Shortly after my last stint inside, I had the misfortune to wind up watching a daytime talk show. (I’m still not sure how this happened.) The topic was GYMS IN JAIL: The Ultimate Danger! or some similar crap. Amongst the contributors was the leader of some mother’s group who thought that lifting weights in prison turned men into super-strong sex-charged rapists, and a fat conservative congressman who said that if criminals need exercise they should bring back the rock-bashing chain gangs. Well, he might be right about that; but some of the other ideas the panel seemed to voice about prison gyms were way, way off. In fact, the image that the public seems to have about prison gyms is something like this:
Dangerous, antisocial scumbags go into prison and have nothing to do all day but lift heavy weights and pump iron in gangs out in the prison yard. As a result, when these guys finish their stretch, they’re still dangerous, antisocial scumbags but they’re bigger, stronger scumbags than when they went in.
This seems to be the common view, held mostly by people who’ve never been to prison. It’s total bull.
It’s true that prison is largely full of scumbags, sure. But in reality, weight-training in prison hardly ever gets anybody any bigger or stronger. This might sound ridiculous, but that’s how it is. Everybody knows that prisoners get hugely strong and beefy from training inside, right? Wrong! This is a common misconception people on the outside have. It’s based on a complex set of errors and confused ideas, which can be broken down into four basic myths. Let’s look at these myths one by one.
This is a basic myth. According to federal law, all prisons have to offer recreation areas for health and fitness—but in some cases this can mean no more than a yard to walk around. Prison gymnasiums with weights began cropping up in the fifties, and probably reached their peak in the eighties. These days there are fewer every year.
It makes me laugh when people think that all prisons have huge, well-equipped gyms. Read the papers—watch news reports when prisons and penitentiaries are mentioned. They’re as overcrowded as hell. There’s just no room in most prisons for the extensive floor space gyms require. As a result, where gyms do exist, they are constantly under threat of losing space. In some Californian jails, bunks are stacked three high, because there’s just nowhere else to put the inmates. If you think prisons are like big health clubs, think again.
Then and now: overcrowding means that many prison gyms have gone the way of the dinosaur. Californian jails are a prime example. (Top) Fulsom prison gym in the early 60’s–plenty of space and equipment. (Below) Mule Creek prison gym in the modern era. (Note the bunks stacked three high.)
It is true there are some large correctional facilities with really excellent, well-equipped gyms; Rikers Island springs to mind. But these are exceptions, not the rule—and they probably won’t last too much longer, anyway. Due to media hype and public outcry, politicians are constantly under pressure to slash prison gym funding. Whenever Uncle Sam’s purse begins to feel the pinch, public spending on prisons is always the first government budget to come under attack. As a result, the growth in the number of prison gyms—which exploded in the feel-good 1980’s—has ground to a halt, and is even reversing in some places as equipment is sold off by recently privatized penitentiaries.
Some powerful people want to get rid of prison gyms completely. As recently as ’99, New Jersey Congressman Bob Franks proposed a bill effectively banning all bodybuilding and weight-training in federal and state correctional institutions. The bill wasn’t passed, but while convicts are being shown in movies and on TV as a bunch of steroid-crazy psychos who do nothing but lift weights all day, it probably won’t be long before prison gyms in America get dirt poured on them.
Something most people don’t realize is that prison gyms are nothing like regular gyms on the outside. To get big and strong using equipment you really need to handle free weights. To bodybuilders, weightlifters and powerlifters, free weights are king. On the outside, virtually all commercial or college gyms are based on free weights. This means plenty of dumbbells and barbells. The dumbbells are usually welded and range from 5lbs ‘bells to 120lbs or more, going up in 5lbs increments. Standard Olympic barbells are equally versatile; going up from 45lbs (the empty bar) to over 800lbs—enough to crush most strong guys. You can regulate the weight of the bar to any level you like with some simple math. All you have to do is add or subtract the loose plates provided, which typically come in 45lbs, 25lbs, 10lbs, 5lbs and 2½lbs varieties. This is important, because it means that can make any adjustable barbell on the outside the weight you need, to within five pounds.
