IFBB Bodybuilder Seth Feroce Returns to Competition
Seth Feroce Returns to Competition
A Bodybuilding Prodigy Who Won His Pro Card in 7 Months is Back!
Seth Feroce hit the bodybuilding scene like a meteor in 2009 – winning his first ever show in March of that year and then at November’s NPC Nationals sensationally earning his pro card. Then just like the proverbial, meteor having won his first pro show, the 2010 Europa Supershow and placing mid table in a couple of 2011 contests he departed the scene seemingly never destined to return. But last month came new news that Feroce is ready to get back into serious flexing action. While we await that development here’s a recap of his first foray into the pro ranks.
Who the Hell Does This?
Seth Feroce competed in his first bodybuilding contest on March 14, 2009 in Kentucky. On November 21 of the same year, he made his first bid for a pro card at the NPC Nationals in Hollywood, Florida— and left with the light-heavyweight title and his pro card.
Who turns professional that quickly in our sport? Just to find someone who was able to do it in so few shows, I had to go back to Mike Matarazzo. Mike won a regional show in Boston called the Gold’s Classic in 1989, then reappeared two years later to blow away favorites like Flex Wheeler and Chris Cormier to win the 1991 USA. That took two years, and he may have even done one or two AAU shows as an amateur.
Phil Heath is another guy they talk about as having turned pro at lightning speed. In fact, Phil took two years and won the USA as his fourth contest. To the best of my knowledge as someone who has followed the sport of bodybuilding for a quarter-century, no man has ever accomplished what Seth did. Then again, less than two months before, we saw Jay Cutler regain his Mr. Olympia title. That had never been done before in the 44-year history of the Olympia either, so perhaps 2009 was simply a year of magical possibility.
“Don’t expect to go there and win, kid.”
The NPC Nationals is the toughest and most prestigious amateur bodybuilding contest in our country, with past winners including Shawn Ray, Lee Haney, Kevin Levrone, Jay Cutler, Branch Warren, and Victor Martinez. It’s commonplace for athletes to do the show a dozen times or more and never win their class.
At the very least, most guys average two or three trips before they get a pro card. So it’s not surprising that Seth encountered a tremendous amount of doubt from many who warned him not to get his hopes up about winning on his first try. “Even guys at my own gym were trying to set me up for the disappointment they were sure I was going to experience,” he tells us. “They would tell me not to think I was going to win my first time at the Nationals, because it just doesn’t happen.”
They assured him that honor would go to someone like Tamer El Guindy, Branden Ray, or Al Auguste— men who had been at the national level for a while already and had thus ‘paid their dues.’ But like all great champions, Feroce refused to buy into their negativity. “I thought, why not? I knew I was capable of winning. I wasn’t about to train for the top five. Once you start thinking like that, you’ve already lost. My entire prep— every workout, every cardio session, every diet meal— was geared toward first place. I knew that placing well my first time would be nice, but I would not be satisfied with anything less than a win.”
Seth pointed out that one man at Webb’s World of Fitness actually had faith in him all along— owner Monte Webb, himself a former Mr. Pittsburgh. “Monte told me he had been around long enough, competing since the early ’80s, to know what a champion looked like— and I had it.”
Otherwise I would have been a nervous wreck by the time I got to Florida.”
Family Matters
To really appreciate just how supportive Seth Feroce’s family is, you would have had to be sitting where I was when he won, which was in the back row of the press section up front. His wife Elise was jumping up and down and screaming like she had just hit the Powerball jackpot, and it sounded like there were another couple dozen more family members going ballistic. It turns out there were only seven in all: his wife, parents, brother Jacob, and his lifting partner Rege and his wife and child.
“Looking out at them when I won, it was Rege that I noticed the most,” Seth tells us. “He’s a pretty quiet guy, so seeing him so excited and yelling was kind of funny.” Not only did Seth’s dad pass on his own gifted genetics to his boy along with his old weight set, he also bought him his first gym membership 10 years ago and also more recently sprang for a StepMill so Seth could simply wake up and do his early-morning cardio without having to drive anywhere.
“My parents are awesome, but my dad is really something else,” Feroce says. “He gets every issue of MD the day it comes out and looks for pictures of me!” Obviously wife Elise is Seth’s rock, but over the Nationals weekend it was his brother Jake who stepped up to the plate and made sure everything went smoothly.
