Troy-built: how Troy Alves went from a 99-pound runt to a 222-pound bodybuilding superstar with 22 1/2" arms

PHOENIX, Arizona -- On this oppressively sweltering day, the city might as well be located in the center of the sun, as record 110-degree heat relentlessly bakes the desert metropolis. It's almost unfathomable that humans not only survive, but also work, play and function in such an inhospitable environment, as millions do on this mid-July afternoon, including a handful of dedicated lifters at the Fitness One health club on Union Hills Drive.

While the thought surely doesn't pass through his mind, IFBB pro Troy Alves owes a debt of gratitude to inventor Willis Haviland Carrier, as the wonder of indoor climate control allows him to train unabated. He completes one last set of alternating dumbbell curls, each swollen biceps in turn tugging and stretching at his skin as it methodically contracts into a powerful orb of tight striated muscle during each rep. Finally, the weights racked with a one-two clang, Alves towels off, rhythmically inhaling and exhaling as his breathing pattern slows and stabilizes.

No doubt, this pro, who turns 38 on September 26, has come a long way from the moment he first touched a barbell during his sophomore year in high school, a time when he often didn't hit three digits on a bathroom scale. Along the way, mistakes were made and lessons were learned as his arm training evolved and his physique flourished.

Now, as one of the hottest competitors in the professional ranks, he can stand onstage, toe to toe with the best bodies on the planet, confidently hitting an awe-inducing double-biceps pose that leaves many of his contemporaries in the dust.

It's a journey worth remembering, a retrospective that can provide a blueprint for those following in his footsteps to avoid the pitfalls while blazing a trail to bodybuilding greatness. On this day, Alves is more than happy to share--and if it keeps him in the comfy confines of the gym for another half hour, away from the blistering furnace awaiting outside, all the better.

CURLS FOR THE GIRLS | "I started lifting in my sophomore year of high school," Alves recalls. "I would go to weight-training class twice a week, and every single time, all I did were curls and bench presses. We would use that old Arm Blaster and just curl all day with an EZ bar. There was no 'rep range' back then. I would just go until I couldn't do any more, every set. All I can remember from class is doing those curls ... and then I would go bench. I did it backward back then; I had no clue."

While Alves pursued multiple athletic endeavors in those days, including baseball, football and wrestling--he was an all-state center fielder at Glendale High School in Arizona, and a gifted running back and defensive back on the football team--he wasn't necessarily hitting the weights to bolster his competitive power.

No, it was much simpler. "I was training for the girls," he admits. "Back in the day, that's what it was for. I wanted bigger arms. I never really learned how to lift in high school; it was all about arms and chest."

From 4'11" and weighing 99 pounds his freshman year, his natural growth coupled with his primitive training pumped him up to 135 pounds by his junior campaign. By the time he graduated and signed up for the Air Force, he was 150 at a height of 5'8". He wasn't "massive" by any standard, but he did attain his initial goal.

"No one could believe how big my arms looked; just curling made a huge difference," he says. "Overtraining is not the best thing to do, but for me, that first routine did dramatic things for my biceps."

During his four years in the service, Alves barely touched any weights, but the guns he built in school stuck with him. "When I got back from the Air Force in 1990, I had 18" arms and 19" legs," he says, laughing. "I used to wear tight Jordache jeans, and I had skinny little legs. But I would get all this attention because of my arms." (Hey, let those without Zubaz pants and leisure suits in their sordid fashion past cast the first stone.)

Thankfully, those dreadful denims went the way of his bench-and-curl routine, and Alves became a bit more serious about muscle growth. While he put his overdeveloped biceps on the back burner for almost two years, he focused on the rest of his physique, training four or five days per week as he struggled to bring his other bodyparts up to par. Only after he accomplished a more balanced overall look did he return to performing curls, this time with a wider arsenal of exercise selections.