Prison gyms aren’t like this. Although some prison gyms have dumbbells, most prison gyms don’t. Of the six gyms in the prisons I’ve seen, at the time only one had dumbbells—and they only had identical sets that weighed 35lbs. (They were chained to the rack.) And as for the barbells? Yes, most prison gyms do have heavy barbells, as you may have seen on TV or in movies. But these barbells aren’t like the variable, plate-loading barbells in commercial gyms—the big old weight plates are permanently welded onto the bar. Fully equipped prison gyms do exist, but despite what you may have heard they are few and far between and are usually found only in lower security facilities, except on rare occasions.
Why are most of the tougher prison gyms like this? Any hack will tell you straight away—so that the inmates can’t use weights as weapons! A heavy dumbbell (particularly the nice cast-iron hexagonal kind) makes for a fantastic cudgel and could cave in a human skull very easily. The large weight plates used on Olympic barbells are just as dangerous. In Rikers Island (NJ) back in 1994 there was a mini-riot in the gym, in which ten inmates and fifteen guards were pretty badly injured. Some of the guards where hit on the head with the 45lbs weight plates that go on the barbells and were nearly killed. Even the empty bars make pretty dangerous quarter-staffs. During the 1993 Easter riot in Lucasville Prison, several guards hid in an anteroom to the gymnasium. A gang of inmates used the empty iron barbell bars to batter down the concrete wall protecting the guards, one of whom was killed. Several inmates were killed during the riot, also.
Inmates have a terrifically strong sense of territory (particularly the gang members) and heated fights break out in the weights pit regularly. If free dumbbells and weights plates were left loose, you’d have dead bodies strewn about the gym floor before the hacks could even react. This is the reason why true free weights are rarer inside than most members of the public think, and the reason why they will probably become increasingly rare in the future.
Liftin’ in Leavenworth. In the early sixties, prison gyms were few and far between; but at least the ones that existed were stocked with bars and loose plates, and productive old school weight-training was possible. That changed forever in the eighties, when the plates were welded up.
The point I’m making is that virtually no inmates have access to barbells and dumbbells that get progressively heavier in small increments. People who don’t regularly weight-train just don’t understand what a huge, practically insurmountable problem this is for somebody who is trying to get stronger through lifting.
What happens when you lift a heavy weight is a phenomenon called hyperadaptation. The body gets really stressed out by all that unpleasant effort. Your cells think it’s a life-or-death scenario. The body thinks to itself; that was tough—better get a bit stronger in case this happens again. And, dutifully, the body gets a little bit stronger for a week or so, in case the same thing happens again. But it only gets stronger by a tiny amount—let’s say 1% (most of the time it will be much, much less). This means that next time you train, you will be able to lift a little bit more—but only 1% more! If you could bench press 250lbs before you got stronger, you’ll only be able to bench press another 2½ pounds more the next week. The only way people get stronger when lifting weights is by taking advantage of this tiny, less than 1% increase week in, week out, month after month after month, for years. It’s how the body gets stronger. There simply is no other way.
