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It became a deafening roar. The floor trembled as the fans stomped their impatience. I'm telling you it was something else. The audience response was so incredible, Betty Weider said...

“Never, have I seen anything like it. I have seen all the Mr. Olympia contests Arnold, Lee Haney, Dorian and there has never been the audience response like the night Larry competed in the first Olympia. I was actually afraid they would get out of control. They were screaming and crying, trying to get one last look at Larry”.

Standing on the threshold of my first Mr. Olympia contest, it seemed a lifetime ago...

I was always smaller than my friends. When junior high came along, everyone's voices got deeper as they matured. Everyone except me. I was still slow in developing everywhere it counted. Gradually I began to grow but I soon realized I’d have to settle for a dismally average physique until something occurred that changed my entire life.

"I'm the one on the right, talk about skinny. You could count my ribs through my pecs"

During the spring of my 16th year, I was weeding and cleaning up the clutter of a winter's accumulation of junk. I then hauled the whole thing off to the city dump. After having dumped everything, I glanced around to see if there was anything I could scrounge. I noticed a pile of magazines and sauntered over as if I was just stretching my legs. I mean no one wants to get caught taking something from the dump. There was a whole pile of neat magazines like “Field and Stream”, “Outdoor Life” etc. As I sifted through, something caught my eye.

It was a bodybuilding magazine with a shot of an incredibly built human being by the name of George Pain doing a side triceps pose. The photo caption read, “You too, can have an arm like this in 30 days”. His tricep stood out like a banana stuck on there, with little slices running down the length of it.

I had never seen anything like it. Flipping through the magazine... there were several photos of George doing exercises which allegedly built his incredible arms. I drank in every word like a man obsessed.

“I can do these exercises. I've got an old tractor axle I can use.” At the time, I didn’t know triceps from biceps but I was going to have those arms and it said, “If you want arms like this, you have to do these exercises.”
Using my tractor axle, I struggled through the strange movements as I experienced my first pump. It was a peculiar tightness like I was growing. Man was I stoked.

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