L-train is on track: Lionel Brown plans an express route to the pro ranks

Flex, August, 2004 by Greg Merritt

He played football with Snoop Dogg, and he grew up with future pro football stars Willie McGinest and Marquez Pope. He saw Cameron Diaz daily in the halls of his high school. He worked security on a concert tour featuring Dr. Dre, Eminem, Ice Cube and company. Back in the day, his dad and Charles Glass were on the same high-school gymnastics team. Currently, he trains with promising professional Richard Jones. Lionel "L-Train" Brown isn't yet a star himself, but he's so close he can hardly sleep. After finishing second in the heavyweight class of the 2003 NPC USA Championships, he's more determined than ever to turn pro in 2004. Brown has basked in the limelight of others long enough. It's his turn to shine.

LEAVING THE STATION | Long Beach is a microcosm of Southern California: racially mixed; neither small nor large (population 460,000), with hard-edged Compton on one side and conservative Orange County on another; and home to both gangbangers and new-money millionaires. A hundred years ago--as a manufacturing mecca and resort destination--it was the fastest-growing city in America. Its port remains the second busiest in the United States (trailing only neighboring Port of Los Angeles), and its shoreline is indeed lengthy (five and one-half miles), but urban sprawl has otherwise blurred its distinctions. Today, it is just another jigsaw piece in the nearly unbroken stretch of Golden Arches, strip malls and gated subdivisions from the valleys north of Los Angeles to the Mexican border south of San Diego.

Lionel Brown, who was born on September 14, 1971, and his younger sister were raised by their mother, Annette Mason. Life on the Long Beach streets was rough. "We had gangs," Brown states. "I knew them. I was taught to stay away from them, but I kind of took advantage a little bit to go where I shouldn't and watch what they were doing. Still, I was always receptive to my mother's teachings, and when I saw some of those guys going to jail, that kind of kept the focus on what she told me, so I never really got pulled in.

"I ran with Snoop Dogg," he remembers with a smile. "Snoop used to spend the night in my house when I was little. We were on the same team in Pop Warner football. I was the tight end and he was quarterback. I always knew Snoop was going to make it, because everything he's doing now he was doing then, like playing Huggy Bear in Starsky & Hutch. When we were 15, in high school, he used to dress like a pimp, and he'd find some girl and tell her to put something on, and he'd be walking around school with her, like Huggy Bear back then."

L-Train was first introduced to bodybuilding by his father, an exgymnast with triceps honed on pommel horses and parallel bars. "I remember him taking me to see Pumping Iron," Brown reminisces, "and I was really blown away, especially by Robby Robinson; his muscles were like balloons. When I saw that, I wanted to get big, so I used to stuff tissues in my shirts when I was a little kid, pretending to be Robby or Lou Ferrigno."

Playing football and running track in junior high and high school, Brown was enamored with the physiques of gridiron greats Herschel Walker and Bo Jackson. He followed the Walker workout of pushups and situps during his early teen years, but he graduated to iron after he saw a photo of Lee Haney. Hitting the heavy basics, he quickly established himself as one of the strongest members of his football team. The more Brown read FLEX and MUSCLE & FITNESS, the greater the pull of bodybuilding grew.

ON THE TRACKS | Brown was 21 and working as an exterminator when he entered his first bodybuilding contest, the 1993 San Diego Championships. Late IFBB pro Ray McNeil assisted him with his preparation, and L-Train took sixth. "I used to just come in [to the gym] and bench press, bench press, do some arms, bench press, and do a little back," Brown says. "I only did leg extensions for lower body, and I called that 'doing legs.' When I went into that first show in '93, I was blown away by everyone else's legs. I started adding squats and more and more exercises. From then on, I trained legs and every bodypart as hard as I could. I'm like that. When I see a little improvement, it fuels me to go harder and harder."

In 1994, after growing on a more balanced workout routine, he won the Gold's Classic in Visalia, California. That was also the year L-Train got married. He subsequently took four years off from competitive flexing to focus on his family. Now divorced, Brown has two children from the marriage: Isaiah (eight) and Loren (six).

Returning to the stage in 1998, Brown showed promise but few cuts. Over the next three years, he racked up heavyweight thirds and fourths in local and regional shows. He even entered the 1999 USA Championships, an appearance he now leaves off his resume. No one remembers him in the lineup anyway; he failed to place. Brown reflects on those years, "I thought I'd win on a tapered physique alone, but my conditioning just wasn't good enough. I had a lot to learn about the discipline side of bodybuilding."