Craig Who?
As deeply entrenched as I am in this sport and as much as I try to know who all the players are, inevitably, there are a few men and women who somehow escape the scope of recognition. Usually, it's due to a lack of exposure in the magazines. I knew Craig Richardson was a pro, but I couldn't have picked him out of a crowd until just recently. When I saw the results of the Orlando Pro Show, where he took third out of 27 men, I knew he must be pretty good.
That meant I was looking for him in New York at the Night of the Champions.
Once I finally saw the guy, I wondered why he was so relatively obscure. At a shredded 5'7" and 210 pounds, Craig had a very shapely and proportionate physique set off by very small joints. And his quads were among the best in the show, with a killer outer sweep and separations you could lose your spare change in. There he placed seventh in a field of 46, beating a lot of very good competitors like newcomer Branch Warren, Art Atwood, Toney Freeman, Nassar El Sobnaty, Heiko Kallbach, Rodney St. Cloud and Garrett Downing.
An easy argument could have been made to have Craig in the top five, though it was incredibly close to decide the fourth through the eighth spots. In any case, now I am well aware of who Craig Richardson is and just how good a physique the man has. Lonnie Teper, bodybuilding's most entertaining MC and creator of many great nicknames over the years, bestowed a catchy moniker on Craig. Since Richardson trains at the famous Diamond Gym in Maplewood, New Jersey, and has a polished physique, he dubbed him "The Diamond." I think it's even more appropriate because Craig is a genuine diamond in the rough. This guy, not even 30 years old yet, is just getting warmed up in the pro ranks and is set to become one of the top stars over the next couple of years.
Not Even Big Enough to be a Midget
His gridiron success continued into high school and it was in his sophomore year that he started lifting weights for football. By 17, his focus was shifting more toward training to build his physique rather than to improve his athletic performance. "I was always lingering around newsstands and checking out the bodybuilding magazines, then I got Arnold's Encyclopedia and the tape of 'Pumping Iron'," he says. "I must have watched that movie about 100 times.
He started training at the local YMCA with a couple of older friends. One of them, a kid name Sam Joyner, was attending the 1990 NPC East Coast and Craig decided to take along and check out a real live bodybuilding contest. " The teen winner that year was Alex Acevedo, who won the Jr. Nationals three years after that.," he recalls. "He was really good, but as for the other teens, I wasn't all that impressed. I knew I could have beaten them if I had competed." And that was the moment the bug bit, when Craig changed from just another Jersey meathead to a competitor.
Competitive Ups and Downs
Craig's first show was not a good experience, as he had expected there to be a teenage class and their wasn't. Thrown into the open men's Middleweight at 165 pounds (up 10 pounds since he had commenced training two years before), he took eleventh out of 27 after dieting an entire two weeks. " I had my ass handed to me," is how he puts it. He came back the next year and took second in the same class, as well as copping the teenage NPC New Jersey Overall title that year and the next. 1994 was his last year as a teen and he capped it off by winning the teen nationals.
By then he was burned out and decided to take a couple of weeks off from training. Tow weeks turned into six months, and when he returned to the gym with much of his muscle mass atrophied down, the other guys laughed at his plan to compete in the Junior USA six months later. But by the time the show was a few weeks away, Maz Ali, the owner of Bodyworks Gym in Patterson where he trained, urged him to hit a couple of local shows to warm up. At both the 1996 Suburban and Metropolitan events, he won the Light-Heavyweight class and been some big guy named Mat DuVall to nab the Overall Titles.
"Mat was 242 and I was only 190, so that was kinda cool." He snickers. But the high of victory wouldn't last. Right after that he won the Light-Heavyweight class unanimously at the Junior USA, but lost the Overall to Mike Valentino by a measly 1 point.
