Abs like a Roc: chisel your own granite-hard midsection with rookie IFBB pro Roc Shabazz's heavy-hitting routine

Muscle & Fitness, June, 2005 by Shawn Donnelly

ON THE WEBSITE OF RASHID "Roc" Shabazz, there's a photo of a slender young man wearing nothing but a faint smile and a pair of maroon posing trunks. Although the guy is in good shape, it's not the sort of physique usually exhibited in this format. There are few curved lines to admire and no huge muscles at which to marvel. In fact, it looks as though someone plucked the man off the street only minutes earlier, stripped him of his clothes and asked him to flex. The picture is, of course, of Roc. It was taken at his first bodybuilding show in 1993. He was 22 years old and weighed 144 pounds.

Twelve years and 66 pounds later, Roc laughs at the photo. "You gotta have a lot of balls to put that picture up there on your own site," he says. "Maybe if I was a guy who had an inferiority complex, that picture would bother me. It doesn't. It reminds me where I came from."

That would be the small Gulf Coast town of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where, at no more than 5'5", Roc lettered in three sports in high school (football, baseball and tennis) and dreamed of a massive physique. Back then, pictures of three people dominated his bedroom walls: wrestler Kerry Von Erich and bodybuilders Robby Robinson and Lee Haney. "When I told a friend in high school I wanted to be a bodybuilder, he said I'd have better luck getting on a horse and becoming a jockey," recounts Roc.

ANIMAL INSTINCT

After high school, Roc attended Jackson State University in Mississippi, where he set a state powerlifting record for his weight (132 pounds) with a 318-pound bench press. Upon graduation, he took a job in mobile telecommunications, but soon made a decision that would change--and eventually define--his life. He quit his corporate position, crammed everything he owned into his green 1988 Suzuki Samurai and headed for Atlanta. "My bank account was just about busted and I had maybe 35 bucks in cash," says Roc. "I didn't know a soul in Atlanta. But I knew that Lee Haney was there."

Like an eager young character from a Hollywood movie--Tommy Gunn in Rocky V comes to mind--Roc showed up at the gym Lee owned, Animal Kingdom. He was told that Lee wasn't there, and that he usually hung out at his other gym, Busy Bodies.

"I got over to Busy Bodies and I went up to Lee," recalls Roc. "I told him that I'd just moved here from Mississippi to meet him and become a bodybuilder. I asked if there was any chance of him giving me a job at the gym, and if there wasn't, that I'd work for free. He looked at me for a second like, Is this guy for real? Then he said, 'Go down to Animal Kingdom and talk to a guy named Terrence. See what he has for you.' When I showed up, Terrence said, 'Are you Rashid? I've got a job for you.'"

SCHEDULING SUCCESS

Roc got into a routine. By day he was a substitute teacher, by night he worked at Animal Kingdom and on the weekends he manned the counter of a convenience store. All the while he was pumping iron, working toward his personal-trainer certification and soaking up wisdom from Lee. When it came time for his first show, even Lee's wife Shirley pitched in, helping Roc choreograph his poses to Patti LaBelle's Somebody Loves You Baby. ("Who do you think helps Lee with his poses?" Shirley asked Roc.)

Progress was made. Pounds were added. Before long, Roc resembled a competitive bodybuilder. In 1999, as a 175-pound middleweight, he won the overall title at Atlanta's Eastern Seaboard Bodybuilding Championship. Two years later, the city hosted the NPC Nationals, and Roc had ideas about a middleweight title and a pro card. Instead, he finished eighth in front of the hometown crowd. "I didn't even get to pose," says Roc. "I didn't feel too great."

Drawing on that disappointment, the next year he made a quantum, Roy Jones Jr.-esque leap, transforming himself from a 176-pound middleweight to a 192-pound light-heavyweight. At the 2002 NPC Nationals, against fierce competition, he finished fourth. The next year he was runner-up to Kris Dim. Roc decided that at the 2004 Nationals, he wouldn't come in as the largest light-heavyweight but rather the tightest and most conditioned.

"One thing Kris said he worked out hard was abs," says Roc. "Looking at the pictures from that 2003 show, I realized that's what I needed to work on, too. I made abs a main focus. I now have a 28 1/2-inch waistline. I shed an inch and a half over the last year."

At the 2004 NPC Nationals in Dallas, the slimmer Roc won the light-heavyweight class and earned his pro card. "It was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders," says Roc, though he's quick to add that he doesn't view his long road to success as a rocky one. "I wouldn't even say I've had struggles," he explains. "It's all just stuff you have to go through to get where you want to go. They're more like tasks."

"He kept his hand to the plow," Lee says of Roc. "I've had fun watching him grow over the years. He'll say I helped him, but it was really him against him. He did the work. The harvest belongs to him."