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ARTICLE BY ERIC DEXHEIMER, PHOTOS BY MARK MANGER
By the time Arvada native Christine Pomponio-Pate arrives at the prestigious Arnold bodybuilding show in Columbus, Ohio, in early March, she'll have been intensively preparing her physique for close to four months. Her body-fat percentage will be near 9 percent -- between a half and a third of that of the average fit young woman. The muscles in her shoulders, back, arms and legs will stand out like the cords on a cut-away doll used to teach anatomy. Her muscle bellies -- the round part of the muscle where it looks like a snake swallowed a rabbit -- will be pumped and full, defined by edges as sharp as a countertop's.
Because muscles appear clearer on a depleted body, she will feel weak from food and water deprivation. "We try to dehydrate ourselves near to death and then hope we don't pass out on stage," she says.
Pomponio-Pate's physical training has been more intense than most people would understand. The former engineer's assistant has been lifting weights and burning thousands of calories during cardio workouts nearly every day. She'll gradually cut carbohydrates out of her meals until two days before the contest, when she'll stop eating anything of substance altogether. She'll be cranky and irritable. She will have started to dream about hamburgers and cups of ranch dressing.
In the final couple of days leading up to the competition, she'll also cut back drastically on water and sodium. Both are enemies of the bodybuilder. They swell the tissues, which can obscure the muscles and definition under the skin -- an undesirable condition known in the sport as "spillover." As the day of the show approaches, she'll cut her water intake in half. On the actual day of the contest, she'll merely sip at a water bottle and take an herbal supplement or over-the-counter drug such as Midol to dry her body out further, hoping to produce the coveted effect bodybuilders call "tight."
The rest of Pomponio-Pate's preparation is literally skin deep. Over time, bodybuilders have decided that darker skin looks better under the harsh glare of stage lights; each year the appropriate color seems to get a shade darker. "Three days out, we start layering on the Pro Tan," says Carla Sanchez, Pomponio-Pate's trainer. The lotion, which is more of a stain, sells for $26 a bottle.
Sanchez www.carlasanchez.com/stage will help her client apply anywhere between four and eight layers of the color. Putting on one's own Pro Tan is considered foolish. Last year, Pomponio-Pate recalls, a contestant's tan was off at a major competition; she looked wan. "The judges said her color might've dropped her two places," she says. The morning of the show, she'll add a separate coat of Dream Tan, a pudding-like cream that creates a bronze or gold shimmer.
Having been coiffed and made up for two hours, she'll carefully pull on her one-piece swimsuit custom-tailored by Christine Marsh, who sews bodybuilding costumes in a small southeast Denver storefront. Her suits, crusted with Swarovski crystals, sell for as much as $500 and are famous all over the country. Pomponio-Pate's suit is black, wet-looking and extremely high-cut.
Once backstage, she will spend several minutes lifting dumbbells or tugging at tubular stretch cords; the short, intense workout helps fill the muscles with blood, making them look plump and large. She'll eat a handful of oat bran, to make her body look fuller, and some honey, to make her veins stand out.
She'll put on clear, open-toed plastic shoes with four-inch heels. Pretty, but inconspicuous. A poorly selected shoe hurts more than a perfect one helps, so contestants err on the side of caution. Finally, Pomponio-Pate will pin her number to her left side and step onto the stage.
At the better-known pro shows, such as the Ms. Olympia, the women are called out one at a time. They begin with a "relaxed" pose. "Of course," Pomponio-Pate notes, "it's not relaxed at all. It's sexy, but flexing a little. Everyone does it differently. I usually have one arm on my hip, one off. Some girls have two arms on their hips.
"Then you do your presentation: You show what you're bringing to the stage. A side pose, a back pose, another side, a curtsy and you're done."
Pomponio-Pate, who is only 5'1", will flex with her legs straight in the hopes of appearing taller. She'll arch her back and stick out her butt -- "so my upper body appears bigger," she explains. Everyone flares her lats -- the latissimus dorsi, the back muscles between the armpit and the ribs that form the crucial 'V' shape. "And, of course, always smiling," she adds.
Contestants will next turn to the right. Pomponio-Pate pivots with her right foot behind the left and then twists, giving judges a chance to observe the "cuts," or indentations, in her arms and the curves in her butt. Then she and the other contestants will turn their backs to the judges. Pomponio-Pate will move her long hair to the front of her shoulder, over her collarbone. As she flares her lats, she'll also lean just a little bit toward the judges to make her back seem even larger.
"You never relax," she continues. "You're polished and graceful and posing. You're always flexing. The lights are so hot. It's like a workout. Your back hurts when you're done. My arms fall asleep out there, and you're water-depleted, so you usually start to cramp."
