Jeremy DiPietrantonio, or JD for short, is gearing up for the INBF Canada West Coast Natural Bodybuilding Championship, slated for June 28 in Vancouver.
DiPietrantonio, who operates JD Athletics out of Jim’s Gym in Parksville, will be competing in the heavyweight category at the event and is looking to use this as a platform to competing at the World Natural Bodybuilding Championship later this year.
Natural bodybuilding, differing from “synthetic” bodybuilding, has a clean and disciplined guide to making sure that their performers are clean for their shows.
“It’s great because it really separates a lot of people from coming in and doing it. You weed out the people who aren’t doing it naturally and that’s what I really enjoy about doing this,” JD said about the upcoming event. “My goal is to turn pro as a natural bodybuilder and this show will help me do that. I’ve got a great staff and a great facility here and it’s all coming together real well.”
JD, who’s 27 years old and has been in the Oceanside area for nine years, gave up being a full-time firefighter to pursue his dream of both being a certified personal trainer and being able to compete in bodybuilding. He’s been training on top of helping out his clients and running his business.
“At the end of the day, everything just keeps going. The business keeps going, the clients keep coming and it’s a lot of fun,” he said. “The training goes hand in hand and it’s all about finding the balance. You have to balance it all out and find the energy you need when you can.”
Training for JD includes having to watch his diet, maintain his muscle while trying to scale back the fat to become as lean as possible, which is part of the science behind bodybuilding.
“Naturally, we don’t want to look the way we look in a show. You have to be able to work with a certain way of training and allowing the muscles to do what they can do, thrown in with dieting, it’s a lot of hard work but you just do the best that you can.”
Competing in the heavyweight division, JD doesn’t have to worry about cutting excess amounts of weight as compared to a boxer or MMA fighter. Staying the course and maintaining a natural bodybuilding physique is something that JD is proud about and enjoys having in his life.
“I think why I stayed natural, even before I knew the different aspects of this business, I wouldn’t be able to do something that I wasn’t preaching each day myself,” he said when talking of the natural approach. “Being able to see the gains without having to go that other route have been better than anything could have given me if I were to take that other road.”
As June draws closer JD will be ramping up the training even more down at Jim’s Gym, where he’s also helping his JD Athletics clients reach their goals too.