Since I am not thrilled with the way I look at present (overtrained and stringy), what better time to feature other bodybuilders? Since my friend Anita Ramsey has recently gotten in good shape again (not that she was ever out of shape) and taken some pictures, here they are. She is a little softer here than bodybuilding fans of the 90's may remember her, but I am quite sure she could get ripped and freaky very fast if she wanted to.

You have probably read many times here about Anita and her husband Curtis Schultz. Anita was a great amateur bodybuilder who came damn close to turning pro before retiring in 1998. Since then she and Curtis have both become writers, and Anita has a very popular news and gossip column on bodybuilding.com called Muscle Update (see the link below).

Anita is an ardent supporter of women's bodybuilding and hates seeing it put down or treated unfairly in favor of women's fitness and figure. She is one of the few who continue to support her fellow sisters in iron.

Curtis and Anita are a very cool couple and the most down-to-earth folks you will ever meet. They came to the Boston area and trained with us back in late March, right before I started losing muscle size and fullness. They are also good friends of Dave Palumbo, who as you know I have the very highest opinion of and wish I knew better. I have a feeling if I had consulted with Dave for my shows he would have made a great babysitter and kept me from doing all the stupid cardio like I did!

I am taking next week off from training because all the classic symptoms of overtraining are evident. My motivation in the gym is way down, my usual weights feel super heavy, and I am tired when I shouldn't be. I think I said I was going to take a week off every six weeks anyway, and it's been nine weeks since I did that. I'm overdue. I have been working harder than usual to meet a couple assignments that came my way that had to be done right away. One thing I hate to do is turn work down, even though I have plenty at all times. I know that after a week of only doing cardio a couple times and not touching a weight, I will be dying to go pump some iron again.

I did want to address a question from a Pump reader today that there have been misconceptions about for years. He sounded very young from the tone of the e-mail, and a Marine Corps drill instructor had given him a routine of push-ups, pull-ups, dips, and running to follow. The kid wanted to know if he could gain a lot of muscle size on this routine, and I told him no. Bodyweight exercises are great for muscular endurance but don't provide enough resistance to make the muscles grow very much at all. He said he had e-mailed a couple pro bodybuilders who had already told him this, but he KNEW they were wrong. He claimed that guys in the military who went through boot camp or basic training came out "huge." Right away a lot of you know this is not true at all. I know dozens of guys who have been in the military, including two of my older brothers who served in the Army and Navy, and both of them lost weight - ten pounds for one and thirty for the other (who was overweight). The build that is best suited for combat is strong but fairly light, so you can hike day after day with heavy weapons and ammunition, plus other supplies. It would make no sense for the men and women of the Armed Forces to be built like bodybuilders, and their physical training bears that out. How slow and useless would an army of 260-pound guys be? They would have to stop fighting every two hours to eat! As a side note, in 9th and 10th grade I was in Marine Corps Junior ROTC and did plenty of sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, and running. I gained no muscle size at all in that time even though I could knock out 25 chin-ups or 100 push-ups or sit-ups any time. Only when I started focusing more on weight training in junior and senior years, getting stronger on the bench press, shoulder press, triceps extension, and curl (pretty much all I did back then) did I start seeing some muscle. Being in great physical condition and building muscle mass aren't the same things, so don't think you can achieve both by training just one way. If you want to get big, you have to lift heavy weights. Simple as that!