When I first penned this article, there was little in the way of info on Benny Podda, and what I could find seemed to be as much fiction as fact. Turns out, however, that my sole source for information wasn’t off the mark- more recent stuff, in addition to a read of Bill Romanowski’s biography, confirmed the utterly maniacal shit I’d read. As it was nearly ten years old, I thought it might bear a bit of an update in form and content, so here is my heavily revised redux of my third BME.
In the past I’ve been asked why I focus so heavily on the outliers in the strength community, rather than the more conventional lifters who’ve had success over the years in a more reserved fashion. The answer is quite frankly, that greatness and boring rarely coincide, and where they do it is more coincidence than a causal relationship. The clock-punching Rudy-style workhorse who starts at the bottom with no talent and achieves marginal success from a refusal to give up and a no-shucks-given attitude only inspires pussies to continue being pussies. Moreover, they’re fucking boring, and succeeded not because of their utter lack of personality but in spite of it. I’d go so far as to say I despise those people, because they convince the weak sauce posers in the lifting community that they belong in the presence of titans simply because they take the same supplements and wear similar clothes.
Fuck that noise- it’s the Benny Poddas of the world who are the humans to be admired and emulated. Not in deed but in spirit- in the refusal to take the easy road to mediocrity, in the desire to be the shot heard round the world rather than some fitsperation douche in melon colored joggers. People who find the average human to be fucking disgusting and aren’t afraid to show it, because normality is a disease to be avoided by anyone with a scintilla of a desire to be someone who shall be remembered by successive generations.
Lest you think that I am simply holding aloft a pack of weightlifting sideshow freaks as people to emulate, you needn’t- these dudes weren’t simply weird and violent for the sake of being weird and violent. They were weird and violent because it was in their nature to be that way, and that nature is what propelled them to the top levels of bodybuilding and the upper echelon of elite strength. Follow in their footsteps or don’t- I don’t give a fuck. just know that the road less traveled is definitely the more interesting one, and the one from which there is the most to be learned.
Benny Podda Vital Statistics
Height: 5’6″
Weight: 215 – 255lbs
Squat: 850lbs x 1 rep; 315lbs x 50 reps, FOR FIVE SETS
Deadlift: 800lbs
Bent Row (for reps): 500lbs
Bar balanced on throat, no hands, for more than a minute: 415lbs
Just the fact that the last bit could be included is a testament to how fucking awesome and ridiculous Benny Podda was in his prime. The man’s life is like a Warner Brothers cartoon come to life and turned X-rated. He’s trained elite athletes and blockbuster actors, shunned the spotlight more than he’s sought it, and combined more esoterica into a single cohesive (at least to him) training methodology and lifestyle than even Bruce Lee considered doing.
Benny Podda out-weirded dudes in bodybuilding at a time when those dudes lived on Nubain and cocaine, claiming crazy superpowers like vampirism in bodybuilding contests that featured everything from Lilliputians to maniacs who’d jump offstage screaming because they broke both ankles (like Mike Quinn) but would get high fives rather than medical attention to Jimmy “The Iron Bull” Pellechia’s outrageous strength stunts consisting of moving massive poundages over short ranges of motion with a lot of help from spotters and a ton of body English.
“You know that feeling when you’re blowing your load?” he asks. “Instead of letting that go out, you reverse the whole thing. It feels like your body is on fucking FIRE! I lift weights with that [energy] coursing through my body and my ticking testosterone a thousand-times normal–’cause I just fucked myself.”
Then he smiles calmly.
“See? That’s why I can hang 220 pounds from my fuckin’ nuts.”
Frankly, I’ve no idea if it helps or hurts to list the weirdest bits about Benny first. Redditors would argue that it hurts, due to the fact they think his eccentricity discredits his entire methodology. Given that I’m inclined to do the exact opposite of whatever Reddit says, I’ll begin with what I consider to be the best parts about a guy who likely warmed up with the best lifts r/weightroom has ever posted as max attempts.
He lives in a fucking cave. That’s right, a cave.
“To get to Benny’s cave, you must first go to a remote waterfall to be purified. This is especially important for first-timers. You don’t want the cave to reject you–when this happens, it induces terror. “Your soul is rended from your body in a spiritual tear,” Benny explains. So, you suffer the pain and indignities of purification. The water pours down on you with the shocking force of spiritual flagellation.
