The Bercian puts the finishing touch to more than three decades of bodybuilding career proclaiming himself champion of Spain and with a fifth place in the world in the Master 50 category hindu push ups benefits
Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman used to say that getting old is like climbing a great mountain: while you climb the forces decrease, but from the top the view is freer and the view, broader and serene. However, some people do not seem to lose strength throughout the ascent, as evidenced by the Bercian Edesio Marqués, who at 55 years has proclaimed himself champion of Spain in his category and has been in fifth place in the world bodybuilding championship, a sport in which the volume and definition of the muscles, with the immense effort that this entails, are key to the final result. “It is a pin for a lifetime dedicated to this,” says Marqués, proud to have come to represent Spain before leaving the world of competition.
The successes of this veteran athlete, a native of the municipality of Cabañas Raras, accumulate towards the end of his career, already competing in the Master 50 category, aimed at those who exceed half a century of life. After more than 30 years of training, last year Marqués was proclaimed champion of the Spanish Cup of the specialty, played in Seville.
In October of this year, he won the Spanish Championship, the most important national tournament, held in Albacete, which opened the door for the Spanish team that participated, earlier this December, in the World Championship. disputed in Tarragona, where Edesio was among the five best on the planet. “I am very satisfied with what I have lived through the last three years, it is an extra that has come to me,” says the Berciano, Once he has fulfilled his dream of wearing the colors of the team, Edesio or Desi, as they call him in his town, will put aside the elite competition for a major reason:
his nine-year-old daughter, who asks him to leave the championships and travel to spend more time at home. “In two days it will pass me,” predicts the sacrificed father, laughing. Even more serious, he confesses that leaving the competition is not synonymous with moving away from the gym. “You take away my training and you kill me. Although it is a very worn phrase, bodybuilding is a lifestyle, “he says. And what does that lifestyle consist of? “You have to set aside time each day for training. When I was young I spent two hours a day in the gym, now I take it slower because recovery is slower. This is a long distance race,
However, although he acknowledges that working in the gym “requires a lot of sacrifice”, he confesses that the hardest part of the effort is the “strict diet” prior to competitions, whose objective is to eliminate fat, water and glycogen from the body to gain definition in muscle mass. “First you train to gain weight and consume excess calories, which means you have energy. When you’re on a diet, the training is even more intense and that exhausts you, especially psychologically. I always say that everyone has to be aware of their potential and understand their body, because it is not an exact science, each person is a world ”, summarizes the veteran champion.
“I was going to be a footballer”
Desi’s first steps in the sports universe were directed towards the world of soccer, where he came to play in the third division at just 16 years old. “Like many children, I was going to be a footballer,” explains the Bercian, who admits that he has always been attracted to the gym and machines to the point of asking his father, who was a welder, to manufacture weights for him. After going through that ‘mili’ that sounds so distant to the ‘millennial’ generations, life and work took him to Zaragoza, a city where, at the age of 22, he came into contact with the world of ‘bodybuilding’ and bodybuilding . “We were informed of that through magazines that came from the United States every so often, but there was a very special atmosphere, you breathed camaraderie in the gyms,” he recalls with nostalgia.
That camaraderie and the friends he has made along the way is what stands out most in his sports career. Among these colleagues and friends, two people occupy a special place as references. It is “the two Arturos”, the Leonese Arturo García and the Galician Arturo Castañeda, both world champions of the specialty. “The figure of the personal trainer is overrated. Before, a gym owner knew how to tell you what exercises you had to do and what habits you had to follow. The essence of machines and weights, now you don’t have it. The collective classes, with the disciplines that are fashionable, is what people prefer, “he laments.
At the time of competition, the court evaluates through a series of poses the definition of the muscle mass of each athlete, as well as other aspects such as symmetry or body balance. “You can’t just do chest and arm to be big from above and not have well defined legs,” he explains. Hence the importance of working in the gym all the muscle groups of the body in a balanced way. “In the competition I pay a lot of attention to people’s faces, because that is where it shows if they are overweight,” says Desi, who boasts of weighing practically the same as three decades ago. “Although it is wrong to say it, physically I am better now than the first time I competed,” he admits with a blush.
Against the black legend that surrounds the bodybuilding universe and the abuse of stimulants, amino acids or protein shakes that some of its practitioners carry out in the “huge market” of food and energy supplements, Desi offers a simple recipe: “I I associate gym with health and, if you can eat, the best is food. A protein shake can be a chicken rice passed through the minipimer. ”