Tom Prince
1997 NPC Nationals Heavy Weight And Overall Winner
Toughest Workout : Gold’s Gym; Boca Raton, Florida, 1997
After getting my head handed to me at the 1997 NPC USA Championship, training took on a whole new meaning. Every workout became the most important thing I did. I had to exorcise those demons, those voices which came from within and without: You blew your chance, baby. Why do you want to keep doing this? Hang it up, man. Even though I was eating less and doing more cardio then ever before, my workouts during the three months leading upto my redemption at the 1997 Nationals were the best of my life.
One workout stands above the rest, though. Florida in August – 85 degrees, picture perfect just like every other friggin day. I cant wait to get through the door and attack the weights. The inside of Gold’s Boca Raton is pretty dead around 7 am.; “I’m the atmosphere,” I would say when friends asked me why I trained there. Today is chest so I warm up with three high rep sets of seated machine press. My joints always tell me how my workouts are going to go, and right now they feel perfect.
My first exercise is the incline barbell press at the 45- degree angle. At 135, the bar feels like its flying out of my hands; 225 feels like 135;315 and its still easy. I load the bar up to 405 pounds and grab this big kid named Neil from behind the desk to give me a liftoff. At 6’6,280 pounds he’s the only guy here I trust to spot me. The most reps I have ever done with this weight are 8, but the first few seem to be easy. After completing number 11, I rack the bar and sit up. “Jesus Christ, Tom!” says Neil.
The next two sets are more of the same. The bar explodes upwards and everything “sits” in a perfect groove, like I’m using smith machine rather than the barbell. When everything is balanced just right, all you do is push. At 455 I bang out 7 reps, 2 more than what I have ever done before.. Lying on the bench before my next set I stare up at the bar. “there is nobody in this world doing this right now,”. “no one”. I triple 495 on my own before Neil helps me with 2 extra.
I sit up and Neil looms over me. “You think Orville Burk is in the gym doing 495? I ask.
“Naw,” he says. “Orville’s probably doin’ two and a quarter.”
Next comes the dumbbell press on a 30 degree incline. The thing I like about this gym is the dumbbell rack goes up to 200s, although from 130 they are coated with dust. I hoist up some 180s and do 12 more beautiful jack hammer reps. I am resting more now between sets, But this is how I love to train” slow and heavy. I don’t breathe hard or even get pumped, necessarily, but I get a real tight feeling in my shoulders, elbows and chest. Training heavy is like getting beat up : things get sore and tight and your joints start locking up.
After five minutes, I grab the 200-pounders and wrestle eight or nine reluctant reps from them. Since I can’t go any higher, I stick with those for a few more sets. God, These things are hard to lug around. Just picking them up, resting them on my knees, sitting back and getting them up to my shoulders is back-breaking work. I finish my last rep and lower the weights, but one in my right hand misses my knee and drops, clipping the side of my foot. Later, I’d find my sock soaked with blood.
I always plan my first two exercises and then go on instinct, and today I head back to the seated machine press, this time putting six plates on a side. Even at that weight the machine gives the stabilizer muscles in my shoulders a rest. All I am doing is pushin’.
I am starting to fade, but I have got one more exercise to go, or rather two : a superset of weighted dips and cable crossovers. Two plates hang from my belt as I bend my elbows and descend into my first rep. All I feel is tightness spreading across from shoulder to shoulder. Damn, this is heavy. I push at the bottom but the tightness clamps down hard one me. I get of, remove the weights and stretch my pecs for a couple of minutes. I get back on and somehow do 16 or 17 reps.
Without resting, I go the cable stacks to do crossovers, squeezing each one hard at the bottom. Combined with dips, these really start to pump my pecs. Now it’s a mental game: okay these reps are high, but the weight is a little bit lighter, so it isn’t gonna be that hard. It burns, But you know the weight’s gonna move if you push, so try to keep the burn going.
After three super sets, I leave. Four days later, so would the soreness.