"I did barbell curls, alternate dumbbell curls and machine or EZ-bar preacher curls," he says of his first bona fide arm routine. "Back in those days, I would do fewer reps, six to 10 per set, three sets each exercise."

LOCKED AND LOADED | Even at that point, the thought of donning posing trunks and stepping in front of a panel of judges wasn't foremost on Alves' agenda. In fact, it wasn't until 1994, a year after he began work as a personal trainer, that such a possibility even crossed his mind.

"I really didn't know much about the sport of bodybuilding," he says. "People in the gym--they weren't good friends, just acquaintances--said I had a pretty nice physique. If I could bring up my legs, I could do a contest."

Eventually, he relented, deciding just a week before it was held to enter the Arizona All-Natural Muscle Classic. He won the novice overall and placed second among the middleweights. His competitive furnace thus stoked, he tweaked his training protocol with his sights set on the NPC.

During that time, his biceps training underwent further changes, as his efforts solidified behind the goal of entering a national-level show. "My hand placement, my technique--there was a lot I was doing mechanically that was wrong," he says of his curls.

"A lot of people have a tendency to curl with their wrists; they roll their wrists over and use their forearms. I was doing that, curling with my body instead of just using my arms. I started to keep my hands locked out, straight or slightly tilted back, and that alteration alone made a huge difference in the condition and overall depth of my biceps."

He also started employing more isolation exercises, such as incline dumbbell curls, cable curls and concentration curls, while tossing in 21s ("triple sevens," as he likes to call them) for his barbell curls every once in a while for good measure. "I used to throw the weight up when I was younger--I just wanted to get it up, and I wasn't thinking of actually isolating and breaking down the muscle. I learned from those days, from watching people in the gym who did it correctly, and I developed my own training style. Now I go one second up, two seconds down. I like to concentrate on the repetition on the way down, not just on the way up; it's all controlled."

FREAK SHOW | After years of well-documented frustrations on amateur stages, including three consecutive second-place heavyweight-division finishes at national-level contests, Alves broke through at the 2002 USA by snagging top heavyweight honors and a pro card as runner-up to overall winner Idrise Ward-El. His 2003 rookie campaign in the pose-for-pay ranks netted a number of impressive placings, including seven top-six finishes and a remarkable eighth place in his very first Mr. Olympia.

"My goal is to make my biceps as freaky as possible," he says of his current aim. "I'm still looking for balance, but I'm not holding back in training them really hard. Sometimes I do triceps twice a week, but I do biceps once for sure. At this point, for me personally, I'm trying to be the perfect specimen as far as everything being balanced and flowing, and I still feel like I have some work to do for the triceps to match up with the biceps."

His routine consists of barbell curls, spider curls (where he turns a preacher bench around and does curls off the flat side) and his favorite, alternating dumbbell curls. "I think I get the best results from that exercise as far as overall mass, because I'm hitting the brachialis and the peak at the same time," he explains.

"Those three are the anchors, but I also switch it up sometimes. I'll do concentration curls, standing cable curls, upper-pulley cable curls--the exercise that looks like a double-biceps pose--and seated cable curls. That's where you're seated in front of a lower pulley, you place your elbows on your knees and curl with a cambered-bar attachment. Once in a blue moon, usually precontest, I add a one-arm cable preacher curl."

For each exercise, it's three working sets, with two warm-up sets preceding the first exercise of the day. "I really don't pyramid at all," Alves adds. "Sometimes I will for standing dumbbell curls, but as far as barbell curls, I'll warm up and then I'll find a weight where it's difficult to get 10-12 reps, and I'll stick with that for each working set. I don't like to force reps, where I start losing my technique and form. I want to be able to get quality reps no matter what."

TURNING UP THE HEAT | On the near horizon for the man who finished third earlier this year at the Ironman, fourth at the San Francisco Pro Invitational and eighth at the Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic is the Mr. Olympia in October.

