CRASH COURSE TO GLORY BY GREG MERRITT Mat DuVall survives a car wreck and a workout programme from hell to become 2003 NPC National overall champ MAY 2, 2003 It seems like a scene from a movie – a van, loaded with highly flammable chemicals, slides on its side through a busy intersection – but the terror is all too real for the man behind the wheel. There is a moment when Mat DuVall’s colossal left arm, flayed with broken glass, is being torn away by the pavement, and he has to choose losing a limb over losing his head. All the while, in the endless seconds when his world is upended, he is terrified by the possibility that the van will erupt into an inferno and turn him to dust. That afternoon, the road near Leesburg, Virginia, was wet from recent rains. DuVall was delivering pay cheques for his uncle, a contractor, in a van filled with paint products. His work nearly done, he eagerly anticipated a trip with girlfriend Bethany Howlett to the following day’s Pittsburgh Pro Figure contest. Coming to a red traffic signal, he looked down and then back up and slammed on the brakes. The brakes locked. He skidded sideways and smashed into the car in front of him, knocking that car through the intersection. Its occupants were uninjured. DuVall was not so lucky. The van tipped onto its side. When the driver’s side window shattered, DuVall’s left arm was dragged on the pavement. He tried to lift his arm as the van slid, but then his head hit the road. Forced to choose, he chose his arm. A friend had lost a limb in a similar accident. DuVall expected his arm to be ripped free. Worse, as oil-based stains and paints splashed over him, he feared the coming fire. When the van finally stopped, DuVall kicked out the windscreen and crawled out as fast as he could go. It was a busy intersection and, in our cellular age, fire engines and an ambulance arrived quickly. Firemen blasted the chemicals off DuVall with hoses. It wasn’t until they cut off his shirt that he realised how badly his left arm was mangled. A large flap of flesh dangled loose. Blood spurted out with each heartbeat. DuVall had two ruptured arteries near the brachialis and a severed vein in his elbow. Despite all the glass and asphalt pushed deep into his arm, there was no muscular damage. It took more than 120 stitches and three operations to close the wounds. The third operation closed off the vein in his elbow, after doctors assured him he had enough vascularity there to maintain normal blood flow. DuVall stayed in the hospital overnight with his swollen stitched arm wrapped in bandages. He considered himself blessed that his fate wasn’t worse. The van’s motor had been pushed into the cab. He could’ve lost a leg, an arm or his life. It was then, with the worst behind him, that DuVall contemplated what lay ahead. He was scheduled to compete in the NPC USA Championships in 12 weeks. He had been in his best shape ever at the three-month mark. But what now? When would he train again? When would he compete again? Would he ever turn pro, or was this a sign that it was never meant to be? OCTOBER 31, 1972 Halloween, one week before Richard Nixon’s re-election, and Mathew DuVall is born to Charlotte and Barry. His father was, and still is, a successful businessman, the owner of a general-contracting company specialising in dry walling and painting. His mother became a cosmetics distributor. Growing up the middle of three children in Manassas, a northern Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, DuVall was an all-sport athlete with a special love for football and Superman. At 13, in a church gym, he found a musty bodybuilding book with photos of Bill Pearl, Arnold Schwarzenegger and other legends. “I got enthralled with the pictures and the way guys looked like cartoon characters,” he remembers. “Even though I was training for other sports, I was already aspiring to have a bodybuilder’s physique at a young age.” The local training facility didn’t allow members under 18, but DuVall went each day until he wore the gym manager down. DuVall was 14. The older members teased him, but eventually they accepted the dedicated and gifted youth. They were powerlifters, so he trained like a powerlifter, bench pressing 405 while still a 180-pound teen. He entered a local bodybuilding show at 17, finishing second in the teen class. Coached by men who knew a lot about deadlifts but nothing about cardio or carb loading, DuVall was woefully naive about contest prep, although he managed to take third place in the heavyweight class of the 1992 Teen Nationals. “After that, I realised I didn’t want to just walk through shows,” he remembers. “I stepped back for three years and learned as much about my body, nutrition and training as I could, so I’d be ready for the next time I stepped on stage.” After a stint at evangelical Liberty University, where he chafed at the moralistic rules, DuVall moved to New Jersey and built a personal-training business. He won the heavyweight class of the New Jersey State Championships at 23 and made a pilgrimage to muscle mecca – Venice, California – staying just long enough to learn that the laid-back lifestyle wasn’t for him. “I didn’t want a life of just sitting around, eating and training,” he states. In 1997, DuVall entered the USA and the National contests, but with respective 11th- and seventh-place finishes, he realised he wasn’t really ready for the national stage. Two years later, he was, and he placed second among superheavyweights in the 1999 Nationals. Christened the Next Big Thing, he was poised to turn pro the following year at the still young age of 27. AUGUST 5, 2000 Standing onstage at the USA Championships finals in Las Vegas, DuVall is bathed in sweat. He has a fever of 102. Suffering a staph infection, he shed 12 pounds over the previous week. He finishes 11th. He wonders if it’s all worth it. His marriage is ending the year after it began, and already he’s planning a future away from bodybuilding. But he’s not a quitter. He