If you don’t have variable weights with plenty of different weight levels, you can’t take advantage of this relatively small phenomenon of hyperadaptation. Let’s take the bench press as an example. Maybe you are a rank beginner who has been stuck at 100lbs for the last month or two. Your muscles have hyperadapted and got a little bit stronger, and now you are ready to try 105lbs. On the outside, lifters have access to those 2½ lbs plates to add to either side of the bar to make it up to 105lbs. (Many lifters use even smaller plates—1lbs and even ½lbs discs.) In a prison gym, taking advantage of the hyperadaptation phenomena is next to impossible. The bars weigh 45lbs, and the weight plates on them each weigh 45lbs. This means that in most prison gyms, the lightest bar you can bench press is the bar with one big plate per side, weighing 135lbs—which is more than the average beginner can bench press anyway. The next weight up is the bar with two plates per side, weighing 225lbs. The third bar (and the heaviest most prison gyms have) has three plates per side and weighs 315lbs. Once you can bench 135lbs, the next weight up is a whopping ninety pounds heavier. There’s no way you can get strong enough to handle 225lbs just by using the 135lbs bar. The same goes for going to 315lbs from 225lbs. The only guys that can bench these two big bars in the joint are guys who could bench press them coming in. Nobody becomes able to do it while in prison—or at least very few; and in these cases steroids are inevitably the cause. (See myth #3.)
There is a way to get massively stronger in prison—but it involves the old school calisthenics I described in Convict Conditioning. In calisthenics, the resistance—your bodyweight—stays the same, but you learn techniques of shifting your gravity or leverage to make that weight seem progressively heavier. The guys who become monstrously strong in prison—without steroids—do it using calisthenics in their cells, not by visiting the prison gym. The human body is way more versatile than welded prison weights.
“Weights only” training–behind bars or on the outside–is a relatively new mindset. Back in the day, all the great strength athletes understood the essential value of bodyweight work. In the sixties, Pat Casey was known as “the King of Powerlifters”, and was the first man to officially bench press 600 lbs. But despite his awesome strength and dedication to the weights, he still found it useful to move his bodyweight.
I can understand how this myth got started. It certainly is true that if you get a chance to see a workout in the weights pit in one of the larger institutions of this nation, you’ll inevitably see some huge guys working out; guys with nineteen-inch arms who can bench press a truck. But hardly any of those guys gained their strength and mass by training in prison. Virtually all of them got huge from a lifetime of training on the outside, and are desperately trying to maintain their intimidating muscle on the inside. Big muscles are inevitably a gang thing. Usually the big guys inside are in on assault or gang-related crimes and will be doing a stretch ranging from a few months to three years.
I’ve seen this time and time again. Often a big bodybuilder (occasionally a national level competitor) will come into the joint and strut around for a few weeks before they start to shrink through lack of steroids. I’ve never once seen a really muscular guy come into the joint and actually improve his physique. The best they can hope for is to get their hands on a supply of contraband steroids and maintain their body with the substandard weights pit in the joint until they can get back out again.
Despite all this, there is a grain of truth to the idea that some guys get bigger in prison. But in 99 cases out of 100, that has jack to do with weight-training. It’s steroids. Steroids—like pretty much all drugs—are freely available in the American prison system, and trust me, they are very widely used. A lot of guys who come inside want to get huge and intimidating pretty damn quick, and the drugs combined with gym work gets them there.
But there’s a drawback to the steroids. Steroids mimic your body’s own muscle-building hormone, testosterone. Your body is intelligent. When you dump a load of stuff that’s either testosterone (or a lot like it) into your system, your body figures that it doesn’t need to make any of its own testosterone any more. To save energy, your body starts shutting down its own production. (Testosterone is made by the testicles—hence their similar names. This is why the balls of steroid users shrivel up. Their testicles slowly stop working.) This isn’t a problem while you’re taking steroids—except for the shrunken balls thing—but it is a big problem when prisoners stop taking steroids, usually when they get back to the outside world. Perhaps they don’t have access to the drugs on the outside, or perhaps they just get sick from taking the steroids, but everyone has to stop eventually. And when they do, their body has no testosterone for a loooong time. This basically means that ex-steroid users rapidly lose all the muscle they built on the drugs, and then some. Due to lack of male hormone, they often become fat and sluggish too. I discuss this effect in more depth starting on page 235.
So much for gyms making guys intimidating muscle monsters for when they get outside. But people see the freaky guys working out in prisons and totally miss the bigger picture.