The cave’s climate is reminiscent of Podda’s Pittsburgh: hotter than hell in the summer, freezing cold in the winter. The cave has been inhabited for thousands of years, Benny says, and it leads to an outdoor amphitheater with perfect acoustics that can only be reached via the cave. ‘The opening is a vaginal orifice. In initiation ceremonies, the Cahuilla would pass through it one by one to be ‘reborn’ as warriors'” (O’Connell).
He takes training like an escaped mental patient to an entirely different level.
Forget Intensity or Insanity, Blood and Guts, and all of the other rhabdo-inducing, man-killer regimes of which you’ve heard. Podda’s methodology makes all of that shit look like the produce of a bottom-tier USAPL lifter’s mind… if you discount the fact that information on the Mongols’ training techniques is, at best, extremely scanty.
“Philosophically, Benny merges German Sturm und Drang, Eastern asceticism and a lot of other really weird shit. “My physical training is based on the philosophies of Genghis Khan,” Benny says. “He taught his troops the importance of exterior and interior training. His warriors learned how to turn themselves inside out so that they could project their inner power out like lightning” (O’Connell).
His psych up methods make even WSM-era Kaz look like a vanilla chai latte sipping vegan men’s physique competitor.
He once ran straight through a wall, Wile E. Coyote-style, to psych himself up for a heavy lift. In another fit of apparent Super Saiyanism, Benny ran full tilt into a lineman from the Pittsburgh Steelers, who was not lifting but talking on a pay phone. Not only did this early predecessor to crowdkilling crush CYC’s best efforts to date just on their face, but Podda managed not only to knock a 285 lb man who benched over 600lbs ass over teakettle, but he headbutted him with such force that the pay phone was ripped out of the fucking wall.
He had a bizarre pharmacological and herbological regimen that led to shit like this:
“Fueled by everything from the visualization techniques of Vipasanna Buddhism to anabolic steroids and herbal concoctions that he drank from root-filled mayonnaise jars, Benny trained like a human wrecking ball. Manion recalls walking into his establishment one day and seeing Benny doing reps with his head wrapped in a blood-drenched towel, others scattered nearby. “The cable had snapped on a long cable-row machine and the handle had hit him on the head,” recalls Manion. “He had to keep replacing the towels when they got soaked with blood. I made a guy take him to the hospital, and it took 12 stitches to close the open wound in his head” (O’Connell).
He transcends every possible conception of what is “cool,” “possible,” or “human,” and shows just how fucking brutal people can be if they stop letting society dictate what their behavior should be, think for themselves, and not be afraid to try shit that is so far out of the box they’ve forgotten what boxes look like.
“I have seen Benny break bricks with magazines, crush coconuts with his bare hands, squirt blood out of his nose, and swing 225 pounds from his testicles. This is NOT Benny being crazy, this is him transferring energy and power to accomplish what he wants accomplished. He puts himself in a state of mind that defies any normal brain patterns you and I may have which gives him the ability to do these abnormal things, like take a 2×4 to the gut and smile while doing it. When Benny was doing his body building contests, he would invite a couple people from the audience to come up and hit him with 2×4’s while he did his routine. Nothing is normal with Benny, normal is boring to him” (O’Connell).
Quite frankly, with a laundry list of violent peculiarities like that, you’d assume some sort of fittingly comic-bookesque backstory, like the man was raised in the weight room of an insane asylum by a kindly, elderly Chinese orderly and his trained attack monkeys. Tragically, it was nothing so interesting, and no one could have predicted upon Podda’s birth the path his life would take.
Born in a tiny mining town east of Pittsburgh into an old bootlegging family, Podda’s boredom in a small town led to his involvement in a variety of extra legal activities that definitely included car theft and possibly included acting as muscle for local mobsters. What the mob was doing in Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania is absolutely anyone’s guess, but that allegedly led to Benny being sent to China to live with a family friend for five years. Given that we had neither travel nor trade with China until the mid-to-late 1970s, that story is almost certainly bullshit. What definitely did happen is that Benny acted like a complete fucking maniac and tried to rob a pharmacy with a goddamned bow and arrow. He was apparently shot in that failed attempt at stone age weaponry to secure painkillers, and landed his happy ass in prison.
