UNM marketing major Aaron Links is obsessed with bodybuilding - and he's not afraid to admit it.
Saturday, Links won the junior division title at the American National competition in Boston.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no weight lifting at bodybuilding competitions. Contestants are judged solely on their physique, not on their strength.
"You're on stage in a super-tiny Speedo outfit so all your muscles are completely visible," Links said. "You're judged on muscularity, your symmetry and your muscle density."
Links said there are several misconceptions that people often have about bodybuilders.
"Typically I'm only in the gym about five or six hours a week," he said. "All it really comes down to is diet and sleep patterns. But when you do go to the gym, you're super intense the whole time you're there."
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The fifth-year UNM student said he works out in cycles. Links lifts heavier weights and performs a lower number of repetitions for six weeks at a time. During the next six weeks, he lifts less weight and performs more repetitions.
He said that as far as the human physique is concerned, diet is 80 percent of the battle.
Links started lifting weights after his mother beat him in an arm wrestling match when he was in seventh grade.
"My mom arm wrestled one of my friends," he said. "And my friend beat my mom. Then I arm wrestled my mom and she beat me. I felt so bad about that."
Links decided to join a gym and by the time he was 19, won his first bodybuilding competition. He has participated in three contests since then and remains undefeated.
"To win this you must be utterly obsessed with it," he said. "And that's really what I am. I'm completely obsessed with it."
Links said bodybuilders do not lead lives like the average person because everything has to be super-regimented. He said he eats every two and a half to three hours and is extremely particular about what he consumes.
In fact, Links said he hauled an enormous duffel bag full of food for his four-day trip to Boston. The bag contained oatmeal, cream of wheat, steak, yams and "a little bit of spinach."
Links said he realizes he won't be a bodybuilder forever, but he said he can use it to get where he wants to be in life.
"I'm going to use bodybuilding as a vehicle, much the same way Arnold Schwarzenegger did," he said. "To catapult myself into business and into investments."
Besides business ventures like owning a fitness and supplements store, Links said he would like to dominate the national bodybuilding scene in three to five years and become a certified personal trainer.
"Other people don't have the goals I have," he said. "That's why I want to get into personal training. To find out what kind of goals other people have and really bring them around to achieve their own goals."