Another untruth. In all correctional institutes—with weight pits or not—recreation time is strictly limited. Where prison gyms do exist, access to those gyms is limited as well and is by no means automatic. Often cons have to fill out prison forms to be allowed time-slots to use the gymnasium and these periods are restricted to two per week (or less where demand is high). Sure, in some facilities, prisoners can spend a substantial amount of time during the day, nearly every day, working in the weights pit of the yard. But does this make inmates stronger? Nope.
What many novices and non-athletes fail to understand about heavy free weights work is the enormous toll it takes on the body. Barbell work wears down the joints (a type of damage scientists call microtrauma), inflaming the soft tissue and, over time, whittling down the more delicate structures like the shoulders, knees, elbows, lower back and wrists. Joint pain and muscular injury are constant companions of serious weight-trainers. Perhaps more gravely, heavy barbell and dumbbell work really puts a lot of stress on the hormonal system; the adrenal and endocrine glands in particular. This kind of training releases catabolic stress hormones like cortisol into the body, hormones that break down tissues and literally eat away the body from the inside if they are allowed to build up due to excessive training.
This is why I laugh when people say that long daily weights workouts will build up convicts. Just the opposite…it’ll wear them down! If most guys—even people with natural athletic gifts—tried working out this way, they’d end up sick and injured. Some guys can stand it, but only if they’ve got a long history of training before they get to jail, and even then weight-training every day won’t make them progress much in size and strength on such a brutal regimen. Only steroids can do that for them.
So why is it that in some institutions guys like to hang around the weights pit lifting whenever they can, if it doesn’t do much for them? The answer: status. Many gang members and hard-cases are desperately insecure and vulnerable inside, and want to cultivate a dangerous, macho image very badly. You’ll find them in the weights pit come recreation period, every chance they get.
The above myths are unbelievably prevalent amongst people on the outside—and even some green guys on the inside, who don’t know much about training. These myths will probably still be alive and kicking long after I’m dead and gone. All the same, I still try to dispel them wherever I can. I’m all about old school calisthenics, baby! But despite my stance on the matter, it is true that a lot of guys on the outside have asked me about the weight-training routines of convicts. There seems to be an interest.
I have picked up weights a few times—I even entered a national prison powerlifting meet, on a bet (I came third). Although weights were never my thing, I’ve witnessed thousands of weight-training sessions done in the yards of half-a-dozen major prisons. I’ve talked to a lot of big guys who were really into it, as well as some semi-pro bodybuilders and powerlifters who found themselves behind bars. As a result of all this I can give you some of the inside dirt on the kind of training routines generally done in prison gyms.
In prisons you find a wide range of individuals, all with different backgrounds and at differing levels of athletic development. For this reason, you will find that individual inmates follow distinctly different types of training routines. Despite this, there do seem to be a few training guidelines the bigger guys seem to follow—the guys who manage to maintain the most mass and strength over the longest periods inside.
Certain exercises are favored over others, but bench press is king. If you want respect in the weights pit, it’s largely based on how much you can bench. As I mentioned above, usually there are three barbell weights available; 135lbs, 225lbs and 315lbs. That 315lbs bar is a symbol in a lot of prisons; it’s seen as pretty iconic—the symbol of true strength. In more than one prison, the big ol’ 315lbs barbell has its own nickname. When I was in SQ, they called it the Big Daddy. The big lifters are always visible in the weights pit, so it’s easy to assume that all prisoners are huge and strong. But it’s not true. Not every convict is interested in working out, and of those who do only a handful are head and shoulders above the average guy on the street. As a rule of thumb, I’d say about 40% of the prison population can usually handle 135lbs for at least one rep, and perhaps 5% of guys can bench 225lbs. It’s difficult to estimate how many men can bench 315lbs for reps, but it’s not many. Given the whole prison population it’s certainly much less than 1%. Those who can bench the Big Daddy get a lot of respect in the joint.
