On the most obvious level, competitive bodybuilding is about contests between athletes, between champions and upstarts and the details of timing and pump, performance, judges and audiences. On another level, though, because bodybuilding is an individual sport based on self-improvement, there is an adversary each contender must face, the one opponent consistently challenging them, bout after bout.
“Me,” according to Aaron Clark. “That’s my biggest competitor. Getting caught up in who you have to beat or who you have to be better than will send you on a head trip. Bodybuilding, at its heart, is about you.”
It’s a reflective thought for a man who, for the last two years, has been the youngest competitor in the top five in the 212s at bodybuilding’s spring and fall classics – at…