All gurus are not created equally. Most gurus have a specialty or niche’ they use to acquire more clientele. George Farah is famous for letting his clients eat plenty of carbs on minimal cardio. Not bad if you have a sweet tooth and a phobia of the StairMill. Dave Palumbo prefers H.I.T lifting, slow-steady state cardio, and a very low carb diet for prepping most of his athletes. There are gurus like Chris Aceto, who coincidentally can’t stand the term guru, who are diet experts and make that their key center of attention. And then you have a distinctive guru like Oscar Arden who is more of a mental conditioning coach then a bodybuilding trainer. Now granted he’s no slouch in terms of training, nutrition, and supplementation, but he tackles the one thing often omit from a contest prep, the athlete’s state of mind throughout the process.
What does the mind have to do with getting into shape? Any good athlete will tell you that the mind is weak and the body is strong. As an elite college athlete I can tell you it doesn’t matter how big, strong, or fast an athlete is at some point they are going to break mentally. Tiger Woods gets caught cheating on his wife and suddenly he can’t crack the top 10 on the PGA Tour. His physical tools are no greater than anyone else, but he dominated from the neck up. As soon as he started to crack in the aftermath of his sex scandal we saw his golf career take a massive tumble. Bodybuilding is no different than any other sport; it’s full of head cases, which is why Oscar Arden can be so effective in working with his athletes. Look at the NBA, Phil Jackson won 11 NBA Championships as coach for the Bulls and Lakers; his nickname is ‘The Zen Master’ for his ability to change the mental makeup of his superstar teams.
All you have to do is listen to PJ Braun talk on the radio about some of his female clients. From what I hear it sounds like he has to spend more time talking his girls off the dieting ledge than anything else. And talk about a tough job, guys out there think it’s rough having 1 girlfriend or wife, PJ has over 100 girlfriends or wives that he attends to weekly. Dieting is a mental challenge with more peaks and valleys than an IFBB pro bikini contest. Sometimes you look great, sometimes you look terrible. And it’s hard not to order a pizza when you’re starving. Female competitors have trouble controlling their peanut butter cravings; imagine being a guy who is used to shoveling down 5 or 6 thousand calories a day. It’s very understandable why a competitor would need a guru like PJ or Kim Oddo to keep them going down the right track.
What about the competitors who are fixtures in the top 6 of the Mr. Olympia, surely they know how to prep themselves for a contest and are mentally strong? I myself had a hard time trying to understand why a guy like Jay Cutler or Dexter Jackson would need someone to come in and teach old dog new tricks. Yet without fail we have seen the switch of gurus, with Jay having left Hany Rambod and now leaning on Chad Nichols for advisement. But then I think about other pro athletes like Tom Brady and Derek Jeter. Both are multi-time world champions, certain Hall of Famers, and still require the assistance of a quarterback coach and hitting instructor. How can legends in other sports also be needing help from a guru?
The best explanation why any great athlete would need a guru is to have an eye in the sky. Nobody is perfect and it is so incredibly easy to fall off track. A bodybuilder has to put a lot of blind faith that the knowledge and skills they have acquired over years of trial and error will hold true from prep to prep. That’s a lot of faith considering one tiny screw up could have you coming in off your peak. A guru for a lot of champion athletes is in place just to reaffirm and give confidence to the athlete that everything is on track and you aren’t falling behind. If Derek Jeter finds a hole in his swing he could go on a 0-20 hitless streak just as easy as a top bodybuilder could be off track on his training intensity from time to time.
I certainly can’t convince every bodybuilding fan that a guru is important or even necessary. Even Evan Centopani finally buckled and decided to go back to a guru, I mean Technician. What I do know is that until there’s a Mr. Olympia who figures out a way to clone himself there will always be the services of the invaluable gurus. Next time you’re at the gym don’t give that fat out of shape trainer such a hard time, he’s just a guru in training.
As always, you can follow me on Twitter @MattMeinrod