Because the perception of strength is so important inside, “forced reps” are a commonly used technique. A “forced rep” is supposed to occur at the end of the set, when exhausted muscles can’t push the weight any more, and your partner grabs the bar just to guide its path, taking a few pounds of pressure off so you can complete the set safely. In reality forced reps are totally abused in prison workouts. This can be seen on a lot of exercises, but especially the bench press. You see guys trying to press way more weight than they can handle alone; the bar only moves because a friend (sometimes two people!) are lifting the bar to make their buddy appear mega strong. I call these “fake reps”, not “forced reps”. Afterwards the guys giving the assist make a big deal about saying stuff like “hey, I barely touched it! It was all you!” and other back slapping bull. It’s total nonsense nine times out of ten. Often the guys helping are straining more than the guy on the bench. But to be fair this is largely because there are usually only the big three big barbells in many prisons and it’s unlikely that a lifter’s strength level will perfectly match one of these three.
The bench press is without doubt the ultimate prison lift.
The next favorite exercise amongst the top prison lifters seems to be pullups; sometimes weighted, sometimes not. You might expect curls to come second, as they do in the outside world; but there’s an important reason why prison guys do pullups—it’s seen as a “must do” exercise to improve the bench press. This might sound strange, since the bench press is a chest/triceps movement, with pullups hitting the back and biceps, but the reason has to do with prison gyms. Most prison gyms don’t have the padded metal benches you see in commercial gyms. These are expensive and can be picked up and thrown. For this reason, the majority of prison benches over the past two decades have been made from concrete cinderblocks, cemented together. Just lying on these prison benches can be hard on the spine—imagine what it feels like while you’re benching 225lbs of iron! This is why pullups are so popular. Pullups hit the lats and add beef to the muscles of the midback. More muscle on your back essentially acts as a cushion against the mercilessly hard benches when you’re pressing, protecting your spine. If you don’t have a thick, muscular back, you can forget about doing heavy bench presses on prison benches.
Dumbbell rows are popular on the outside, but they’re less of a staple in the pit. The big dogs go for barbell rows or pullups.
Pullups tend to favor guys at lighter bodyweights. Because of this, even some of the really strong powerlifters have trouble due to their bulky bodies. Fat guys don’t have a chance. For those lifters who can’t do pullups, barbell rows are popular for back training. Since the back is bigger and stronger than the chest, in theory a trained athlete should be able to row more than he can bench press. This isn’t always true, however. More guys are able to row the Big Daddy than can bench press it, but this is only because while rowing you can really cheat the weight up. Another favorite for the back is reverse grip rows, where the trainee uses a curl grip rather than an overhand grip on the bar. The guys I’ve spoken to believe it’s a better exercise for building the lats than conventional rowing. I don’t know if this is true though.
After the bench press, the next obsession in the prison weights pit tends to be big arms. Most convicts seem to spend half their gym time training their guns. They love ‘em! In reality, the arms are one of the weakest areas of the body; they have very little horsepower compared to the real muscle engines of the legs, hips, back and chest. But because they are usually the most visible muscle group, arms are a very apparent signifier of all-over musculature and fitness. A lot of this has to do with the psychology of intimidation. Big arms to an inmate are like tusks to a bull elephant–an important image of strength and masculinity. Guys hike up their sleeves to the shoulders, and wear T-shirts and tank tops wherever they can. There’s a real culture of arms in the joint. One trick I’ve seen a lot of guys use is to pump up their arms in their cells before the recreation period, with a couple of sets of rapid close pushups. This forces all the blood into their arm muscles, temporarily making them look much larger and more vascular—and more impressive to the other inmates.
Big arms to an inmate are like tusks to a bull elephant—an important image of strength and masculinity.