Substitute the a couple of letters after the “S” and swap a blind kid in a hospital for a murderous psychopath in solitary confinement and this could be a case of art imitating life, because Stick wasn’t introduced until 1981 and Podda might’ve met The Swan in the 1970s.
Prison only served to make the already batshit Benny even stranger, and in a story seemingly lifted right out of a Daredevil comic book Podda was taught to master his chi by a man in solitary confinement known as “The Swan”… after beating his cellmate half to death with a food tray. While Podda mastered his chi he apparently spent long hours reading various esoterica like the Bhagavad Gita, and he emerged from jail even more peculiar than he was when he entered. Nevertheless, he went on to nab a football scholarship at the University of Richmond, where he majored in biochemistry, but he ended up doing more drinking than training and studying and was expelled.
At some point in this story, Benny Podda started lifting, and he discovered he was a fucking badass at it. After dabbling in powerlifting he gravitated toward bodybuilding, and became a legend in the East Coast bodybuilding scene for his psychotic training style and zany posing routines. Benny knew he lacked the classic lines of the pretty boys of that era like Mohommed Makkawwy, Chris Dickerson, and Samir Bannout, so he went the other way and tried to drive his black-hole-dense physique to the limits of thickness and vascularity. Doing that, however, required him to take it to the fucking extreme… which to Benny seems to have meant that he had to live in a small, windowless room with nothing but a cot and a stack of books. Apparently, his “Spartan lifestyle was a purposeful attempt to avoid distractions from his goals. So devoted was he to his goals that “The Beast” would wake up three hours before his 6:30 AM workout to perform Taoist meditation” (Colescott). By the time he got onstage, Benny was completely unhinged, and his performances reflected his mental state- he’d flex so hard blood would spurt out of his fucking nose, rock Wolfman masks, and do other bizarre shit, including the one time he hung himself for 5 straight minutes and then lifted his head and gave the audience the finger before cutting himself down.
If only Tim Bleknap had enjoyed spelunking- we might have been treated to such awesome training vids that Jujumufu would have been beyond derivative when he hit Youtube.
Eventually, Benny came to the same realization that whacked other awesome bodybuilders of the 1980s in the face like a like a UFC fighter’s fist in the face of a crazy hot porn star- the more brutal a bodybuilder, the less marketable they were. As such, all of the most interesting guys with the most effective training techniques and the craziest physiques were shunned by the mags, and he hung up his trunks alongside badasses like Tim Belknap, Tom Platz, and Jusup Wilcosz. With that, Podda decided to live like Riddick in complete solitude with only a mountain lion as his companion for an extended period of time.
“When we got to the cave Benny told me stories about the nights he’d spend there, the peyote he would eat, how people would bring him stuff from town, and how he’d talk to the spirits. You’d go inside the cave and it opened to an auditorium type of thing where it almost looked like [a place] where a band would play. He said the spirits would sing to him, talk to him, and they’d chase him through the catacombs of rocks. He slept with a rock as his pillow, people would come bring him food, cases of beer—I remember him talking about the beer as one of his luxuries. He’d train at the cave, lifting rocks and doing spiritual types of things. He broke his ankle when he lived there, getting chased through the rocks by the spirits and stuff. Instead of going to the hospital, he’d heal it by walking through deep sand that he said was over 200 degrees and the heat from the sand would heal his ankle. I stuck my hand in the sand and I couldn’t even keep it in for a second because it was so hot” (Harder).
Nor was this some kind of retarded, Instagrammed, Millennial attention whoring adventure- he took his duties as a priest of the fucking Sand People more seriously than the CDC would take a case of someone cracking out from ebola in the middle of an Olympic stadium.
“Podda had recently undergone a fasting and training regimen that carved an approximate and deliberate 60 pounds off his stocky frame. At that time,excess muscularity impeded his duties as a priest, and Podda shed the bulk as a part of an overall spiritual and physical transformation. He spoke of a functional “second anatomy,” in essence a literal and dormant suit of muscle that can be “worn” or “removed” virtually at will, which exists “inside” his physiology and is readily available in many different guises. After a time, Podda returned to his muscular ways and gained an approximate 85 pounds of lean bodyweight within several months. This is hard to imagine and more difficult to believe, but in the world of the Podda, anything is possible” (Skipton).
