of my first competition, coming so close to winning the overall title fueled me to train even harder and add some more muscle to repeat the process all over again on the following year. Ray served as my inspiration to get into even better condition than I was the year prior. I just wanted to present a physique that was as conditioned as Ray's but bigger.

I agree with you Anthony. Sorry that me teaching Ray how to pose a week before the show did not help your cause..LOL. In all seriousness, Ray was super defined, an inspiration for sure. Now, we know how hard it is to live the bodybuilding lifestyle. So why do you love bodybuilding?

I love the bodybuilding lifestyle because besides the way it improves your health and physical appearance, it teaches you good discipline, determination and also keeps you out of trouble. In addition, I like it because you get out of it what you put into it.

I'm with you on all that. Thanks to such lifestyle I never got into drinking, smoking or trying drugs during my teenage years. If nothing else, it made me more focused and structured on my studies. What I love the most is the Spartan-like discipline that one gets from it.

Oh, I know. As you are aware, going to high school and preparing for a bodybuilding competition did not allow me to go out with my friends and eat at fast food restaurants, which was a nuisance, to say the least, at first. I was extremely depressed about this until I began to notice the changes in my physique. For the first time in my life I had a six-pack of abs. I always wondered before these how to get abs! From that point on, it was like a light switch was turned on and I focused on achieving my set goals of stepping on stage and looking my absolute best.

Now that I have acquired such discipline from bodybuilding, I feel as if I can do anything in life; I feel in control of my own destiny. As a matter of fact, bodybuilding has even helped me become a better student (read Anthony's article on How Bodybuilding Can Help You Become a Better Student).

Before we go any further, can you please tell our readers how what were the results of the second bodybuilding show you did?

Well, thanks to your coaching and after a whole year of hard training and dieting, I ended showing up at 3% body fat weighing 155lbs of lean muscle. As a result, I ended up winning my class and the whole show!