This need to look bigger, pumped up—is a major reason guys spend so much time in the pit training their arms. Supersets are popular—biceps exercises immediately followed by triceps exercises, repeated over and over. Supersets are common in prison gyms because they are probably the best way that exists to quickly engorge the arms with blood. This endless pumping up doesn’t make lifters bigger or stronger in the long-term, it only makes the arms appear bigger while they’re doing it, but that doesn’t matter. It’s an image thing. As any heavy duty bodybuilder will tell you, endlessly filling your arms up with blood will not make them grow—only short, sharp sessions with progressively heavier weights will make you grow. Just repeatedly filling your arms with blood, for very little in the way of long-term training results, may all sound vain and pointless, but remember that prisons are dangerous places. Reputation and your perceived place in the prison hierarchy are at least as important as genuine athletic ability. If the guy next to you in the yard has big guns, you have to pump yours up until they are bigger. It’s an all-out arms race!
Supersets are often done with a relatively light weight. This is so that the arm workout (and the pump) can be prolonged. Depending on recovery levels and what day of the week it is, the guys who favor supersets will begin their time in the pit with straight sets of some heavier arm exercises. This is usually straight bar curls with 135lbs. That’s quite a lot to curl, so expect to see a lot of cheating from the smaller guys. Only the real big dogs even attempt to curl 225lbs, and even here you’ll see plenty of “forced reps” and “fake reps”. As well as the big three barbells, some of the better-equipped gyms also have a few lighter cambered bars. These are useful for curling, as well as doing triceps presses when the 135lbs bar is just too heavy. Another common sight is guys doing towel work on arms day. This involves the trainee pulling or pushing on a towel to do an exercise, whilst his buddy holds onto the other end, applying resistance. Sometimes a thick old rope is used instead, where this is available (which is not very often due to the suicide risk). Various exercises can be done this way; curls, reverse curls, front raises, and French presses being the most common. Usually the two-arm exercises are preferred, but I’ve seen guys doing one-arm variations on these also. Towel or rope work is popular because the resistance can be tailored perfectly to allow the pump to be maintained—enough to pump up, but not too heavy that the workout starts to falter before the end of the rec period.
Some of the attention to arm training is functional however. In order to be able to ace huge bench presses, strong triceps or “back arms” are required. This means that some of the more serious powerlifters eschew the supersets style of training in favor of slower paced sets built around low reps with heavy iron. The exercise the really strong guys love for powerful tris is known by the sinister name “skullcrushers”. Lifters do skullcrushers by lying back on a bench with the bar held up with arms locked or slightly bent. Using pure arm power, the forearms are bent back until the bar touches the forehead. The upper arms shouldn’t move—only the forearms. This isolates the triceps muscles and places a massive amount of stress on the elbows. A guy has to be hugely strong to do skullcrushers with the 135lbs bar. I’ve heard legends of guys who can do this exercise with 225lbs but I’ve never seen it myself. The powerlifters inside do a lot of heavy triceps lifting as ancillary work for the bench press and their arms are cock diesel as a result. If you ask a guy to show you his muscles, most guys will roll up their sleeve and flex their biceps. In fact, the triceps are a far bigger, more powerful muscle than the biceps. Most guys in the weights pit spend hours pumping up their biceps in a vain attempt to get big arms, but remember the triceps muscle at the back of the arm makes up about two thirds of the size of the upper arm. There are lessons here for all bodybuilders.
In classic bodybuilding, broad shoulders are the hallmark of a quality physique; combined with a lean waist, they create the illusion of perfect mass, the Holy Grail of aesthetics. But in prisons shoulder training tends to be little more than an afterthought following arm training. Preferred exercises seem to be upright rows, standing military presses, cleans and presses, seated presses, standing shrugs and the press-behind-neck, in that order. Upright rows are the favorite, because you can use momentum and cheat—this means that a lot of guys can handle the 135lbs bar for reps. The bigger and stronger the lifter, the more they seem to prefer seated presses. This might be for reasons of exercise technique, or it might just be because it’s harder than the cheating upright row and only the strong guys can handle the heavier weights on this lift.