That agonizingly close miss would be repeated three more times. At the 1998 USA, he lost the Light-Heavyweight class to fellow Jersey boy Jason Arntz in a nail-biting tiebreaker. The next year at the nationals, he lost the class once more to Rodney St. Cloud by that darn one point. And even when he finally won the Light-Heavies and earned his pro card at the 2000 Nationals in New York, a twinge of frustration went off inside as he lost the Overall to Victor Martinez by - you guessed it - by one point.
He took the next couple of years to establish his personal training business, Craig Richardson's Body Sculpting, then made his pro debut at the 2003 Night of the Champions. There he placed sixteenth ("a legitimate sixteenth, as they scored up to the top 20 at that time," he points out) and got pissed off. "I killed myself in the offseason after that, just tore the gym up," he says. The anger and resultant improvements paid off, as evidenced by his higher standings this year.
Family Matters
As important as bodybuilding is to Craig, his family is the real priority in his life. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children, 12-year-old Qualayia (Craig's stepdaughter), 11 year old Quashawn, and four-year-old girl Quaterra. Balancing a family life with his personal training and bodybuilding is easy, because they are behind his efforts 100 percent. "My wife understands when I'm dieting aqnd I get tired more often and I'm in the gym more," he says. "In the off-season I'm only in there 40 minutes a day to hit a body part, but getting ready for a show, between weight training and two cardio sessions, that goes up to three hours.
He still finds time for family outings. "A friend of mine works for the New Jersey Nets, so we go to a lot of the games." He says. "My daughter loves Chuck E. Cheese, so you'll find me there quite a lot. When the weather is nice, we'll go out to the Jersey shore to the beach, or out to a park." I asked Craig is he lugs along the bodybuilder's geeky nutritional burden, an Igloo cooler and a jug of water. "No way, I hate coolers," he laughed. " I see guys with them walking around and they look like dorks. I'll just have my food in Tupperware containers and put them in a backpack."
His three kids are his biggest fans, too. Craig has had T-shirts printed up the past two years with his name and slogans like "The Champ is Here", and "Simply the Best," and all of them wear the promotional garb to school. "And my little girl is hilarious," he assures me. "When I'm in my bedroom practicing my mandatory poses, she'll either join in or count out 10 second holds for me."
One thing that both mystifies and disgusts Craig as a family-oriented man is watching some of his fellow East Coast bodybuilders abandon wives and children to move to Venice Beach. "That's some messed-up priorities right there, I'm sorry to say." He says with disdain. "If I ever came down to a choice between bodybuilding and my family, I would give up bodybuilding in a second. These muscles are just a temporary thing, but family is forever."
A Metabolism Kirstie Alley and Anna Nicole Smith Would Die For
Craig was blessed with a naturally pleasing shape and great structure for bodybuilding, but another genetic attribute of his could be seen alternately as a blessing and a curse - his lightning-fast metabolism. Gaining weight has been a constant struggle since day one, and still is. "I need to eat six or seven meals a day if I have a prayer of gaining on ounce," he declares. "With five meals a day I can maintain, and at three or four meal a day, I lose weight fast. If I have two bad days of missing meals, my wedding band will slip off my finger."
Still with enough good food and intense training, the mass has been gradually accumulating. "I've never been over 230 a day in my life, and now I'm 236," he told me with cheer. "I want to put on 10 more pounds before I start dieting and them come into the Olympia this year at 220. Ten more pounds of muscle, especially on my upper body, will really improve my physique."
Not Harley-Davidson, Not Lite-Brite, But Harley Brite
Craig was quick to credit much of his success over the past few years to Harley Brite, his training partner since 1999, who is also a criminal defense attorney. "Harley had been training with Vinny Galanti for a while before that," Craig says. "Harley doesn't look like a pro bodybuilder, but the man is intense and reliable, the two qualities that make for a great training partner. I remember at the 1999 Nationals when I weighed in at 208 but was 203 when I woke up the next morning after not eating. He went with me to ride the bike for an hour just to keep me motivated. I was on zero carbs, exhausted, and felt like keeling over, but he kept my spirits up and I eventually made weight. That's a real friend."