It was from this cave that Benny operated as he became a trainer, and from which we gain a bit of insight into what his methodology actually is.
As I’ve mentioned, Podda’s workouts were like old school Wanderlei Silva fights- they were bloody-as-fuck, attack-from-every-conceivable-angle affairs that likely seemed longer to the meat being pounded upon than they were. Yeah, that sounds like a euphemism for masturbating, but as Podda seemed keen on mentioning load dropping at every possible opportunity, he’d likely consider that unintentional double entendre apt. One of his most famous clients was Chuck Norris, who was always in good shape but never what anyone would consider a muscle-bound beast at 5’10” and 155lbs. Known more for his presciently hyper-tight jeans that allowed him to kick any motherfucker in the face Norris wanted and his voluminous, glorious chest hair than his pecs, the only person in history who can divide by zero decided to level up from Jack LaLanne to Sylvester Stallone, and decided Benny Podda was the man to do it.
“‘I didn’t know who the fuck Chuck Norris was and didn’t give a fuck,’ says Benny. ‘They took me up to his house and we hit it off because I pounded the fucking guy. I yelled at him, ‘Kick me in the fucking chest as hard as you can!’ He’s like, ‘No, I shouldn’t.’ So I berated the fucker until he did it–and I didn’t budge when he did.”
If I am not mistaken, that’s Podda spotting Norris on what appears to be a hilariously Brad Castleberry-style 425lb incline bench in The Hero and the Terror.
What resulted was a Norris who looked far more like an ass-kicking rogue cop than an extra from a 70s porn film, and it was due to Podda’s realization than Norris was basically doing a bodybuilding show every two weeks for the movie, so he peaked Norris accordingly. Ever the innovator, Podda’s peaking method is like nothing you’ve ever seen. It consisted of supersets to which an extra exercise was added on each set, transforming the superset into a triset and then a giant set, all the while fueled by less calories than you’d feed a six year old.
For instance, here is the three day a week program he built for the workout and shirtless scenes in the film.
Chest
Set 1: Incline Bench Press + Flat Bench Flyes
Set 2: Incline Bench Press + Flat Bench Flyes + Dips
Set 3: Incline Bench Press + Flat Bench Flyes + Dips + Vertical Chest Press Machine
(The same weights are used for all three sets and all sets are done to failure)
Shoulders
Set 1: Overhead Machine Press + Upright Rows
Set 2: Overhead Machine Press + Upright Rows + Dumbbell Laterals
Triceps
Back
Chins supersetted with T-Bar Rows– 3×10 (all reps done slowly and very strictly, pulling as high as humanly possibly on the chins)
Pulldowns– 3×10
Biceps
Barbell Curl– 1×10 with 10RM, followed by 30 second rest, AMRAP with same weight, 30 second rest, and another AMRAP set that ends with a static hold with the arms at a ninety degree angle and elbows in tight at the sides.
Abs
Static hold with body held parallel to the ground on an incline situp board, which according to Podda “is one of the most effective and brutal abdominal exercises there is” (Podda).
And the diet to fuel that workout, which also consisted of three days of running or biking per week, was 1200 bland-as-fuck calories a day of turkey breast, egg whites, potatoes, and whole grains in a 60% CHO, 30% PRO, 10% FAT split. Though it sounds like a fucking nightmare, that was pretty standard for that era- if you adjust the calories for a 200lber, you’re looking at a whopping 1550 calories a day. It’s no wonder Chuck never trained legs- not only did he lack the flex fabric technology for jeans we now enjoy, but there’s little chance of getting in a decent leg workout on that calorie level without a 1980’s style Colombian preworkout.
In any event, Podda had this to say about the program:
“This diet consists of about 1200 calories a day; 75-100 grams of protein, 220 grams of carbohydrates and between 25 and 30 grams of fat. The diet goes on for two weeks, with a small carbohydrate deprivation cycle two days before the peaking date, to drain water from the subcutaneous tissue. Then we have Chuck taking carbohydrates every three hours to fill himself back up to make the skin and muscle as tight as possible for the peak time. It’s all designed to peak on the day the scene is shot” (Podda).