Two big exercises are favored for legs; barbell squats and deadlifts. Both exercises are done in powerlifting form; meaning that the squats are done to approximately parallel, and the deadlifts are full-range, bent-legged style. Leg training is nowhere near as popular as upper body work. A lot of guys will work upper body six or even seven days a week; squats only get a few sets as an appendix lift, usually no more than one day a week. Oddly—despite the fact that the average lifter can handle more weight on the deadlift than the squat—squats are way more popular than deadlifts.
Virtually all hardcore gyms have power racks to aid squatting. There aren’t many of these in prison gyms, although there are a few free standing squat racks chained together so it’s harder to use them as cudgels. In many places even these are missing, and lifters have to lift the bar off the racks that form part of the bench used for bench pressing. Bench press racks aren’t really designed for this purpose, and the big guys have to practically squash themselves under the bar to lever it up on the back of their necks. Ouch. Maybe this explains why squats aren’t so popular as on the outside.
You rarely see variations like Romanian deadlifts or stretch deadlifts in jail. They require more coordinated technique, and less weight. Behind bars you’re more likely to see variations that allow for less technique and more weight–like partials off the bench press rack, if there is one.
Abs usually get worked sporadically—often in-between upper body work to stretch the session out longer. They tend to get worked with knee raises and leg raises done from the chinning bar, although some prison gyms have Roman chairs for sit-ups. I’ve also seen tag team style ab training, where one guy stands on another’s feet so he can do sit-ups, then they switch ends. Abs get moderately high reps, and don’t seem to be worked out all that hard. On the outside, ab work is important to get that six-pack the ladies love. In prison, a rippling midsection isn’t that much of a priority—unless you are someone’s twink.
Calf training is an important part of bodybuilding—certainly competitive bodybuilding—because onstage a bodybuilder is judged as much by his weak areas as his strong ones. But in the joint I’ve seen exactly three people train calves in the weights pit over a period of about two decades. Two of those individuals were nationally-ranked bodybuilders trying to hold onto as much of their physiques as possible during their stints inside. On all three of these occasions, the exercise of choice was barbell calf raises for high reps. A reader who knows bodybuilding might assume that given the scarcity of calf machines and dumbbells in most prisons, the obvious choice for calf training would probably be donkey calf raises—where the trainee bends over and has someone straddle his back as he does calf raises off a block.
This would not be a wise choice for an exercise in a prison environment.
There are a lot of great athletes in prisons all over the US. These guys are big, and they are intimidating. But although these “big dogs” are highly visible, they actually only make up a relatively small group of the prison population. And of those guys who are strong or in great shape, hardly any of them got that way from pumping iron in jail. They were part of that culture of size and intimidation before they even got inside. Steroid use is rampant in jails—as is all drug use—but the effects steroids have on lifters is transient and usually negative in the long run.
There’s a small group of guys who have got monstrously strong and reached the pinnacle of fitness while in prison—some even becoming world record holders. These are the guys who have been trained properly, not in the weights pit, but in traditional, old school calisthenics. With the correct instruction, you can learn these skills just as easily on the outside as you can in prison.
If you’ve never been inside, it’s easy to be intimidated by the stereotype of the macho, beefed-up convict. A lot of this is smoke and mirrors. I’m a big believer in the philosophy of DTA—Don’t Trust Anybody—but this applies on the outside just as much as in jail. There’s one famous theory that says that guys in prison tend to have more testosterone than the average guy on the street—this is what makes men more aggressive and more likely to commit crimes, particularly violent crimes. I think this is bull. Your average guy buying stocks on Wall Street or sweeping up trash has as much testosterone as the regular guy in the joint. The difference between these guys is the environment they’ve been raised in and the decisions they make, not some chemical coursing through their veins. That’s my ten cents worth. But I’m no psychologist; just someone who’s spent more time in jails than walking the streets. In my experience there are as many sharks and predators on the outside as the inside. The ones on the outside are just not dumb enough to get caught.