When she's done, Pomponio-Pate will go backstage, change into her custom two-piece bathing suit and do it all over again.
On a recent weekday afternoon, Pomponio-Pate arrives at the General Nutrition Center at the Denver Pavilions to do a meet-and-greet for one of her sponsors, Isatori. On a card table just inside the entrance to the store, she lays out a pile of Meta-Cel supplement samples, as well as a pile of glossy eight-by-ten photos of her bikini-clad self.
A series of recent successes in major shows have turned Pomponio-Pate into a recognized physique star, if not a superstar. Last fall she placed sixth at the Ms. Olympia contest, one of the two biggest shows in the country. A few weeks earlier, she was asked to compete in the Arnold, probably the most important contest of the year. Named after you-know-who, the competition, which the governor still attends, is invite-only. Pomponio-Pate was one of only fifteen women in her category to get the call.
"Getting invited to the Arnold is huge," says Taylor, who has followed Pomponio-Pate's career from amateur to pro. "And to finish in the top ten of the Olympia -- it's amazing. This is about as good as it gets."
A couple of fans who've been awaiting Pomponio-Pate's arrival at the store start to trickle in. It's easy to see why they're here. Pomponio-Pate is strikingly good-looking, with long, dark hair, a classic inverted-triangle face with high cheekbones, deep dimples and perfect teeth. For a sizable portion of the male population, her figure -- large-busted, wide-shouldered and rail-thin -- would qualify as a perfect ten.
She is also unfailingly polite and personable, standing to greet each visitor. Three young men approach her slowly, made suddenly shy by their proximity to celebrity. Pomponio-Pate, however, is as friendly as can be. She smiles and shakes each of their hands.
"Have you guys tried this? Meta-Cel?" she asks, nodding to the table. "When I was competition-dieting last year, I gained ten pounds of lean muscle."
"Damn," says one guy.
A second looks intently at the photo and then up at Pomponio-Pate. "This picture doesn't do you justice," he says.
The three stick around long enough to get autographed photos, then leave.
A woman in sweats approaches next. "Can you tell me what you do for abs?" she asks. "I'm doing Body for Life."
"Well," Pomponio-Pate answers, "I don't really do obliques, 'cause you don't want that thickness. You want the 'V.' You've gotta be careful."
The woman picks up an eight-by-ten. "You're really cut in this photo," she says. "How'd you get down to this?" Pomponio-Pate laughs.
"Nine months of dieting."
Some cops stroll in a few minutes later. A couple of them recognize Pomponio-Pate and ask how she's doing. "I'm crabby," she says. "Hungry." She nods toward the supplement table. "Taking a lot of this stuff to stay awake. I'm smiling, but I don't know why."
During a lull, Julia, a supplement representative at GNC, walks over. "Why don't you eat something," she says, more directive than question.
"I know, I know." Pomponio-Pate takes out a tape measure that's sitting on the card table in front of her. "Let me see how fat I am," she says, winding it around her 24-inch waist.
A middle-aged man walks in. He's scruffy, unshaven, dressed in holey jeans and carrying a large, dirty backpack.
"How are you?" Pomponio-Pate asks.
The man stares. "Well, I'm seein' what I come to see," he says, adding, "I'm unemployed right now." He asks Pomponio-Pate where she works out. She answers vaguely: "Oh, different places."
"If you ever want to, you know, just work out or something...or maybe go out to dinner..."
"Oh, I couldn't do that," Pomponio-Pate says, showing him her wedding ring. "My husband wouldn't like it. But thank you. Thank you."
"I get that quite a bit," she sighs as he walks out with an autographed picture. "I just try to be careful." She prepares for a snack: oat-bran cakes made with egg whites and sprayed with non-fat imitation butter.
She's allowed two of them a day. She stays up preparing all her food for the following day, although it doesn't always look wonderful in the light of day. "I get sick of chicken," she says. "That's what I get sick of most. I mean, you can use spices -- until it's time to stop the sodium." The supplement rep comes back with a Starbucks tea for Pomponio-Pate and a big whipped-cream confection for one of the men. Pomponio-Pate looks longingly at the frothy drink. "What's that yummy-looking thing?"
The thirty-year-old Pomponio-Pate has always enjoyed pushing her body. Although athletic and good at most sports she tried, her primary sweaty interest was soccer, which she played for ten years.
Following the lead of her brother, who'd gotten into competitive bodybuilding, she began working out with weights in high school. In 1994, however, a serious car accident brought her workouts to an abrupt halt. The crash tore off her lips and knocked out most of her teeth. She endured numerous reconstructive surgeries, three on her lips alone, which were formed using skin from the inside of her mouth; she also received a new set of porcelain teeth. Following her recovery, she began working out again in earnest.