Benny Podda being Benny Podda, he remained friends with Chuck Norris after the filming for The Hero and the Terror but shrunk from the spotlight, allowing notoriously prickish Lou Ferrigno to pick up where he left off and train Norris for Delta Force 2. As he once said, “I have an intense aversion to conventional notions of success,” and he apparently took that shit seriously. Nevertheless, he did train a couple of other celebrities, and got a ton of good press for packing 50lbs onto the worst parented, over-coached, burned out and now horribly meth addicted felon Todd Marinovich before the draft, leading him to a first round draft selection in the NFL and one of the saddest bust stories this side of JaMarcus Russell.
It’s not often that a nose tackle makes the cover of a bodybuilding mag… unless, of course, he has Benny Podda as his trainer.
Though Marinovich ultimately turned out to be a useless pile of tweaker trash, Podda made such an impression with Marinovich’s physical transformation from skinny junkie into the quarterback who was chosen before Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Farve in the draft that NFL super-agent Tom Conlon started recommending him to everyone he could.
One of those someones was Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana, who had been plagued with a nagging hamstring injury that left him basically crippled. Utilizing a mix of insanity, Eastern medicine, and apparent sorcery, Podda had Montana playing golf within hours and starting at quarterback the following Sunday. Likewise, he fixed San Diego wide receiver Curtis Conway’s nagging knee injury, which had kept him out of a couple of games with that same blend of who-the-fuck-knows-what.
According to Bill Romanowski, “after a few of sessions with Benny, Curtis was back on the track, and screaming “OH MY GOD!” Perhaps the most ringing endorsement Podda received from an NFL player came from defensive tackle Bill Maas (the goof on the cover of the bodybuilding rag pictured above), who hired Podda in the offseason and was so floored by his physical improvements he called Conlon one night and said, “Hey Condo. This guy Benny Podda? I think he’s… Jesus Christ.”
If Benny’s story sounds somewhat reminiscent of Mas Oyama’s, I think it’s because Benny liked Mas’s style, rather than just lifting his stories outright. That’s not to say I entirely believe the Benny stories about fighting in Bloodsport-style deathmatches in the Orient in the early 1980s, however- I think the legend of Frank Dux might’ve bled into Benny’s at some point in the retelling.
Benny’s programming for these guys was all over the fucking place, as one might imagine. Though he’d competed in powerlifting and was well known at Jim Manion’s Pittsburgh bodybuilding mecca of a gym to be superhumanly strong, he was just as, if not more likely to recommend training more in line with Mas Oyama’s mountain training than bodybuilding or powerlifting methods, and he tailored his clients’ training to their individual needs rather than forcing them to adapt to his methods. As such, Benny’s training rarely matched that of his clients’, and his clients’ programs were all unique. As such, he’d have champion martial artists Chuck Norris sweating in the gym, while his high school basketball stars would be outside in the mountains, lifting giant logs, climbing cliffs, and running on railroad ties to improve balance and coordination.
I’ve no idea how much credit Podda got for Romo’s arms, but if any part of those things were Podda’s doing, we should all pay attention.
By far and away, Benny’s most vocal supporter was one of the most violent defensive players ever to play professional football, Bill Romanowski. When Romo hired Benny, he was already one of the most assiduous trainers, dieters, and supplement takers in professional sports. Romo helped build the supplement juggernaut EAS in the 1990’s and was well-known for carrying a fishing tackle box full of supplements and gear everywhere he went, and meeting Benny just ramped up the insanity. Podda ranted and raved about Romo’s food choices (he was eating like a 1990’s bodybuilder) as if he was a teenager living on junk food. In a rampage that would presage the end of their working relationship (Romo’s wife couldn’t stand Podda), Podda essentially tossed all of the shit in Romo’s kitchen and replaced it with fertile eggs, steak, and enough weird Chinese herbs that Romo could have opened up his own Chinese apothecary. The eggs were of particular importance because, according to Podda, they contained “energy, life, little dots of blood- the dots that turned into little chickens.”
This woman could diet for the SI Swimsuit issue cover and live with a genuine lunatic… but thought Benny Podda was just too goddamned unhinged to be hanging around her house.
Romo was the kind of psychopath Podda could work with- he had been fined for all kinds of on-field shenanigans like stomping downed players, breaking fingers in fumble piles, and spitting in opponents’ faces, and once broke one of his teammate’s faces with a single punch in practice. Romo was so crazy and violent even his teammates feared him, but it was that kind of crazy that earned him four Super Bowl rings and two Pro Bowl appearances, and he credited the shit he learned from Benny Podda with helping with that and being invaluable in Romo starting in an unheard-of 243 consecutive games. The intensity with which those two approached Romo’s training and diet completely surpassed anything anyone else could tolerate, however, and Romo ended up moving on to less psychotic trainers after working with Podda for a while.
