Bodybuilders Obsession with Mirrors
Recently, I watched the modern version of Dracula on television- albeit there were no bodybuilders in the movie. The movie’s classic confrontation scene pits Frank Langella as Dracula against Sir Laurence Olivier as the good doctor. The doctor is busy looking into a mirror when he hears a sudden noise behind him, so he checks the mirror but sees nothing. He then turns around to find Dracula standing in the middle of the room. (For those of you who aren’t horror buffs, Dracula does not cast an image into a mirror because he is one of the undead.) Quickly, Dracula picks up a heavy candleholder and throws it violently at the mirror, smashing it into pieces. His line: "You’ll have to excuse me, I have a thing about mirrors."
Mirrors are to be looked at as tools in bodybuilding, just like weights and bodybuilding supplements are. That’s what this article is all about. It’ll change the way you look at mirrors, and it’ll change the way you look In them. As a bodybuilder, that change will do you a lot of good.
PLAYING FAVORITES
To start off, I’ll illustrate how a highly common practice among bodybuilders goes virtually unnoticed. Here’s how it happens.
You’ve just finished your bodybuilders arm workout and those pipes are pumped like crazy. So, you go ahead and check out that pump in the mirror. However, you don’t check it just anywhere in the mirror. Instead, you go over to your "favorite" location, the one that makes you look especially good. And, you just don’t stand in front of it. Rather, you stand at a specific, predetermined distance that gives you your best look. What’s wrong with that? Lots.
In truth, you are not getting an accurate picture of your physical development. You have deliberately "maximized" your look under the best lighting conditions in the gym. Such a practice is great for doing photos, or showing your friends how freaky you look, but it is not accurate. Is an accurate look all that important? Well, would you like to prepare for a contest under the influence of a mind altering drug? Obviously not. In essence, however, that’s what you are doing: You’re "altering" your look. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just not an accurate practice.
Keeping things in perspective, we have to remember that we are people first, then bodybuilders. Everyone has a natural tendency to want to exaggerate things, not just bodybuilders. An artist’s conception of a particular house for sale always makes it appear bigger than when it is actually seen. Car commercials make the vehicles look out of this world with carefully selected camera angles and light enhancement. And those beer commercials, wow, don’t those parties look like fun? The trouble is I’ve never been to a party like that. Enlargement is a product of human nature and has been present in society since the very first "I caught a fish this big" story.
As a bodybuilder, you must make an effort to resist this tendency, and check yourself in various kinds of lighting situations, not just favorable ones. Believe me, scores of bodybuilders have lost contests simply because they entered with a false confidence that a "favorite" mirror location gave them.
