Adapted from article by Ron Harris (ronharrismuscle.com)

You know his face and physique from the ubiquitous MuscleTech ads over the past year, but you may not be totally familiar with the name yet. Certainly, from now on, you will know who Idrise Ward-El is, because he has just won the Super-Heavyweight and Overall 2002 NPC USA Championship in Las

Creating A Champion
Idrise grew up on the tough streets of the Bronx, New York. An excellent athlete, he was playing semi-pro baseball as recently as 1993 and he is an 18 handicap on the golf course. He fooled around with weights as a teenager, but it wasn't until he joined the Airforce that he begain to train consistently.

"I had no idea what I was doing," he says. "But once I was stationed in California, people kept thelling me I could be a good bodybuilder. Not that I was huge or anything, but that shape was always evident." His first competition was the 1991 NPC armed forces, where he took fourth in the Light Heavyweights at 187 lbs - 70 lbs less mass than he carries in competition today. " I always had good lines and proportions, even at that size," he recalls.

He competed a few more times after that, bodybuilding just wasn't a priority at the time, until IFBB official Toni Dee convinced him that he had too much potential to not pursue the sport seriously. With a new commitment, he took second at the California Championships in 1997. The he gave himself an ultimatum. "I decided to do the Nationals in '98, and if I made the top ten, that meant I had something worth pursuing. If not, it was time to quit and move onto other things in life. I took fourth, so that was my sign that I could go all the way."

Idrise spent eight years in the Air Force, from 1985 to 1989 he was stationed in San Antonio where he worked as an ICU nurse. From 1989 to 1993, he was stationed in Northern California working in the Civil Engineering Department. Upon leaving the Air Force, he took a job as a corrections officer at San Quentin Penitentiary, which included guarding the most heinous criminals on Death Row. "I didn't let it affect me like some guys do, but it wasn't my cup of tea. I knew I wasn't fulfilling what God put me on Earth to do. I had more to offer, and it wasn't going to happen for me there."

"Honestly, before 1998, I wasn't really training and dieting the way a true competitive bodybuilder should," he explains. "That year I met Andre Scott in Portland Oregon, and my education began." Scott told him he wasn't doing it right.

"I was doing these long workouts, and I thought I was training hard, but Andre showed me what hard-core training was all about. My workouts became shorter, more intense, more focused. Instead of worrying about the weight, he showed me techniques like pre-exhaust, partial reps, supersets and drop sets that took me into a whole new world of pain I never knew existed. At times I thought my muscles would literally be destroyed, the agony was so severe. But I started to grow like never before. He helped me get ready for my first Nationals and I would never have done so well if I hadn't been training with him. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Andre for that; he's a hell of a guy."

Jack of All Trades

His prison guard career ended and Idrise changed occupations again, taking corporate job in sales. "It was a gas sales company that sold things like propane, forklifts - kind of like what Hank Hill does on King of the Hill," he says. But, "I knew my bodybuilding career was stagnating because there was nobody around who could help me." So in 2000 Idrise moved to Palm Desert, California to start a personal training business.

The Last Mile
"I always had the drive to be one of the very best bodybuilders," Idrise says, "but I lacked the knowledge, particularly when it came to dieting." Upon moving to Palm Desert, he hooked up with seasoned local competitor Jim Juge and together they fine tuned the missing ingredient in his contest package: conditioning. 2001 was a stellar amateur year for Idrise, as he won the Contra Costa and the California, took fourth at the USA and second at the North American. The he met Hany Rambod. Hany "the Merlin" is becoming well known as a contest prep guru. "We were all out to dinner with Jay Cutler and his wife and a few others, and Hany was watching me pick at my food while everyone else was inhaling anything that wasn't moving," Idrise recalls. "He looked at me and said, 'you don't like to each much do you?' He was right. I really have to force myself to eat six meals a day. Dieting isn't really that bad; it's actually the only time I'm hungry enough to eat as much as I should. Hany helped teach me how to eat big and stay big while getting leaner. I couldn't believe it when I was 260 with straighted glutes a couple of weeks away from the USA. I could have won the show then, but we dried it up to 254 and there was no way anyone was coming near me."