Although their working history was tragically short, Romo still ended up with a laundry list of weird Chinese supplements gives us some idea of what Podda himself uses. Though this list is sort of uninspiring, Romo swears that this shit is all essential.
- Dynamic Warrior stack– Appears to be for general health and kidney support
- Yin chiao– Cold and flu
- Gan mao ling– Cold and flu
- Zhong gan ling– Cold and flu… how many colds did
- San she dan– More cough and cold shit.
- Osha root– A mood enhancer known as loveroot because it makes bears nuzzle each other. Only Benny Podda would have known this.
- Minh mang- tragically, this is the one by which Podda apparently swore and Romo loved, yet I cannot find any information on it anywhere. It’s named after a legendary Vietnamese emperor who advocated the slaughter of Christian missionaries and fathered 142 kids by 43 women, so I’d guess whatever it was it increased aggression and testosterone. Maybe it was a euphemism for Cheque Drops?
I don’t give a fuck if you like bodybuilding or not- if this doesn’t entertain you, little will.
In short, Benny Podda was a fucking enigma- we’re not sure precisely how he trained, but we know he trained hard as shit and unconventionally, and he was strong as fuck as a result. We don’t know what his diet was like but we can guess, and we know he scoured the Earth for the most effective pharmacological aids, both narcotic and non-narcotic. Of all of the people in the history of training, Podda was likely the most dedicated to his craft and the most innovative in the pursuit of excellence, and his example should stand as one of the most interesting and compelling of all of the lifters in the zeitgeist.
Additionally, the story of Benny Podda is one we should all heed- being an anomaly might not always work in one’s favor, nor will it always bring financial success. By all accounts, however, Benny is completely happy with his body of work and the cave-dwelling lifestyle he currently enjoys. And even more than that, Benny Podda will be remembered long after he’s dead, and that is the closest thing to immortality one can achieve. The people who stick to well traveled paths, on the other hand, make no impact on the world- they live safe, unoffensive, uninteresting lives and are gladly consigned to the dustbin of history without leaving a mark on the world.
“The world of tradition is dying,” Benny laments. “When the last flame goes out, that’s when you have apocalypse–like the great flood, the Black Plague, earthquakes and nuclear war. It’ll make World War II and the dropping of the atom bombs look like nothing. But as long as one person keeps the flame alive, a complete cataclysm can be avoided.”
Sources:
BenShea, Adam. Benny Podda: Muscle Man, Medicine Man, and Martial Artist. JoshStrength. 24 Jun 2018. Web. 17 Nov 2018. http://blog.joshstrength.com/2018/06/benny-podda-muscle-man-medicine-man-and-martial-artist/
Colescott, Steve. The hardcore twelve. AtLarge Nutrition. 28 Nov 2009. Web. 19 Nov 2018. https://atlargenutrition.com/the-hardcore-twelve/
Harder, Jeff. Photographing Benny Podda, the bodybuilder turned martial artist turned cave-dwelling medicine man. Vice Sports. 23 Jul 2017. Web. 19 Nov 2018. https://sports.vice.com/en_au/article/9kwv37/photographing-benny-podda-the-bodybuilder-turned-martial-artist-turned-cave-dwelling-medicine-man
McLeod, Paul. Trainers. Los Angeles Times. 15 Oct 1996. Web. 19 Nov 2018. http://articles.latimes.com/1996-10-15/news/ss-54017_1_personal-trainers/2
O’Connell, Jeff and Steve Stiefel. Wild Thing. HighBeam Research, reprinted from Men’s Fitness. 1 Nov 2004. Web. 19 Nov 2018. https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-124007834.html
Podda, Benny. Training Chuck Norris. The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban. 4 Dec 2016. Web. 19 Nov 2018. http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2016/12/training-chuck-norris-benny-podda-1989.html
Romanowski, Bill. Romo: My Life on the Edge: Living Dreams and Slaying Dragons. New York: Harper, 2005.
