Frank Zane: in reaching the top of his sport, no bodybuilder fused mind and body like Frank Zane did

Muscle & Fitness, Jan, 2005 by Jeff O'Connell

A QUARTER CENTURY AFTER WINNING bodybuilding's defining contest, the Mr. Olympia, three times straight (1977-79), Frank Zane seems a figure oddly out of tune with his sport. Even then, the former middle-school math teacher shunned convention, developing the magnifying-glass focus of a yogi, honing his discipline to rival that of Bruce Lee and entering trancelike states that would extend one set of roman-chair sit-ups for up to 2 1/2 hours. Today, at 62, he remains an eccentric of the highest order, playing blues harmonica in clubs after the Arnold Classic, heeding omens and chronicling the details of his workouts in whimsical verse.

Ironically, Zane was once bodybuilding's standard-bearer, an archetype for the physique ideal presented in the 1950s by Steve Reeves, whose look hearkened back to guys the ancient Greeks immortalized in marble. It was a look that still held its own in the 1970s, even after having been run under the tire treads of Arnold Schwarzenegger's muscular onslaught earlier in the decade. The famous critic Jon Landau once wrote, "I have seen the future of rock 'n' roll, and his name is Bruce Springsteen," upon first encountering the performer in a club, and iron game spectators rhapsodized similarly about seeing Zane onstage.

They were dead wrong, as evidenced in part by Shawn Ray's inability to vanquish bigger foes throughout the '90s. Today, the name Zane is invoked nostalgically by those trying to articulate what they don't like about bodybuilding circa 2004 or as a code phrase for symmetry and proportion. No elaboration required.

As someone who also played David to the Goliaths of his day, Ray respects Zane for beating overwhelming odds. Only for Zane, as a scrawny 140-pounder growing up in the mid-'50s, there was no real precedent--just pictures of Reeves, Reg Park and Bill Pearl that seemed larger than life on the pages of Joe Weider's Muscle Builder magazine (a progenitor of this one). That didn't keep Zane from visualizing himself on the sands of Muscle Beach, but the townsfolk in tiny Edwardsville, Pennsylvania, hooted at that dream. "Everybody said, 'What are you doing that for?'" he says. "Everybody shunned it. Even my high school typing teacher said, 'Zane, you'll never learn to type because your fingers are muscle-bound.' I'm thinking, Thanks a lot, you sonofabitch."

If Zane was taking names back in his high school typing class, imagine the fuel more significant critics were adding to the fire burning inside. He knew payback would require patience, given the limits imposed by his genetics, so it was a gradual climb from 1961, when he placed 17th at the 1961 Mr. Pennsylvania, to 1968, when he was standing onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, being crowned Mr. America.

A week later in Miami, where Zane had traveled to compete in the Mr. Universe, Joe Weider stood beside him and gestured toward an impressive newcomer with a forbidding last name. "I remember him saying before the show, 'Arnold is going to be the greatest bodybuilder of all time,'" recalls Zane. "I'm thinking, What about me, Joe?"

FROM ADVERSARIES TO ROOMMATES

Zane handed Schwarzenegger a rare defeat that day, but there were no hard feelings between those kindred spirits. In fact, Zane slept on Schwarzenegger's spare cot when Weider fulfilled his childhood dream and brought him west to Muscle Beach for two weeks of photo shoots. Sold, he returned home, quit his job, stuffed his worldly possessions into his car and headed back to California in the summer of 1969, this time to stay.

"We were real tight," says Zane of the camaraderie evident in the photos taken of that scene, most of them clicked by the late Artie Zeller. "I guess we didn't expect to beat Arnold, but it wasn't about that. We were into the training; the competition was just something you peaked for. There was no money involved, and I had to get a job teaching to make a living, but we'd go to the gym twice a day."

By the time Zane was ready to snatch his sport's highest prize, years of visualization, positive self-talk and meditation had made his central nervous system an incredibly efficient link between his mind and his muscles. "Two weeks before the 1977 Mr. Olympia, Robby Robinson would have won that show hands down," says Zane. "But on the day of the show, I beat him because he was off and I was on. Anybody can get in shape, and anyone can give a peak performance. The secret to really being a champion is to give it when it's called for--on demand."

At the extreme, so intense was his mind-muscle connection that workouts became the Zen of Zane. "You become one with the activity, and when workouts get to that extent, they become magical, and you lose track of time," says Zane. "This happened to me a couple of times, especially when I was in South Africa in 1971 training for the NABBA Universe. It was a really boring place, so I was at the gym training with this guy for eight hours at a time, but it seemed like it was about two hours, 'cause we were totally involved in doing it. Time disappeared."