“From the time we landed in Florida until I won, Jake never left my side,” Seth relates. “If I needed any food, he ran off and got it, even if it meant driving around town. He wouldn’t even let me carry any of my own bags. Jake just wanted me to relax and focus on winning.” It wasn’t until the show was finally over and the family was celebrating with some pizza that Seth realized just how much Jacob had put his brother’s needs above his own.
“He was putting that pizza away like he had never eaten before,” Seth says. “It turns out he hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast, about 16 hours before that. I felt terrible, but Jake assured me it was fine. That was my day, and as my brother he wanted to make sure it went perfectly.”
“It’s All A Blur”
As much as Seth would love to be able to re-live each moment of the weekend he turned pro, he admits that much of it simply happened too fast to process. “It was weird, because I would be laying down backstage just waiting and waiting, and time was crawling by in slow motion,” he begins. “But once the expeditors told us to start getting ready, it was like time sped up into fast motion.”
One thing he will never forget is the camaraderie he shared with the eventual Super-heavyweight and Overall Champion, Cedric McMillan, who apparently has a great sense of humor. “Cedric would be telling me stuff like, I’m gonna eat you up onstage, you little munchkin! You know, just busting my balls, but laughing while he said it. When we were up there for the Overall comparisons and posedown, he was whispering stuff to me like, I’m gonna getcha! He’s just a funny, cool guy.”
Seth was also surprised to see how nice the favorites to win the class, Tamer, Branden, and Al, were to him backstage. “There had been a lot of trash-talking online and things had been said about how they were going to crush me or whatever, but none of that had ever come from them— just their fans, stirring up shit. The guys were super cool to me and treated me like we had known each other for years. I have nothing but respect for all of them.”
This Kid Needs a Break
The big question once a guy turns pro is always, “What’s next?” When you will make your pro debut? Seth really wanted to compete in the New York Pro this coming May. “It’s the next most prestigious contest after the Olympia and the Arnold, and it’s close enough to Pittsburgh so that all my friends and family could go to it.”
But Seth had started dieting for his first contest in December of 2008, almost a full year before the Nationals. He had hardly had a break after the Pittsburgh show, because he had immediately set to work making the necessary improvements for the ‘fast track to a pro card’ plan to work. But even the fact that his mind and body do need a substantial break to recover from the rigors of so much training, cardio, and intense dieting wouldn’t be enough to stop Seth from competing in May.
What did ultimately sway his decision was knowing that he wouldn’t have adequate time to improve his physique in such a brief span of months. “I am still very much a fan of the sport, and what I find exciting is when guys show up looking better than ever before,” Seth explains. “We all saw Jay at the Olympia and the reaction he got. Branch was another man who brought something new and improved to the table. Heath has been very calculating in choosing his shows so that he gets better at each one, and that’s the example I want to follow.”
Seth has a whole list of what he needs to work on that includes more muscle maturity, better quad separation and deeper cross-striations, a wider back with more development in the lower lats, bigger arms, and a tighter waist. Feroce also knows he needs more thickness in his upper chest.
“I plan on getting onstage at the next 202 Showdown with Kevin English and Dave Henry,” he informs us. “And you don’t stand next to those two without a very thick and complete chest.” So for now, Seth Feroce is still processing his meteoric rise through the amateur ranks and tentatively looking at a fall show in 2010 to qualify for the big 202 event in Las Vegas over the Olympia weekend.
At only 25, it literally boggles the mind to wonder how good he will ultimately be. No man has ever ripped though the amateur ranks with such lighting speed, and the improvements he made from May to November of 2009 were significant. Now, with a full off-season ahead of him, what changes is Seth Feroce capable of making? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out. And of course, the truly awesome aspect about the Seth Feroce story is that we have been able to bring it to you right here in MD as it unfolds. And that’s where you can continue following the rise of this hard-working, humble young man from Pittsburgh with the physique so outstanding that it blew away the NPC Nationals on his first try.
Training Split
Monday: Chest, light triceps, calves
Tuesday: Back, light biceps, abs
Wednesday: Quads
Thursday: OFF
Friday: Shoulders
Saturday: a.m.: Heavy arms/p.m.: Hams
Sunday: OFF