Athlone bodybuilding veteran leads Bruno to success

By David Flynn

Two men recognisable in the bodybuilding realm of Athlone have worked together over the past year, resulting in experienced Irish champion bodybuilder and powerlifter Paul McCabe leading his younger friend, Bruno Rodrigues, to finish third in the Physical Culture Association (PCA) bodybuilding competition in Galway last month.

Both men are well-known these days for training at Athlone Regional Sports Centre, where Bruno has worked as a fitness trainer for the past 18 months. Paul, although being a native of Monaghan is synonymous with bodybuilding in Athlone for around 40 years, having trained in the town in the days before gyms were part of the mainstream of people’s lives. Paul is a former All-Ireland bodybuilding lightweight champion, and has numerous other weightlifting titles since the 1980s, and he has also represented Ireland as a powerlifter. He is also recognisable through his career as a paramedic, and is stationed in Athlone.

“Bruno came to me one year ago, wanting to get into the best shape he could through old-fashioned, old-school bodybuilding and he had been training a bit beforehand,” Paul told the Westmeath Independent.

Despite his knowledge of fitness training, and him being a trainer, Bruno wasn’t satisfied, and wanted to be as fit and strong as possible.

“When I met Paul, I saw him doing exercises (pull-overs with a belt) that I hadn’t seen done too often, and we got chatting and he told me he was a former powerlifter, which I figured, because he had great knowledge,” said Bruno.

“We discussed about me achieving my best physique and my wife, Patricia encouraged me to go for bodybuilding and to take it to the next stage.”

Bruno also had moral support from staff, friends and members of the Regional Sports Centre, and he began training strictly from that time, one year ago, and he took up an even stricter diet, albeit quite slowly.

“Paul was very patient with me, he did his best, I did my best and then everything happened,” said Portugal native Bruno.

Bruno (38) and Patricia have lived in Ireland full-time since June 2020, and he has been a personal trainer for six or seven years.

“When Bruno came to me, I knew that he was willing to do what it took to be a bodybuilder, and it is a lifestyle because you don’t just body build for a couple of months per year,” said Paul. “I’m doing it for a long time and find it normal and don’t find it a chore, and hopefully the older I get, the wiser I get.”

Paul’s life story is fascinating, and it’s clear that Bruno met the right man at the right time with the right knowledge to take him, not just to bodybuilding, but to competitive success.

Paul was in college in Athlone in the early ‘80s, when he started exercising at a small gym over Ginkel’s nightclub in Church Street. He later went training in Shannonside Gym in Golden Island, which was where he and many Athlonians of the ‘80s and ‘90s really cut their teeth with weightlifting.

“I started winning competitions, the first one after I thumbed to Dublin with a belt over my shoulder to the Hercules Powerlifting Club and I won the trophy,” he said smiling. “I started doing bodybuilding after that to rehabilitate, when the powerlifting season was cut short, and I liked it, but didn’t know anything about dieting at that time. So, in my first competition I went to the Mansion House, and came third, a bit like Bruno!”

That was an interesting piece of comparison between the friends, over thirty years apart!

When Bruno approached Paul over a year ago in Athlone Regional Sports Centre, Paul believes that Bruno thought he was going to have to eat chicken and broccoli for the rest of his life! However, the two guys worked out a different scenario together.

“I asked Bruno what was in his fridge and there needed to be some changes and we started from there, to change a bit here and a bit there, and not to do it suddenly, so it didn’t become a chore or a shock to him,” he said. “We utilised the food that was in his fridge for him to build muscle. It all worked until the final five months before the PCA competition, when we worked harder, but especially in the final ten weeks when Bruno was really eating mundane stuff. But it was only for ten weeks.”

Paul believes bodybuilders or people doing other kinds of exercise can eat some of their favourite things, but should do so in moderation.

“I always say you can control the nice stuff, but don’t let it control you,” said Paul. “If you like your pizza, have it once a week, and look forward to it. But to achieve a reasonable physique, it’s just about eating normal food, like our forefathers, meat and potatoes,

“Because it was Bruno’s first competition, I wanted to move very, very slowly, and that is the secret, because if you drop calories too quickly you end up sacrificing muscle tissue, so we started at about 2,800 calories, and then dropped them slowly after that,” said Paul. “In the last few weeks, he was down to 1600. He looked good in the lineup. His waist was smaller, his arms looked good, and his legs were really good. The whole thing about bodybuilding is conditioning. It’s not always the big guys that are going to win.”

As part of his training, Bruno did a huge bodyweight workout of planks, crunches and press-ups.

“First you tire the muscles so do a few crunches, leg raises, more exercises, and at the end, one minute or whatever of plank,” said Bruno smiling. “The PCA competition in Leisureland, Galway was for first timers, and it was my first time, and I was excepting to be nervous, but it felt like home, and that made me feel more confident. I prepared myself on the side of the stage and because my name is Bruno, I was first. It was amazing. First, I was in a group on stage, then individual and then with a group again. Then they picked first, second and third.”

In the PCA bodybuilding event in Galway, there was an audience of around 2000 spectators. Bruno was on stage for around five minutes and there was a lot of work and training involved, with the last five months and last fortnight particularly very intense, for those five minutes of performance.

“The guy who won had great conditioning, great physique and was around 20 kilos lighter than me, so he deserved to win,” he said. “But I don’t believe I was too far from second place.”

Bruno found that he has made certain food choices which have benefitted his training.

“I love pizza, but learned about making good choices, such as eating a burger instead, which is more complete and it has more protein,” said Bruno.

Paul is hugely optimistic of his younger friend’s future. The two men will continue to train together aiming for further bodybuilding competition success.

“Bruno has twenty years at least there, and he’s going to be great going forward into another year,” said Paul. “He has a blank canvas now going forward, and we are going to build a lot more tissue, a lot more muscle.”

Joking that Bruno is “a baby” in bodybuilding terms, Paul added: “I still expect to see him competing when he’s as old as I am.”