Cedric McMillan - Will He Send Them Nuts in Brazil?
Cedric McMillan - Will He Send Them Nuts in Brazil?
Ever since he turned pro in sensational style at the 2009 NPC Nationals Cedric McMillan he ensconced himself as one of bodybuilding’s biggest enigmas. He has all the weaponry but too many times seems unable, or unwilling, to blend that weaponry with modern contest condition. This week (may 29-31) he enters the Arnold Classic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Two years ago he entered this contest but was late for the competitors meeting and didn’t compete. The bodybuilding community hopes that not only he competes but that once he nails the type of condition needed at this level of performance. Cedric is a unique individual who does things his way. In this feature we look at the boy who became the man and then one of the best bodybuilders in the world.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF CEDRIC McMILLAN
“You got a gift, son. But it’s not enough! You gotta develop yourself. Rely too much on your own gift, and you’ll fail.” —The Movie was called “The Natural,” and those were a father’s words to his son, a boy blessed with unimaginable talent, otherworldly potential, and all the tools to be one of the very best to play the game.
In the real world, endings aren’t always happy, and little boys don’t always have a Dad to push them, to guide them. In 1977 a boy named Cedric was born in Lancaster, South Carolina, a small town of only a few thousand. He was raised by his Mom, a courageous woman, who occasionally depended on the welfare system to buy baby food and diapers for a boy who was born with an incredible gift, one that wouldn’t be discovered until many years later.
As Cedric got older, he understood that he had a Dad, but he would never actually know him. “Maybe once every six years he would come by the house to see my momma,” Cedric explains. “I would catch a glance of him before she cussed him out at the front door, but never spent time with him or anything like that. He was never around. All my life it was just me and my momma.”
Anyone who has ever entered the world of competitive bodybuilding understands that success is typically born from a competitive spirit, an appetite to succeed. Let’s face it, the hunger to win is the foundation of a champion, unless your name is Cedric McMillan, a guy who confesses that winning is not what drives him, admitting that you won’t find a single trophy on display in his home.
“As a kid, I never played any organized sports. That might be from never having a dad around. I never really got to experience what it was like to play sports, or develop any type of competitive spirit. I remember a time, when I was in junior high, a football coach came to me to see if I wanted to play football. I was intimidated. I didn’t wanna be the guy who didn’t catch the ball, and then we lose, and it’s all my fault. I was more into just doing stuff by myself.”
Cedric speaks openly about how the absence of a father deprived him of the lessons that most young boys typically learn about competition, positive reinforcement, and the ability to navigate the concept of failure. But there was one day, as a young boy, that may have forever altered Cedric’s life.
“I can remember when I was five years old, watching TV with my Mom. She was changing channels and a bodybuilding competition was on. I didn’t understand it. I just seen this woman dancing onstage in a bathing suit. I said, Ma’, that lady can’t dance, she just trying to show off her muscles. Eventually, the men came out. When I seen those big bodybuilders, that’s the first time I’d ever seen a muscle man. Ever since then I’ve been in love with bodybuilding and I was amazed by muscular physiques.”
Wrestling With His Fears
Despite an avoidance of team sports, young Cedric found an activity that he was quite good at. “When I was 10 years old, we lived in an apartment complex in town. Me and the other boys there, we all used to fight and wrestle a lot.” As he speaks of his proficiency at wrestling, he reveals a rare air of confidence: “They had a wrestling camp for a week at school, when I was in the fourth grade, with four days of training and the last day was a freestyle wrestling tournament. I was really good and was considered really strong, I guess from all the push-ups and sit-ups I did. I always won unless I was against a kid that was already a trained wrestler. They might beat me by points, but I would manhandle and slam the F*&K out of them!”
But the fun didn’t last long for Cedric. “The next year, the only wrestling they had was team wrestling, where each kid earned points for the whole team.” Cedric explains, “That was intimidating to me. Just like other team sports, I didn’t want to be the one that made the team lose. I’d rather do something where it’s just me, and nobody else depending on me, with the possibility of letting them down.”
First Look
When he first stepped on a competitive bodybuilding stage, in the novice division of the 2003 NPC Palmetto Cup, he revealed the kind of overall structure that comes along once a decade. Although he was still a stringy 205 pounds at 6’1”, his wide shoulders and well-crafted proportions caught the eye of those who know a good thing when they see it. In bodybuilding, muscle can be built, but world-class form requires the assistance of a higher power. To put it simply, you either have it, or you don’t. In Cedric’s case, we were witnessing something that had bodybuilding insiders, including the publisher of Muscular Development, scratching their heads in disbelief.
As he continued to compete, winning title after title, the expectations began to mount, and the pressure to live up to them was fast becoming a burden. Expectations can be a motivator, but they can also be an enormous weight on the shoulders of someone who spent his entire life avoiding the competitive spotlight. Most bodybuilders thrive on praise, but Cedric is wired differently. “I just wish I could say to everyone individually, that it’s coming, I promise. Just give me a little bit of time, and if it’s not here YET, don’t be disappointed in me.”
