MR.
USA
Written by
Photos by
Muscle
Digest
July/August
1978
Rod Koontz, 1977 AAU Mr.
It bothers him when people stare, but
“I’m glad I’m at the point where people do take a second look, but I don’t like
the derogatory things people say. If a
skinny guy wears shorts, no one says anything.
If a big guy does, he’s a show-off.”
So Rod always keeps “pretty well clothed, long sleeves, long pants. I guess part of it is vanity. When you win a physique contest, people—the
general public—expect you to look like
What has given Rod the most pleasure in
the past year? “Winning
the
Born and raised in the
Considered too small for football, Rod
became very active in gymnastics. “When
I graduated from high school, my arms were almost as big as my thighs. I used to live on the rings at the beach in
the summer, and that’s when I got my ‘long pants’ complex. People used to look at me and say, ‘God, your
upper body is so big, but your LEGS . . . !” I even went swimming with long pants!” Rod’s face broke into a big grin. “But I’ve worked my legs so hard that now I’m
even getting considered for Best Legs in national contests!”
Along with gymnastics, Rod actively
participated in boxing, karate, and to a lesser degree, weightlifting. He found that boxing made him edgy, ready to
turn and punch anyone who walked up behind him.
His right arm bears a souvenir of his boxing days, a small tattoo that
reads THEE ANIMAL. Weightlifting gave
him more strength for karate, but “I lost fine control and kept getting
disqualified for knocking guys out.”
A feeling that he was “wasting time
lifting weights for nothing” led Rod into his first bodybuilding contest. He entered the teenage division at a local
contest without even having seen a physique competition. He heard he came in sixth.
Since then, Rod has so successfully
combined bodybuilding and powerlifting that he won
the 1976
Rod learned the role of nutrition in
athletics while he was in the Army. “I
went in at 183, in good shape from being a gymnast, and right away I gained 18
pounds of fat, despite all the running and stuff.” He began experimenting with diets as soon as
he was discharged. After briefly trying
variations of the “chicken and water” regimens, he quickly turned away from
them because he felt so bad. Since then,
he has relied very heavily on professional advice and on knowledge gained from
studying scientific journals on nutrition and biochemistry.
Biochemistry fascinates him to the
point that it probably would be his career choice if he had to start all over
again. Nevertheless, he’s happy with and
enjoys his present job as a computer software tester. The company Rod works for specializes in
programs for stockbrokers, and his job is to see that a client gets the
programming capabilities he pays for—no more, no less. “Everybody’s surprised when I say I’m into
data processing. They ask, ‘What do you
do? Move computers?’ They think bodybuilders are dumb and can’t do
anything but lift!” He works the swing
shift which permits him to train and catch a few rays of the
He
is especially appreciative of his boss’s favorable attitude toward the special
demands of bodybuilding. As for his
co-workers, “When you do well, they back you, but they think you’re a health
fanatic and not a normal person because you don't eat a lot of donuts and
potato chips. But look at some of them! One guy at work is 6’1”, weighs 140; the
other looks like a jockey. They sit
there talking about their plants. ‘Oh, did you give it the mineral I told you
to? How much sun does it get?’ They went on and on, and I just started
laughing and said, ‘You know, you guys take better care of your plants than you
do of yourselves!’ I usually don’t say
anything, but I was getting tired of it.”
A bonus at work in 1977 was meeting his
gorgeous girlfriend
If Rod bases his diet on biochemistry,
his training is based on kinesiology, the scientific study of muscles and their
movements. Although he varies his
routines from contest to contest, they all relate back to his knowledge of kinesiology
for the purpose of isolating muscles to pre-exhaustion, then finishing off with
a general exercise. His pet theory is
also one of
He also firmly believes that the main
cause of stretch marks is not warming up enough. Proper warm-ups are an obsession with Rod; he
has to gear his entire training routine around injuries. When he was 14, he broke his wrist. The break was so badly treated by a
succession of doctors that osteomyelitis set in and
Rod almost lost his arm. A malpractice
suit resulted, and a specialist finally came to Rod’s rescue. That was the most serious of a series of
injuries, but Rod also has to compensate for shoulder and elbow injuries from
gymnastics and from a knee injury acquired at a weekend football game.
Rod’s diet definitely sets him apart
from most bodybuilders, and he acknowledges that over the past two years he has
probably concentrated more on diet than training. It’s paid off right from the start: In 1975
he won “Most Improved Bodybuilder in
A disbeliever in zero carbohydrate
diets—“the body and brain need carbohydrates to function efficiently”—, Rod
stays on a low fat diet. “Fats
contribute to obesity, are low in nutritional value compared to carbs and interfere with the digestion of protein.” He normally shuns refined sugars, favoring
natural sources of carbohydrates.
Proteins are limited to 50 grams per meal because he feels more cannot
be assimilated. “I think that these guys
who have to eat so much meat are making their bodies inefficient because meat
is so hard to digest. Beef is especially
high in fats, causing it to interfere with digestion.” Rod maintained a 2,500-calorie diet before
winning the
Blackstrap molasses is a very important
part of Rod’s diet. Because of a
peculiar physiological dysfunction, his body is unable to absorb the
nutritional values found in dairy products, and molasses helps compensate for
this. “Blackstrap molasses has 29 times
more iron, 137 times more calcium, 53 times more potassium, and less carbohydrates than a comparable amount of honey. I use it to whip up weird concoctions in my
blender, stuff that other people don’t see how I can eat, just to get the
nutritional value from it.”
Rod’s smile disappeared when he was
asked what the most difficult part of bodybuilding is for him. “Politics,” he replied grimly, “and it’s
getting worse, especially in
He was more open on the topic of what
makes a contest good. “It’s run efficiently and not rushed. The prejudging lighting should be the same as
at the night show. Don’t make a contest
a spectacle; bodybuilding won’t be accepted as a sport if competitions are run
like beauty pageants.”
Who
make the best judges? “I don’t
know. Bodybuilders lean toward what
they’d like to look like, photographers judge on
whether or not a guy is photogenic, and women look at the face and they dislike
vascularity.
Judging is really hard, especially when you have to compare the guy who
looks like nothing until the individual body parts are posed. I guess I’d have to go with the guy who grows
as he poses—it shows a lack of fat, because you can’t flex fat.”
Being a bodybuilder can have its humorous moments. “I was in the hospital getting my appendix
taken out. First of all, they didn’t
have any gowns with arms that would fit me, so they had to cut off the
sleeves. I was asleep one night, and a
nurse came in and did something to the patient next to me, and it kind of woke
me up. So there I was, half-asleep, and
she looked at me and came running over, looked at my arms, and said with a sigh
of relief, ‘Oh, they’re both like
that! I thought your arm was swollen
from the I.V.!’”
Rod can often be seen at small
contests, yelling advice to beginning bodybuilders. “
What’s
ahead for Rod? “Right now I’m training
to win the
—end—