Just Around the Corner

Hi guys. I just came back from a nice long vacation from the holidays. I hope everyone had a good holiday. I’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year and good health.

After 7 longs years of hard work and dedication I am now the Musclemania World Champion. I came in first place in the Physical Disability Category. But the crazy thing was while I was there at the registration I applied also for the Bantam category. I figured this was the biggest contest I’ll ever do. Everyone from around the world is here. So I decided to just have some fun and do 2 categories. By the end of the 2-day contest I ended up winning not 1 but 2 categories. My mind was going haywire. I planed on coming in 1st place for the disability category because that’s what I had trained the whole year for. But for the Bantam Weight category I didn’t prepare for that. I weighed in at 120 pounds and took on guys weighing in at 140 and under and with no disability. When they announced my name as first place for the Bantam I honestly thought they made a mistake. But when they handed me the trophy and I heard the crowd cheering that’s when I realized I had won.

It feels weird when I get people in the gym calling me Mr. World. They ask me why I feel weird and tell me that I should be proud and very happy of my accomplishments. I am proud and ecstatic over the win. But to me, taking on people with no disability, people much bigger than me, and to come in as the underdog and come out the champion is like one of those fairly tales people read to you when you were a kid. And just like in the fairly tales there was a happy ending. I can’t help but feel lost in this wonderful story.

Now people ask me what’s the next step for me. Right now I just came back from vacation. I had to give my body the break it deserved. I started training again. I don’t know what my next step will be as far as contest are concerned. I’ll train and decided on a show later on. For now I’m doing whatever makes me happy. I’m doing all the things I couldn’t do because I always had to prepare for a contest. I went back in the martial arts so all is good in my life.

Now that everything is back to normal I’m concentrating on my personal training company “Prescriptive Fitness”. Now that I won the World’s I have proven to all my clients that anything is possible and that they too can get in shape. So starting this week I am in the works of making a “Before” and “After” contest at the gym that I work at. My clients will have 3 months to get in their best shape. And whoever improved and looks the best, wins a trip. In my next article I’ll be giving you guys an update on how that’s going.

Before I go, I’d like to thank my family and friends that have supported throughout the years, my Personal Trainer Peter Panopalis, all the people at Musclemania for putting on a fantastic show and to all my fans that have written so many emails encouraging me to train hard. Thank you all for helping me to become a Champion.
Ryan Ortizo

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