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Grigori Atoyan
Road To Olympia
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By Ted Donson
Photo Ralph DeHaan
If you were to ask Grigori Atoyan which was his best muscle group, he would just as likely raise a finger and point to his head, because according to this Armenian IFBB pro, “A bodybuilder’s most powerful muscle is his mind”. Armed with that strength and conviction, this admirable athlete hopes to be able to win the Mr Olympia title some day, and some day soon at that.
Looking at history, you might say that Armenians appear to have great strength of will and courage in the face of adversity, as they have often had to fight against invasion and oppression. In fact, these people have an outstanding ability to better themselves in many respects.
You just have to look at this guy to see that he is a absolute giant when it comes to muscle, but when you get to know his roots and evolution you will understand that there are no limits to what Atoyan could achieve as a bodybuilder. He sets himself serious goals, like becoming Mr Olympia no less, but when you see the kind of stuff he is made of, believe me, that is within his reach.
Origins and Evolution
Grigori Atoyan was born in Armenia on 21 November 1972, which makes him 37 years old at present. He has one brother, Elmon.
As a kid he was a keen athlete, and spent time swimming, boxing, doing martial arts and playing football, which was the sport he took most seriously and which led him to start weight training for the first time, in order to boost his performance on the paddock.
“As a football player I weighed around 150lb. I was very athletic and flexible, but also very lean,” he recalls.
“I was still playing football when I got into weight training. It helped me gain strength and get better conditioning, which was the key to being more successful on the field. But although weight training did help my football, that wasn’t the real reason I wanted to build my strength and size,” remarks Atoyan.
“I started lifting weights when I was 17 years old,” he explains, “ because I always wanted to be physically prepared to join the army. Later on I got involved in bodybuilding – I enjoyed the feeling of building muscle – and then I continued my training and really got into the sport in a big way when I moved to the US.”
Nowadays Grigori lives in Sacramento, California and is married to Narine, with whom he has two children, Harutyun, 15, and Martik, 13. He has been training for 20 years now, and competing for 13, and says family support plays a big role in his career. In fact, at one time it was his father who convinced him to keep going and not give up on his dream.
“My family had always supported me in whatever I did. At one point in my bodybuilding career I was very disappointed with my placings, and I actually had decided to quit. But my father said, ‘You have come this far in the sport already, you can’t quit now'. Grab your bag and get back to the gym’. Well, I followed his advice and here I am today, competing on pro stages and living my dream.”
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Vladimir Sizov, ‘The X-Man’
A Russian-Style Back Workout
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By James Taylor
Photo Jason Mathas
Russian gymnastics coaches are renowned for their expertise, but also for their toughness, to the point of pitilessness even, with their students. They say that for the perfect performance on the hoops, the horse or the parallel bars you must give them total commitment, and they won’t settle for anything less than that.
I can tell you that all Russian athletes know the meaning of physical sacrifice.
If you take this aptitude for commitment and apply it to bodybuilding, you’ll meet Vladimir Sizov, a Russian ex-gymnast who’s on his way to becoming a professional bodybuilder in the US.
Since the day he set foot on US soil for the first time Vladimir Sizov has wanted to go professional. He continues to battle hard to achieve this goal, and is coming closer and closer to succeeding.
Despite having integrated into the US perfectly, the Russian style is still very present in his weight training; his workouts are strict, focused and ruthless, like the ones his gymnastics coaches used to put him through back home during the many years he was a top gymnast.
For many years weight training was the top priority of the day, every day; nothing else came close in importance. This turned him into a young man with an unshakeable discipline for the weights that will help him reach the very top in bodybuilding today.
From Russia with Tenacity
Vladimir was born in the capital of Russia, Moscow, in 1970 and was a gymnast, excelling so much as to become a national Olympic gymnast. Training and competition were his life, so he’s used to spending several hours a day in the gym and to competing. As soon as he left competitive gymnastics, he knew he had to set himself a new challenge. Weight training was just the thing he was looking for.
He recalls, “My body reacted well to the weights after all the years I had been doing sport.”
Since he made it to a high level as a gymnast, he was active for a long time and started out quite late as a bodybuilder; when he was 25 years old, to be specific. But he was used to making sacrifices, though, so the switch wasn’t hard for him.
Vladimir remembers with a smile that he was also a superb tennis player and that he might have gone far, had he not chosen the weights instead.
He fell in love right away with bodybuilding and decided to move to the US just a few years ago. He now lives in Las Vegas (Nevada) ...“In fact, I live there precisely because of the opportunities open to me as a bodybuilder. There are shops where I can buy the food and supplements I need, and the main bodybuilding contests are held here and the chain of Gold’s Gyms is also in this city”, he tells us.
In fact, Vladimir is a personal trainer at the Gold’s Gym in Las Vegas, and works out there as well.
Incredible as it may seem, besides making his living as a personal trainer, Sizov works in the circus, thanks to the immense athleticism he has developed after all his years of gymnastics.
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