Skipton, Todd W. From beast to priest: the transformation of Benny Podda. Excerpt from Raising a Man. Ebook, 2010.
A real badass takes pain enhancers, not pain killers. Next.
HAHA I think the one-rep wonder Mr Universe you may be talking about might be scripture-spouting Joe Meeko. The very same guy that claimed that he used to be 5'10 but was now just under 5'8 because he 'lost height due to squatting heavy' – apparently because the discs in his spine compressed? LOL http://www.bodybuildingpro.com/joemeekomruniversedvd.html
Haha, long time no hear from you Jamie. A very nice comeback with a rewrite about my favorite lunatic. Need more posts, pronto!
There are a fucking ton on the way. No worries on that front!
Welcome back boyo
Thanks bro!
Gay
This man still traverses the North American Continent. Last time I heard he was in New Orleans for Mardi Gras as I was trying to get in touch with about a year and a half ago.
I've already talked to you before about the conversation I had with Benny on the phone. Extremely compelling man. He described himself as always taking things to the "extreme" and his lifting was so intense that he was "snapping shit" so he got out of it.
I'm sure he know of Oyoma but I think he was inspired by Musashi and could relate details of Musashi's life.
Apparently his grandfather knew Evola and Mussolini because Benny's family is from Sicily.
I was getting into MMA at this time and he was giving me advice. He said just get in there and don't give a fuck about the result. "Bite the motherfucker if you have to and if they kick you out of the promotion just find another" – Benny Podda. He followed by saying, "blood tastes good, especially the blood of somebody else".
He also related that he had been in some arranged fights that if one loses "they throw you body in a dumpster". These are actual quotes, take what you want from them. I hope to cross paths with him someday because he is truly one of a kind.
Where the info about Evola and Benito comes from? This is very interesting.
Ha, that is awesome advice in re fighting. I would absolutely love to meet that dude, but given the fact neither he nor I are in the "in" crowd of online coaches, I have no idea how we'd ever get in touch with one another.
The reference to Evola and Mussolini is from Benny himself when I talked to him over the phone.
Jamie, I actually told Benny that I first heard about him via the CnP Blog by Jamie Lewis. He just mentioned to say thanks, which I messaged to you about sometime ago through facebook.
So now we officially can call it lifting Arditi-style. Or Ride the Barbel. Lift or die, me ne fucking frego!
Custer, I have absolutely no recollection of that, which surprises me. I might have been drunk when I read it, lol. In any event, that is awesome, and thanks!
Nice one. Any chance on a cnp recipe ebook in the near future.
I'm actually working on a full blown book to that effect, and we've purchased a badass camera for taking pics of my creations. That's definitely in the works, along with a training and diet book that is totally unlike anything I've as yet published.
Awesome. I look forward to it. I've read the nutritional psycho like 4 times. Wouldn't mind a few recipes of desserts like the cheesecake o have a sweet tooth.
Steroids, etc
You don't get that moon face style bloat from noshing on chicken breasts, lol.
Been checking the site everyday for updates on your return, welcome back you fuckin psycho
Hahaha. That's dedication! Thanks man. Rather than wait for other people to type up the stuff I wrote over the last three months, I am biting the bullet and doing it myself, so there is going to be a ton of new shit in the next few weeks. I shall repay your loyalty with some serious dedication to being a 1950's secretary, hahaha. I despise retyping my handwritten work for some reason.
Missed your posts. Glad you're back.
That's pretty cool. Increasingly I feel like people don't need sets and reps or realistic goals, they need myths they can believe in.
All of that shit about "realistic goals" is fucking stupid. That mentality is just fear and weakness. There is absolutely no other reason to even invent such a term otherwise.
Jamie, good to have you back ya filthy animal!! You're books and this blog kept me going throughout my recent 9 month deployment. I'm curious to know if your next ebook will have slightly modified training and philosophy. Will it be issuance of insanity pt. 4 or destroy the Opposition pt. 2? Either way man thank you
That's awesome man. I will be dropping a legit book within the next year that is sort of along the lines of The Warrior Diet (I don't want to tip my hand too much), and I am going to port this blog to an entirely new site with search functions so stuff is easier to read. There's also a couple of recipe books in the works, but as I always make content generation my focus it's hard to do everything at once.