continues to compete in pro qualifiers, bouncing back with another second-place superheavyweight finish at the 2001 Nationals. To Mat DuVall, it’s just another loss. NOVEMBER 15, 2003 A triumphant Mat DuVall stands with his Nationals trophy at centre stage in Miami’s Jackie Gleason Theatre. Grinning so wide his face aches, he strikes a pose. Flashbulbs erupt. In his 10th attempt at a pro card, DuVall won not only the superheavyweight class but also the overall. Seven months earlier, recovering from the road accident but still hoping to enter the USA Championships, he had returned to the gym. Stitches bled. His elbow swelled. Even leg training hurt his arm when he gripped a handle or a bar. He dropped out of the USA. It was nearly three months before he could train with his usual beyond-failure intensity, and then he focused more on the pump than the weights, finally shedding his teen powerlifting instincts to the betterment of his physique. Because his sore left elbow or shoulder frequently forced him to alter workouts, his training grew more instinctive, and he kept up a flexible schedule even after the pain subsided. By late summer, relying on the unwavering support of his parents, girlfriend Bethany Howlett and cousin Brian Wjtusik, he was confident he could peak for the rapidly approaching Nationals. Nutritionist Chad Nicholls oversaw DuVall’s diet and coached him through the final days, as he achieved his best-ever condition. Before he even left Virginia for Miami Beach, he declared himself a winner because of all he had overcome. NOVEMBER 17, 2003 The newest National champ sits at a table in a deli in Marina del Rey, California, having spent much of the day at a FLEX photo shoot. He devours a cheeseburger and fries as he talks about his past and his future. On walls crowded with pop-culture detritus, he spots a Superman cutout soaring near the ceiling. He grins. DuVall is a Superman superfan, owner of the appropriate ring and shoulder tattoo as well as a roomful of memorabilia, which he claims can put Lee Priest’s Superman collection to shame. “Even at a young age, I knew that Batman was just a guy in a fancy suit with a lot of gadgets,” DuVall explains, “but Superman can actually do things with his own body. And there are multiple dimensions to him.” And so there are of Mat DuVall. He is an articulate man who scorns trash talking, a hardworking businessman disdainful of the lazy life of too many bodybuilders, a once dogmatic Christian who now sees wisdom in all religions. After six years and 10 attempts at turning pro, he is surprisingly ambivalent about professional posing. “I’m challenged more by what I can do in the business world than on bodybuilding stages,” he explains. “Do I want to compete as a pro? Parts of me, yes, and small parts of me, no, because there are problems I have with the sport that aren’t ever going to change. For all the effort you put in and what you take away from the people you love, the payback isn’t that substantial. “My biggest problem is that I feel guilty when I diet, because I become a different person. My family has difficulty with it, because I’m a communicator by nature, but you don’t hear a peep out of me when I diet. I want to be active with my contracting business. I want to get my cleaning business going. These require communication. I’ll decide where to go with pro contests after I feel more grounded in these other areas of my life that will carry me a lot further than bodybuilding.” (As we went to press, DuVall informed us that he will make his pro debut at the Canada Pro Invitational on May 15.) In the end, as Mat DuVall is sliding the last of his fries through a puddle of ketchup, mere hours after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is sworn in, he serves up advice that, fittingly, is more about life than bodybuilding. “Be as much of an individual as you can be. Don’t make the mistake of reading what this champion or that champion does and thinking that’s what you need to do. Be who you are. If you want to use the obvious example, look at what Arnold did. He had a plan. He was always his own person and blazed his own path. Be yourself, and if you don’t know what that means, take a step back and find yourself. I don’t think it’s ever too late.” MAT DuVALL’S TRAINiNG PHILOSOPHY In 2001, while training with Trevor Smith, head honcho of Nuclear Nutrition, DuVall adopted Smith’s beyond-failure principles; he has followed them ever since. For each exercise, after warming up for one or two relatively intense sets of 15-20 reps, DuVall does only one working set, but that monster is like four intense sets wrapped into one. He does 12-15 reps until he reaches failure (let’s use 300 pounds as an example weight). His partner helps him with two forced reps. Then the weight is reduced by approximately 30% (to 210 pounds) and he does eight to 10 reps, followed by one or two forced reps. That weight is then reduced by approximately 30% (to 140 pounds) for six to 10 reps and one or two forced reps. The final reduction is also approximately 30% (to 95 pounds), and he pumps out a final 10-20 reps. When he reaches failure, his partner resists as he fully exhausts the muscles with negative reps. One such set typically consists of 50-100 reps and can last five minutes. “It is the most excruciatingly painful training you can do,” DuVall insists, “but it’s extremely effective.” This type of training is so stressful that the central nervous system can handle it for only eight to 10 weeks before being overtaxed. After that, DuVall returns to more conventional workouts for three or four weeks. Simultaneously, he lowers his nutritional intake. Normally, he eats up to 500 grams of protein daily, but he may ingest only 350 when not on a beyond-failure cycle. He believes the synergistic cycling of training and diet is both healthier and more effective because it rests and recharges the metabolism. FLEX Mat DuVall can be reached for business at mdmat2000@aol.com.