That was the Day I committed to bodybuilding life.
This was the day I committed my life to building my body strong so I could become a professional bodybuilder living the eat train sleep repeat lifestyle in Venice, California.
It was Arnold on the cover of a muscle & fitness magazine who inspired me to change my starving self destruction to build myself up self construction. I’ve been training with weights since I was 17 non stop.
Before I discovered bodybuilding via Arnold Schwarzenegger at 17 I was exercising.
My exercise was high in volume of light work, for instance 500 situps as a workout.
I had no idea what I was doing!
My first gym visit was at Nautilus, the system was one set per machine in a circuit workout.
I remember asking the trainer ‘what do I do now?’ when my training results stagnated. Via the fitness magazines that featured icons like Arnold I learned about pumping iron, it was high volume and new kinds of exercises and they were done with free weights! I was fantasizing about squats, deadlifts and using dumbbells not machines.
I left Nautilus as soon as I could afford it and signed up for the first real bodybuilding gym of my life at 18. There I copied training techniques of the local bodybuilders.
I was lucky to have World Champions in olympic weight lifting as well as Sweden’s Bodybuilding pride Marika Johansson train at this gym.
The experts took note of my potential and my work ethic and they showed me how to train in depth.
The next gym was in another city, it was one of the top 5 best gyms in Sweden. Training amongst the best again kept shaping my knowledge and influenced my training style. At this gym I was approached by competition coaches who wanted me to compete for them.
The year before my debut on stage after three years of bodybuilding training I moved to Stockholm and found my fourth gym in a basement. It was a true dungeon that looked like the photos shot of me by World Famous photographer Brian Moss in NYC. This was where I prepared for my first competition in Sweden.
The first 3 years of my bodybuilding life had no real structure, I was training what I liked and skipped working on body parts I thought were big and muscular enough.
Biceps training was boring to me so I skipped that, I avoided training my glutes since I thought my butt was too big, little did I know it was mostly fat and my muscles were tiny!
Dieting down to a shredded physique the first time gave me a shocker: I was much smaller than I’d ever imagined! I had no glutes, no biceps, I was embarrassed to find it out and this became my motivation for a comeback.
It was now 2003 and I found a Supplement sponsor who was all about Max-OT training aka maximum overload training. The two athletes Skip LaCour and Jeff Willet in the United States were my idols and I copied their training methods I read about online in their contest prep journal on AST Sports Science’s website. In 2004 I applied to work as a fitness model at AST sports science booth and got to fly to Columbus Ohio to attend the Arnold Expo, working the booth with my idols. I’ll never forget what Skip wrote on the signed photo of him: ‘Little Arnold’!.
That was what he called me, it was the best compliment I’d ever received.
I made a lot of gains with my training style combined with nutrition changes.
I was introduced to nutrient timing, higher protein intake, salt intake etc.
Sports Nutrition was now my second big passion and special area of interest to master.
In 2005 I became the trainer of the Biggest Loser Show Scandinavia, I was the only trainer who used weight training as the big part of the body transformation program.
I had my team on heavy weight training and nutrition was developed like the beginning of Fighterdiet with big servings of vegetables to keep hunger down. The need to be in shape on tv was what forced me to get disciplined and skip gaining so much weight during the off season.
My first 3 years had been a matter of bulking and cutting, and the bulking seasons were December-July, contest prep August-October-November.
I became known as the gluttonous pig who ate all the leftover vegetables at the Estonian castle where the tv show was shot.
Every evening I went to the kitchen to pick up my pile of baked or cooked vegetables.
After 3 years of competing in Sweden, winning the Junior’s divisions and coming in 2nd as a senior, I earned a professional card to compete as an IFBB fitness figure pro athlete.
I was suited for that new division they created for women who were less muscular and more feminine.
It was now my 7th year of training, I made my debut in San Francisco in March 2006. I came in 13 out of 30 women, I believe. Now I got a new sponsor to compete for, Optimum Nutrition. My first year as a pro I placed 13, 12, 11, 10, 9 & 8. The second year I competed I placed 10, 9, 8, 7 & 6.
After that I was over it, I didn’t enjoy the high heels, bikinis, makeup and emphasis on relaxing my body instead of flexing. It was boring to downplay my muscularity, I was told by the judges to tone down my athletic back, arms and glutes.
I didn’t want to follow the physical guidelines to place better so I simply quit. I wanted to live looking competition ready, I didn’t care for competing per se. I wanted to build muscle, burn fat and stay lean forever. That was my goal. My intention was to get lean, and then happily maintain my fitness body composition.
2007-2018 was my fitness model ‘big times’ era.
During this time I kept on training with different programs of my own.
I was always a thinker and loved applying different theories and seeing what results I got.
When it comes to injuries, I tore one of my hamstrings in 2003, had a few different minor tears on both sides throughout the years with one big one in 2014 while training and living in Miami, Florida.
I was lucky to be spared other injuries, I trained well and carefully in general. I had pains and aches all the time, particularly in my lower back and glutes for most of the time. I thought that was just expected with my heavy training.
2016-2018 were my years of training around pains and kept showing up. Many times I was depressed and unmotivated, I didn’t want to train and I didn’t know how to have breaks.
I was scared of physical weakness, I was scared of losing muscle and I didn’t feel my body had a right to need rest. I held on to my premise ‘since I don’t take drugs to help me train harder or build muscle faster’ it’s ok to train my body as hard as I want, it’s my body, it’s my property, how dare my body utter a thing! July 2018 I couldn’t keep training, one of my hamstrings had a big tear that required surgery.
I was terrified about taking time off, I was crying and felt it was unfair I couldn’t keep training. I didn’t want to live my life if I couldn’t train heavy and hard again. My life would be over if I lost my ability to train the way I had always trained.
My plan was to make a comeback and get stronger than ever, build more muscle than ever. It didn’t work out. I was patient for 6 months post surgery then I started to increase the load more and more on squats.
The pains from my surgery were excruciating, I couldn’t ignore it, it stopped me. I panicked. I kept training, finding my ways around my pains at Golds Gym in Venice until March 2016, 2020.
That was when the gyms closed down and the pandemic lockdown kicked in. I had no weights at home and I wasn’t as athletic or experienced to train in new ways for building muscle. Little by little I built a gym for myself in my apartment, got rid of my big bed to make room for weights, bench and equipment. This was the start of my new era of fitness over 40. At first I kept training heavy and hard at home until pains and aches took over. I couldn’t keep it up. I lost motivation, it wasn’t fun anymore.
More than 20 years into it, I was bored. In September 20022 I had another epiphany, I felt one with the Universe and ‘was told’ to drop everything I knew and start from nothing again. So I did.
This became my ‘seize the training day’ mission.
In order to build muscle I had to cut down on my rest time and I had to use time under tension instead of reps to give my body a reason to grow.
I converted typical bodybuilding reps of 10 reps into timed sets. I set a timer on 10 minutes at a time to go all out without pause like a Fighter, this helped me avoid using my max strength that would be too challenging and I’d reinjure myself. I made this system for myself to use to build my body beyond the dogma of bodybuilding.
I was scared of lighter weights and what would happen to my body. I had no choice but to go this route, I became more athletic than ever, well trained to the best shape of my life, I had transformed my training style completely.
I was proud of my lifts, my technique and of my results.
During 2020-2023 I tore one hamstring again, two shoulders, I experienced hand arthritis and suffered my first gout attack. I learned tons from all these lessons.
The new ways to train and rebuild my body became my real bodybuilding past 40 documentaries via my workout videos on Paulinenordin.uscreen.io .
-Pauline Nordin, coach and trainer
