Written by Capriese Murray
09 October 2006

Will I Ever Look Like You?

Capriese, how many years were you training seriously before you had that freaky, thick look to your physique that you have now?  I ask because I've been at this for 10 years now and I'm wondering if it's in the cards for me to ever have that look. I started out at 5-9, 140 pounds and I'm up to 220 now, but I just don't have that look to me that makes people say, "Holy shit!"  I'm not going to quit training or anything, but I wonder if I should lower my expectations and stop thinking I am going to look like you, Lee Priest, or Ronnie in this lifetime.

            I have to admit I always got attention. Even from the first few weeks I started lifting weights, people were noticing I was buffed. I was always a muscular kid, naturally. When I picked up my first barbell, I was 5-foot-6 and 155 pounds, with really good definition. Looking back now, I even had a bodybuilder's shape to my muscles, just a lot smaller than they are now. But as for getting that really thick, freaky look, I'd say that's happened over the past five years. Remember that when I did the Teen Nationals, I was a lightweight the first time and then a middleweight the second year. That's not small for a guy my height, but now I compete at around 205. It took me almost 10 years to grow from a lightweight to a heavyweight. 

As for you, I don't know if you have the genetic potential to get to the size of me or Lee- let's not even talk about Ronnie, OK? Ronnie makes me feel small! You have the right attitude as far as continuing to train goes. You should keep training hard, because I bet you still have some growing to do regardless of how large you will ultimately be. Think about Ronnie; he's been training for 25 years and somehow he still keeps making gains after all this time. That makes you wonder if anybody has ever truly maxed out his or her genetic potential. When it comes to looking at the pros in the magazines, I think it should be more for motivation than to necessarily try to be like us.

Think about it this way. Suppose you love to play basketball every Sunday afternoon in the park with your buddies, and you're pretty good. Maybe you have actually been working at improving your game over the years and you're a better player at age 28 than you were at 18. Does it matter that you don't play at the level of Michael Jordan or Lebron James? Why should that bum you out? Those are two of the best to ever play the game, just like Ronnie and Jay are two of the best bodybuilders ever. Elite athletes in any sport are a combination of gifted genetics and years of hard work. Don't be upset that you may not have those rare genetics to get freaky huge. Compared to the average American couch potato with a beer belly and man-boobs, I bet you're a damn stud. You're strong, healthy and muscular, and a lot of guys probably wish they could look just like you (a lot of their wives and girlfriends probably wish that, too!).  And you wish you could look like the pros, and the pros wish they could look like Ronnie!

Think about one advantage you have over the freakazoids. You have the option of being recognized for being overly muscular if you want to, or concealing it, depending on the situation and the mood you're in. You can wear more revealing or tighter clothes to show off, or cover up to be incognito and blend into a crowd. Guys like Ronnie, Markus, Jay, and even me, don't have that choice. No matter what we wear, we stand out as unusual and people will stare and make comments, and not always compliments, I assure you. I'm glad I can't hear what's whispered about me at times, or I would get upset or angry.  So I hope I answered your question. You probably still have a decent amount of muscle left to gain before it's all said and done, so until then, enjoy the process and appreciate what you have.

 

        The Mutant Smoothie: Grow and Fill Potholes

            Would you tell me your supplement regimen from the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep? You don't have to say the name brands if you don't want to, but I would like to get the breakdown on what types of products you use.  

            You may be a little disappointed if you were hoping to see a big laundry list of products and a complicated little chart explaining how I use them. I depend more on my food and training and only use the basics when it comes to supplements, so it's not hard to break down. I have a multivitamin twice a day, once after breakfast and another with a meal in the late afternoon or early evening. I think that's something everybody should include in their program, because foods don't always contain enough of the various vitamins and minerals our bodies need, especially someone who trains with weights a few times a week fairly intensely.

I also take BCAAs, or branched-chain amino acids, three times a day about 20 minutes before a meal when my stomach is empty. Those help keep your body in an anabolic state and are important whether you're trying to grow or attempting to hold onto your mass while you diet down. The only other two supplements I use are part of a meal-replacement shake I have four times a day. Two of those times are an hour before training and right after, and the other two times are just between solid meals to give me all the nutrients I need.  I have never been a big eater, so the stuff in the Mutant Smoothie help me out a lot.  What are the top-secret ingredients of a Mutant Smoothie, you may ask?

