Any of y'all been to prison or know people who have? 
prison bodybuilding has always fascinated me
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Barbells Behind Bars
10 Years of Prison Weightlifting
by Daniel Genis | 07/30/14
Tags:
Here's what you need to know...
• Weightlifting is vital to the social structure of some prison yards. Just know your area or "court" and stick to it.
• Because of occasional fights, there aren't any dumbbells lighter than 35 pounds (it's hard to get any momentum going when you're trying to smash a guy with a 60-pound dumbbell). Instead, courts fight one another with shanks and fists.
• Sometimes guys come out of five years of solitary with a Sandow body. They obviously don't have equipment, so they train by manipulating gravity.
• Soy protein makes up a large component of the state-issued meals, so there's a whole underground economy in providing bodybuilders with meat and eggs.
• To say that prison weightlifting is good for self-esteem isn't enough. It also builds willpower and dedication, and gives men a sense of accomplishment. For many, it's the first time they've felt any sense of achievement.
The Lowdown
I was addicted to heroin. I owed a bunch of money to some local Ukrainians, so I robbed a series of people at knifepoint in order to pay off the debt. One of the victims recognized me and later on I got pinned for the other robberies. I was sentenced to prison for ten years.
But I wasn't always "that guy." Before the heroin, I got a degree in history. Learned three languages. I worked in publishing and taught as well. I got married to a Hungarian woman who understood my Soviet background. (My parents only moved to the states in 1977). My father is a big deal writer in Russia and my mother a corporate warrior. Obviously, my addiction and subsequent incarceration came as a big surprise and disappointment. I worked out, too, before going to prison. I was a member of a health club and when I lived in Copenhagen I used to go to a boxing gym.
Lift or Get Crushed
While waiting in county jail, there was nothing to do but eat pork rinds and cupcakes and deal with the stress. I put on 30 pounds while awaiting sentencing. I wasn't too pleased with this, and knew that I'd eventually get some trailer visits from my wife, so I felt that I had to drastically improve my body. But it wasn't only that. I was now in a hostile, dangerous and altogether foreign world, and I was going to be there for ten years, so I joined the weightlifting cult immediately. I eventually devolved into a shallow creature that wore ever-tighter shirts and tried to keep his vascularity up, even in the jailhouse mess hall. It was easy to revel in muscle, and many men in prison do just that.
Not Like Planet Fitness
Prison weightlifting is its own subculture, with a history, customs, heroes, myths, and as any proper subculture should have, its own vocabulary. As a result, there are several colorful terms for going out to the yard and lifting weights. One is "getting money," which oddly enough also refers to masturbation. "Pushing iron," "getting right," and "throwing steel" are also terms that mean weightlifting. There's also a sub-subculture that limits exercise to the pull-up bar, and the guys who practice this are "barmen." Their methods are rather ingenious as they manage to train pretty much every body part by manipulating their own bodies over, under, and around the pull-up bar, including legs, which is done by suspending oneself from the bar with two sturdy leather weight belts.
The barmen have no idea that they've essentially reproduced much of the gymnastics culture of Eastern European fitness without being able to find Romania on the map. Of course there's a rivalry between barmen and weightlifters. The barmen can never achieve the same mass, but have incredibly defined torsos on them which none of the weightlifters could replicate. The barmen stand in lines in front of the pull-up bar and make fun of the lumbering weightlifters, while the guys with rust on their hands from the pig iron tell the barmen to beware of the rising wind, which might blow them away.
The weight belts are a vital part of the culture as they're made to order by jailhouse leatherworkers. They usually express ethnicity or affiliation. Mine had the double-headed Imperial Russian eagle on it and cost fifty bucks, while others had images of gorillas, Hitler, tanks, bulls, and every flag one can think of.
Calling this simply exercise is a gross understatement. Weightlifting is popular enough and vital enough for the entire social structure of some prison yards to be arranged around it. A prison I spent four years in, Greenhaven Correctional Facility, had its yard divided into 15-foot "courts." Each one had an affiliation of sorts. Some were for members of a specific gang, like the Blood Court, while others, like the Italian Court focused on ethnicity. I was a member of the Irish, which took in all the ones with less clear categories.
However, to join a court one must have clean "papers," which meant no history of informing and no sex charges. There was, however, one court labeled as "Christian" that would allow men to exercise without showing paperwork. Every court had a duplicate set of rusty, awfully welded iron weights and dilapidated machinery. My court was run by John Gotti in the 1970's. As a result, we all used "John's weights."
Visiting from court to court is only done by invitation; doing so without an invitation is a challenge to a battle. Because of occasional fights, there aren't any dumbbells lighter than 35 pounds (it's hard to get any momentum going when you're trying to smash a guy with a 60-pound dumbbell). Instead, courts fight one another with shanks and fists.