"A part of it was self-consciousness," she acknowledges. "Part was, 'Damn it, I'm lucky to walk and move, and I'd better use that.' I'm not going to sit around and be lazy if I can move.
" Pomponio-Pate entered, and won, her first women's fitness competition in 1999, with a Michael Jackson-themed dance routine. A few months later she won the category again at the Colorado State Championships. When she tried to go national that summer, however, she finished ninth of ten.
"I didn't have any idea what I was doing," she admits. "I didn't know how to diet at all; I was trying to do a combination of carbs and protein and fats. I didn't know any of the little tricks to get super-lean." She also saw what she would be up against if she wanted to compete against the top women. All had trainers and choreographers.
Over the next couple of years, Pomponio-Pate jumped in and out of competitions, doing well in some -- sixth at the 2000 Nationals in New York -- and poorly in others. Fatigued and frustrated, she took all of 2002 off.
The following year, she moved into the figure category, grateful not to have to work up a fitness routine. Yet in several shows she placed only in the middle of the pack. The problem, apparently, was her shape. "The judges I talked to said I needed to be leaner," she recalls. "I was too thick, too muscular."
Every day, millions of women struggle to shave a couple of pounds and a few inches off their bodies -- the foundation for a multibillion-dollar dieting industry. For Pomponio-Pate, however, it was simply a matter of deciding what shape she wanted and becoming it. She buffed up her shoulders and arms and sculpted her body with diet, pushing herself to get ever leaner. "It's a lifestyle," says trainer Sanchez. "It's not something you do for twelve weeks and then stop. Hanging out at a bar on weekends, going out -- it just doesn't fit with what we're doing."
In photos from 2003 and 2004, the difference is clear. In the former, Pomponio-Pate is buff and muscular, clearly a gym rat. A year later, she is so defined, with her muscles and tendons so obvious, that her skin is almost an afterthought.
The shape-shift paid off. In May 2004, Pomponio-Pate placed sixth at the California Pro Figure show. At New York's Pro Figure, she placed second, which guaranteed her a trip to that fall's Ms. Olympia, where she captured sixth and an invite to the Arnold. Along the way she has also snagged supplement endorsements -- the pay is about $2,000 a month -- and a couple of plum photo shoots, including a back-page promo in Flex magazine and an August "glute" spread ("Hard and Round in 39 Days!") in Planet Muscle. The margin between a competition-ready woman and one who is sick is paper-thin. Medical studies have noted a high incidence of eating disorders among female bodybuilders. Sanchez, however, says she keeps a close eye on her clients' diet and exercise to ensure they don't cross that line. She points out that none of her clients has ever stopped menstruating while training -- an early clue that the line between leanness and illness has been crossed. Sanchez also notes that Pomponio-Pate has succeeded while staying natural, unlike some of her competition. "I'm not saying every competitor who's ripped is on drugs," she says. "But if anybody thinks there isn't any out there, they're wrong. It's definitely used in fitness and figure categories. It's at the amateur level and it's at the pro level."
At the Point Athletic Club in Lakewood, Pomponio-Pate is sweating through a workout on the StairMaster. There's less than a month to go until the Arnold, and she still has more than ten pounds to lose from her 113-pound body. Over a post-workout breakfast of a tiny box of raisins and scrambled egg whites with Tabasco, she reviews pictures of her old, 2003 body, and her retrofitted 2004 one.
She doesn't like what she sees. "I feel like I'm here" -- pointing to an old picture -- "instead of here." Still, she forces herself to shuffle through the pile. "I need to look at these to motivate myself," she says.
"The judges notice the smallest thing," she adds with a trace of irritation. "If you had your hair done but you have visible roots, it's like, You're not prepared; you're not polished.'"
The workouts and food deprivation are getting to her. This morning, on the way to the health club, she stopped at a green light, then drove through a red. Too few carbs will do that to you, she says; without them, you start to get foggy.
She's also tired of explaining why she does what she does to people who don't get it. "If my dad sees me and I'm crabby and hungry, he'll say, Just eat.' And I'm like, 'You don't understand. I didn't do all this for sixteen weeks just to eat.'"
"It's not as psycho as it sounds," she continues. "It makes my willpower stronger -- it makes me stronger as a person. There's always something to work on, and I think that's good. It keeps me working harder. I mean, I'm definitely happy with myself."
This article originally appeared in the February 24, 2005 issue of Westword published by Denver Westword LLC. The complete article is available at www.westword.com
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