He Built a Gym … in Iraq!
Cedric’s story took a turn during high school when he made the decision to lay the groundwork for enlistment in the Army. “I realized that there was no real plan for me, and I didn’t have any skills. So I used the Army as a way of getting the skills to have a career. I signed up for the Army Reserves and I started going to reserve duty one weekend a month while I was in the 11th grade.”
He not only got the skills needed to pursue a job in telecommunications, but he also got deployed to Iraq in 2003. “While we were training to go to Iraq, we did a lot of training on basic infantry tactics and my superiors noticed how good I was at that type of stuff, so they took me away from the communications section and put me in charge of this team called a Quick Reaction Force. Part of our duty as QRF was to patrol the highway and support convoys as they traveled through our area. We had to stay in this small outpost in the middle of no where.”
Cedric reminds us that necessity is the mother of invention. “That’s where I built a gym from just wood and parts from broken-down vehicles. I made 13 pieces of equipment. It took me about a month to build it, but that was my gym. People would come by and take pictures of it.”
These days, people mostly take pictures of Cedric’s world-class physique, one that has drawn comparisons to the likes of Lee Haney, and believe it or not, the eight-time Mr. Olympia has taken notice. Haney tells us, “Cedric has one of the most pleasing physiques in bodybuilding. Once he gets his peak to a science, he will be king.”
The Legend Grows
In 2009, Cedric showed up at the NPC Nationals as a relative unknown. Although he had garnered some attention the previous year when he won the Junior USAs, Staff Sergeant McMillan was hardly a commodity on the national bodybuilding scene. He entered the contest as a super heavyweight and by the time the evening was over, the 32-year-old stood alone as the NPC’s Overall National Champion— a title that typically signals the start of a formidable career in the IFBB’s pro ranks, a title that Lee Haney himself used as a springboard 27 years earlier.
Today, as he inches toward his 38th birthday, some skeptics have questioned whether Cedric is young enough to still be considered the future of his sport. “I think I’m still fairly young as far as my development goes.” Cedric explains, “I feel like my body is still fresh. I feel like I have plenty of room to grow.”
Perspective
No matter how far Cedric progresses as a bodybuilder, his perspective on the big picture is unlike most of the men he shares the stage with. It’s not uncommon to hear bodybuilders refer to their sport as a form of battle. Many of our greatest champions have been credited with having a particular killer instinct. But you won’t hear any of that from Cedric. When discussing those who like to compare bodybuilding to war, he offers this commentary:
“I just can’t equate going to war, to standing up beside a bunch of other half-naked dudes in a beauty pageant. We’re not tackling each other, it’s not freakin MMA, we’re just standing up trying’ to look beautiful … and I just can’t equate that to war, or needing a killer instinct.”
A devout family man, Cedric cares deeply about his wife of ten years and their three children, a love that grew even deeper when a devastating car accident nearly ended the lives of his entire family, a topic that Cedric, an extremely private person, prefers not to talk about.
2015
It’s a big year for Cedric. His competitive season started in Columbus at the Arnold Classic and finishing fourth he quickly became a lightning rod for what a winning physique looked like when Arnold Schwarzenegger at his Sunday seminar hailed Cedric as the winner and the blueprint for what a bodybuilder should look like, while at the same time blasting all the big guts on view. The other view was that Cedric just was not in the condition needed to win a pro show and that he keeps proving he is not hungry enough.
“Anyone who questions my hunger doesn’t really know me.” Cedric clarifies, “I keep all my drive and emotional energy inside and under control. I’ve never had a goal of trying to prove to anyone how much I love bodybuilding, because ever since I started working out it was MY thing. I did it because I loved it, not to impress anybody or not to try to look good for anybody else. It was, and remains what I love to do.”
From Columbus he goes on to the Arnold Classic Brazil with the burning question being, will he finally nail condition? Can he finally deliver? That depends on who you ask. But in the case of Cedric, he won’t be asking any of us about the expectations WE have for HIM. For a guy who started with very little, bodybuilding is a personal journey. He competes for reasons that most of his rivals couldn’t possibly understand. He’s been deployed in Iraq. He nearly lost his entire family. He was raised in the projects, without a father. He remains an active-duty, full-time leadership instructor in the United States Army, a job that often calls for 18-hour days. And, to this day, when his Mom isn’t looking, he leaves money in her house to help make things a bit easier on the woman who raised him all by herself.
“Bodybuilding is mine. Bodybuilding is in my heart and I do it because I love it. It is a goal for me to be successful at representing what bodybuilding was all about back when I fell in love with it.”
So the next time the heart of Cedric McMillan is called into question, you may want to look directly into his eyes first. And when you do, you’ll discover the kind of person that conquers mountains … and the kind of courage that can take him as far as he wants to go.
To learn how Cedric did in the Arnold Classic Brazil (May 29-31) stay tuned to Musculardevelopment.com for constant updates, play-by-plays, video previews, wraps ups and interviews.
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CEDRIC MCMILLAN: A LIGHTING ROD FOR OUR TIMES