Into a blender go water, whey protein powder, L-Glutamine (very important for muscle recovery and immune function), oatmeal and cashews. This concoction is thicker than your average shake, I tell ya. In fact, you could probably use it to fill in those famous New York City potholes! Whenever I drink it in the gym, someone always looks at me like I'm crazy and asks, "What the hell is that crap you're drinking?" They see the chopped up nuts and oatmeal flakes floating around and think it's nasty. But I have everything in there I need: high-quality protein, complex carbs and essential fatty acids. It's also very filling, so I don't have to eat again for about 90 minutes. That's my entire supplement regimen and it works well for me.

 

            Should I Throw Weights Around?

            What's up, Mutant? It's great to see you finally turn pro and get some good publicity. I have been an NPC competitor since 1992 and always used to see your photos in NPC News in the shows you did. Every time, I'd say, "Jeez, this guy is great, how come he isn't a pro?" Anyway, I'm a little confused about how to do my reps. I learned how to train way back in the day from some guy who claims he used to be Mr. World or something, but he never could tell me what year it was, or the organization. He was probably full of shit. But one thing I did learn from him was to do my reps under control, with a good squeeze at the top and a slow negative. Recently I got the latest "Road to the Olympia" DVD from Mits Okabe, and almost none of the pros seem to train like that. They do their reps fast, with no pausing at the start or finish, and just pump them out like that. Since these guys are all twice my size, maybe that way is better? Is that how you do your reps?

            No, I definitely don't do my reps that way. My rep speed is faster or slower at times, depending on what body part I'm training and which exercise it is, but I do everything under control, emphasize the contraction and never just drop the weight on the negative stroke of the rep. I have seen the looser training style you're talking about. A lot of times these guys are using so much weight that without momentum, there's no way they could handle it. For instance, Ronnie's last video showed him doing barbell rows with 495. There was a lot of body English going on, but you couldn't say his form was sloppy. I have never really seen a pro who used sloppy form. 

Another thing I think I should point out is that sometimes it seems like Ronnie and others don't do the exercises through the full range of motion.  What's really going on is that their muscles are so big and thick, they either can't or don't need to use a full ROM. On curls, for instance, Ronnie goes up a little more than halfway, but that's all it takes for him to pump up his enormous biceps. I guess it's something you can't relate to until you get to a certain size.  But as far as your way of doing reps goes, I would keep that in your routine, but also mix things up every couple of weeks by doing more ballistic form and knocking out the reps faster. It's a different type of stimulation for the muscle fibers and the change will probably help you make some new gains.

 One other thing- the old guy probably was full of crap. I have met so many bodybuilders who claimed to have won the Mr. America or Universe and later came to find out they had never competed beyond the state or local level. One guy years ago even told me he won the Night of Champions and mentioned the year. Little did he know I was up on my trivia and told him, "Wow, Robby Robinson, you sure look different in the magazines!"

 

            Taboo Subject These Days

Over the last year or so, I notice I can't get any of the pros or top NPC national-level guys to talk to me about gear. I used to post on GetBig or Mayhem and ask them to critique my cycle, or give me some tips on how to use different things, or how to tell if stuff was real. But now they all stopped posting. I have a lot of e-mail addresses for them, so I've just been asking them directly, but I never hear back anymore. What the hell's going on? Why doesn't anybody want to help me anymore? What, are they afraid I'll get too huge and beat them or something?

            Well, I have some bad news if you were hoping that I was going to volunteer to be your drug guru. In case you've been living in a cave without Internet access over the past year, you should know that the DEA is really going after steroids in general, and bodybuilders who import and deal steroids in particular. Last year, at the Arnold Classic, over 20 subpoenas were served to various athletes and coaches. MD's own Anabolic Freak Dave Palumbo is incarcerated as we speak. Federal agents are poring over every bodybuilding magazine and website they can find every day, looking for anything that can lead them to more arrests for steroid distribution or even possession. So, anybody who talks openly about steroids right now is an idiot who's asking for legal trouble. 

Steroid use has always been a very personal and confidential subject among elite athletes, but now more than ever. Nobody wants to go to jail for doing the things they have to do in order to compete in their sport at the highest levels. I would recommend that you not even waste your time and put such athletes in a precarious position by asking about gear. Nobody knows these days who the person on the other end of that computer is or what their agenda may be. If you're really in need of good information, don't be so lazy as to expect the pros to tell you everything. Pick up a good reference book on the subject like Anabolics 2005 by MD writer William Llewellyn. He has purchase info at the end of his column.