"I'll be there," he states matter-of-factly, as if he's out to prove that his last outing at bodybuilding's biggest contest, a disappointing 15th in 2004, was nothing but a fluke. "I think my setback in my second year in the pros was taking the whole year off in preparation for the Olympia," he says. "I have the type of physique where I need to compete at least a few times a year. That messed me up--I didn't hit my timing right. I totally blew it at the Olympia. I was flat, my color was terrible, everything was gone. That was a good learning experience.

"I feel earlier this year I was on my way to making a dip into the top five [of the Mr. Olympia]," he continues. "I never get caught up in the size game, but I will have added a few pounds because I've been training very hard. I've been working on making my physique as perfectly proportioned as possible, and I think doing that, it's going to look like I put on a lot of size. It may only be five pounds [which would put him at about 225-227 on contest day], but it will be dramatic on my physique."

With that, it's time for the next looming challenge of the day--facing down the prospect of stepping out of the air conditioning. Luckily, whether it's standing down the 300-pound behemoths of our sport or just taking the feverish wrath of Mother Nature, Alves is ready for battle.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS LUND

RELATED ARTICLE: TROY ALVES ESSENTIAL STATS

BIRTHDATE September 26, 1967

BIRTHPLACE Bridgeport, Connecticut

CURRENT RESIDENCE Phoenix, Arizona

MARITAL STATUS Married to Tara

HEIGHT 5'8"

OFFSEASON/CONTEST WEIGHT 245 pounds/222 pounds

RELATED ARTICLE: TROY ALVES' TOP TIPS

1 | Don't get caught up in emulating someone else's arms. Everyone has his own structure and goals, and you should train based on that alone. For my clients, I've changed the routines based on certain characteristics. Some have longer biceps, where there's a lot to fill out, so I have them do more volume training and basic exercises that build overall mass, such as barbell and hammer curls. For someone who has well-developed biceps already, we'll hit different angles to polish them and bring out the peaks, like preacher-bench concentration curls and multiple angles using cables.

2 | Especially when you're starting, take it slow to avoid overtraining. I would advise people new to working out to train biceps no more than once per week. If you feel in the years to come that it's a lagging bodypart, you can push it to twice per week. Also, I wouldn't recommend any more than 10-12 sets maximum per workout. I've seen guys do 18 sets or more for biceps. I don't understand that.

3 | If you haven't seen progress in a while, it's time for a shock. Do something a little different, whether it's higher reps, different angles or different exercises. I personally like 215, because it's an explosive technique that really fries the muscle, or high-volume training like a crazy set of 50 reps, where you use rest-pause to help you get to 50. Go until you can't lift without cheating; then rest for a few seconds, just enough to get that next burst of energy--you want to keep that burn going, but you also want to get quality reps.

TROY ALVES' BICEPS ROUTINE EVOLUTION (1981-PRESENT)

EXERCISE                     SETS  REPS

FIRST BICEPS ROUTINE (CIRCA 1981)
Standing cambered-bar curls  5     To failure
  (with Arm Blaster)
Flat-bench barbell presses   5     To failure

INTERMEDIATE BICEPS ROUTINE (CIRCA 1992)
Standing barbell curls       3      6-10
Alternating dumbbell curls   3      6-10
Machine or cambered-bar      3      6-10
  preacher curls

CURRENT BICEPS ROUTINE
Standing barbell curls       5*    10-12
Cambered-bar spider curls    3     10-12
Alternating dumbbell curls   3     10-12

NOTE: Alves also rotates in upper-pulley cable curls, seated cable
curls, one-arm cable preacher curls, standing cable curls and dumbbell
concentration curls.
* First two sets are warm-ups.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

YEAR  CONTEST                PLACING

2002  USA Championships      First, heavyweight
                             (earned pro card)
2003  Australian Grand Prix  Second
      Mr. Olympia            Eighth
2005  Ironman Pro            Third
      San Francisco Pro      Fourth

COPYRIGHT 2005 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group