Jamie: nice job with this…I wrote the "Beast to Priest" article (still available for free on Scribd, so if you want to link to it, do it), which was a very condensed version of the biography I was authorized to write by Benny himself (and his Mom)…Benny is a most fascinating individual and is a sincere, caring and dangerously unpredictable man to interact with! He actually wrote a book, about 12 years ago, and I have around 50 pages of excerpts; his style dovetails nicely with yours. Overall theme; paraphrasing: take destiny by the throat and make it your slave! He has millions of stories; never a dull moment! At the time of my article, he was training in an ultra-super slow style, e.g., a 3 minute rep on a hybrid deadlift/row/shrug movement, for 5 sets of 5…yes, a 15 minute non-stop set! And, immense poundages, which is hard to believe but not once you meet Benny. I have seen him do surreal bodyweight movements, as well, and, his testicle lift poundages were pushing 500 pounds! Believe what you will: in the world of the Podda, anything, and everything, was possible…just not conventional! Last I heard, several years ago, he was still platform fighting in Macau and was working with the Saints defensive lineman,thus the story by the other poster; Benny said he was giving a series of seminars in a bar in N.O.
Todd, I love that article. Everything I have read about Benny has just made me even more intrigued with the guy, which is why I went out of my way to get into touch with him. Is there any chance that I could see some of the excerpts you have from his book? Email at bartmaney@gmail.com. If you don't want to share then I understand as well. I still read some of his articles at elite fts every now and then. If these don't get you motivated then I don't know what will.
https://www.elitefts.com/education/motivation/strength-2/
https://www.elitefts.com/education/motivation/strength-part-ii-the-conqueror/
Yes, I was the one who connected Benny with Jim Wendler (who loved Benny!) and EFS, for those articles, and a couple that EFS refused to publish. As much as I would love to show you those excerpts from his book, as well as close to 50 other pages of handwritten correspondence, those writings will remain private due to the wishes of Benny. He is absolutely a most unique person: that MMA advice sounds exactly like he attacks everything in life! One brief anecdote: before a workout with him, he had me do 4 shots of a black, viscous liquid much thicker than motor oil that contained the decomposed bodies of 4 rattlesnakes and who knows what all else; the precisely-engineered mix had been aging and fermenting for more than a year; plus we primed for that by drinking copious amounts of opium tea. What a rush!
Todd- thanks for commenting! I definitely would have loved training with Benny back in the day, and I'm envious as hell that you've had the opportunity to hang out with him. If this article gets back to him, I hope he doesn't take issue with the Frank Dux analogy, haha.
Wow…I'm envious Todd, that sounds like a one of a kind experience. He frankly provokes a lot of questions about his life trajectory that I have been dying to ask him about. I would like to ask him more about his faith and becoming a priest as well as how he reconciles that with the other esoteric interests that he has namely Ars Regia (The Royal Art). Oh and the Latin Mass that he recites from memory that you mentioned while holding double broadswords?!? I will never forget that image, far from a typical priest.
The greatest thing about Benny was, at any given moment, literally ANYTHING along the continuum of possibility could happen, and you never knew what to expect! For instance, during his sword-wielding part of the Mass recitation, I remember running through in my head, odds were even that he would A) decapitate everyone in the audience B) commit seppuku, or C) light the swords on fire and swallow them D) literally combat evil psychic spirits in the presence of 35 people…that it was the latter was still one of the most unforgettable things I ever witnessed! The fact that I escaped with my life? That's pretty much the impression Benny always left you with…
As an occultist, I'm definitely dying to get the details of that last story. Benny is larger than life like a motherfucker.
You would be fascinated by some of the insanely entertaining out-of-body experiences the man has been through…by design, because nothing in his life appears to be by happenstance. He is now a full-fledged doctor of Chinese medicine, as well as retaining his priestly duties, and the stories continue to flow, more incredible than ever. I will relate, when and what, as I am able!
All sounds a bit gay to be honest…
Todd,
Are you a believer in the metaphysics of Benny's training/philosophy or are you much more grounded in the fact that the boundaries of modern human physiology are much greater than we have currently conceived? Also, in what ways has Benny inspired you to do your own seeking without his guidance?
Todd- It's be great to collaborate with you on an article or do an interview with you, if you'd like. If you're on FB, shoot me a message there (the first FB button at the top right), or you can email me at jamielewis83@gmail.com.