One last thing- I have noticed that the guys who seem to put the most time and effort into trying to find the "perfect cycle" and locate the "best" drugs usually don't look all that impressive. They tend to put most of their faith in the gear and not enough effort into hard training and good eating. If that sounds like you, I suggest you stop worrying 24/7 about being on the best drugs, and instead focus on training and eating at your absolute best every day. The bodybuilders who think it's all about the drugs almost always suck.

 

            Pass the Broccoli or End Up Like Elvis

            How important are vegetables in a bodybuilder's diet? I know a lot of top bodybuilders don't even eat them and get all the vitamins and minerals they need in supplemental form. But I thought they were just good for fiber and all that. What do you think, Capriese? Do you eat your veggies? And you do eat them raw or cooked?

            I think vegetables are very important, especially if you're someone who eats a lot of meat like most bodybuilders do. It may be true that you can get all the same vitamins from pills and capsules, but you would be missing out on the "Roto Rooter" effect. Most vegetables contain cellulose, a substance the human body can't digest. Not to get too graphic, but a good example is the outside of a corn kernel. It comes out your body the same way it came in.

 Basically, what we're talking about is fiber. As it passes through your colon, it "scrapes" the sides off like a scrub brush and frees up things that may get stuck on its walls, such as accumulated waste products and undigested meat, and flushes them on down the pike so your body can eliminate them.  Otherwise, you could turn out like Elvis. Autopsy reports showed that he had about 40 pounds of a chalky, clay-like residue lining his colon. The King was big on peanut butter and banana sandwiches and cheeseburgers, but somehow I don't think he was capping those off with broccoli or asparagus. I confess I probably don't eat enough vegetables, but I do have at least a couple of servings every day, usually raw. Steaming the vegetables breaks down the cellulose so you don't get that "Roto Rooter" effect. Best choices for this are raw broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, cabbage, iceberg lettuce and carrots.  

 

Training and Lifestyle Journal

February, 2005

 

            Humbled by the Kind Words

            A couple of weeks ago, I got the issue of MD with the various write-ups on the Nationals from Flex Wheeler, Chad Nicholls and Hany Rambod. I want to thank them all for the kind words and compliments. That's the kind of thing that drives me to train harder on those days when I wonder why I do this. Hany took credit for coming up with the nickname "Mutant Murray," and rightfully so.  Thanks Mr. Pro Creator, it seems to be sticking! It was especially nice to read what Chad wrote, that I should have been the hands-down choice for the Overall, and that I will do more damage right away than Chris Cook in the IFBB.  It's really cool to have someone give you props like that. As for me being more ready for the pro shows than Cook at this stage, I guess we'll see if Chad's right in May. I hope so!

 

            Saw Arnold Run

            Like a lot of bodybuilders, I tuned in to watch "See Arnold Run" on A&E.  Overall, the movie was pretty corny, like I figured it would be. I thought Roland Kickinger made a perfect young Arnold, though. The accent was the same, he looked just like him facially and in the physique, everything. They definitely cast the right man. The older guy wasn't so convincing as the Governator, and all the campaign drama wasn't that interesting to me. I mean, we all know he won the election. But I did enjoy the scenes from 1974. They did a great job of showing how Arnold had a master plan for success and was determined not to let anything get in his way. You also saw his wild side as a young guy in his twenties. And of course, I got a kick out of seeing Mike Ergas and Bob Cicherillo as Franco and Lou Ferrigno. I saw Chris Cook in there too, as Dave Draper, but you had to really pay attention to catch him.

 

            Almost Time to Diet

            At the end of February, a couple of weeks away as I write this, it will be 12 weeks away from the New York Pro show on May 21, and that's when I start my diet. My weight is 235 right now, my usual off-season weight, which is where I figured I would start dieting from. I didn't have time since the Nationals at the end of November to put on any more size, so my focus for my pro debut is to come in shredded and hopefully, get some good callouts. That's never easy at a show this big, with over 40 guys in it. The poster is coming out soon and has me and Chris Cook on it, since this is our first "rematch" since the Nationals. If I can qualify for the Olympia, I will do it, but I know I really need a good off-season to thicken up my back to where it needs to be. As you probably know, it's very tough to make any improvements when you're dieting. Nonetheless, I am very excited about getting up on a pro stage at last. I've been dreaming about it for a long, long time, and I'm psyched that it's going to happen for the first time right here in my backyard. Talk to you next time!

 

            Capriese is available for appearances, seminars and consultations.  Serious inquiries may e-mail him directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Also, be sure to check out his website at http://www.capriesemurray.com/

 

            Got a question for Capriese? E-mail it to him in the "Ask MD" section of www.musculardevelopment.com.