So lifting weights in prison involves participating in a social structure not unlike a gang, at least in New York State. In many other states, the weights have been removed to combat this subculture and to satisfy public fears of bulked-up, American History X cons walking the streets after they get out of prison.
prison bodybuilding has always fascinated me ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barbells Behind Bars
10 Years of Prison Weightlifting
by Daniel Genis | 07/30/14
Tags:
Here's what you need to know...
• Weightlifting is vital to the social structure of some prison yards. Just know your area or "court" and stick to it.
• Because of occasional fights, there aren't any dumbbells lighter than 35 pounds (it's hard to get any momentum going when you're trying to smash a guy with a 60-pound dumbbell). Instead, courts fight one another with shanks and fists.
• Sometimes guys come out of five years of solitary with a Sandow body. They obviously don't have equipment, so they train by manipulating gravity.
• Soy protein makes up a large component of the state-issued meals, so there's a whole underground economy in providing bodybuilders with meat and eggs.
• To say that prison weightlifting is good for self-esteem isn't enough. It also builds willpower and dedication, and gives men a sense of accomplishment. For many, it's the first time they've felt any sense of achievement.
The Lowdown
I was addicted to heroin. I owed a bunch of money to some local Ukrainians, so I robbed a series of people at knifepoint in order to pay off the debt. One of the victims recognized me and later on I got pinned for the other robberies. I was sentenced to prison for ten years.
But I wasn't always "that guy." Before the heroin, I got a degree in history. Learned three languages. I worked in publishing and taught as well. I got married to a Hungarian woman who understood my Soviet background. (My parents only moved to the states in 1977). My father is a big deal writer in Russia and my mother a corporate warrior. Obviously, my addiction and subsequent incarceration came as a big surprise and disappointment. I worked out, too, before going to prison. I was a member of a health club and when I lived in Copenhagen I used to go to a boxing gym.
Lift or Get Crushed
While waiting in county jail, there was nothing to do but eat pork rinds and cupcakes and deal with the stress. I put on 30 pounds while awaiting sentencing. I wasn't too pleased with this, and knew that I'd eventually get some trailer visits from my wife, so I felt that I had to drastically improve my body. But it wasn't only that. I was now in a hostile, dangerous and altogether foreign world, and I was going to be there for ten years, so I joined the weightlifting cult immediately. I eventually devolved into a shallow creature that wore ever-tighter shirts and tried to keep his vascularity up, even in the jailhouse mess hall. It was easy to revel in muscle, and many men in prison do just that.
Not Like Planet Fitness
Prison weightlifting is its own subculture, with a history, customs, heroes, myths, and as any proper subculture should have, its own vocabulary. As a result, there are several colorful terms for going out to the yard and lifting weights. One is "getting money," which oddly enough also refers to masturbation. "Pushing iron," "getting right," and "throwing steel" are also terms that mean weightlifting. There's also a sub-subculture that limits exercise to the pull-up bar, and the guys who practice this are "barmen." Their methods are rather ingenious as they manage to train pretty much every body part by manipulating their own bodies over, under, and around the pull-up bar, including legs, which is done by suspending oneself from the bar with two sturdy leather weight belts.
The barmen have no idea that they've essentially reproduced much of the gymnastics culture of Eastern European fitness without being able to find Romania on the map. Of course there's a rivalry between barmen and weightlifters. The barmen can never achieve the same mass, but have incredibly defined torsos on them which none of the weightlifters could replicate. The barmen stand in lines in front of the pull-up bar and make fun of the lumbering weightlifters, while the guys with rust on their hands from the pig iron tell the barmen to beware of the rising wind, which might blow them away.
The weight belts are a vital part of the culture as they're made to order by jailhouse leatherworkers. They usually express ethnicity or affiliation. Mine had the double-headed Imperial Russian eagle on it and cost fifty bucks, while others had images of gorillas, Hitler, tanks, bulls, and every flag one can think of.
Calling this simply exercise is a gross understatement. Weightlifting is popular enough and vital enough for the entire social structure of some prison yards to be arranged around it. A prison I spent four years in, Greenhaven Correctional Facility, had its yard divided into 15-foot "courts." Each one had an affiliation of sorts. Some were for members of a specific gang, like the Blood Court, while others, like the Italian Court focused on ethnicity. I was a member of the Irish, which took in all the ones with less clear categories.
However, to join a court one must have clean "papers," which meant no history of informing and no sex charges. There was, however, one court labeled as "Christian" that would allow men to exercise without showing paperwork. Every court had a duplicate set of rusty, awfully welded iron weights and dilapidated machinery. My court was run by John Gotti in the 1970's. As a result, we all used "John's weights."
Visiting from court to court is only done by invitation; doing so without an invitation is a challenge to a battle. Because of occasional fights, there aren't any dumbbells lighter than 35 pounds (it's hard to get any momentum going when you're trying to smash a guy with a 60-pound dumbbell). Instead, courts fight one another with shanks and fists.
So lifting weights in prison involves participating in a social structure not unlike a gang, at least in New York State. In many other states, the weights have been removed to combat this subculture and to satisfy public fears of bulked-up, American History X cons walking the streets after they get out of prison.
