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Breaking 400: A Tribute to Greg Kovacs!
Written by Dave Palumbo
I remember it like it was yesterday. The year was 1993. Dorian Yates marched onto the stage at the NPC Bev Francis Atlantic States weighing a mind-boggling 285lbs. His back was so thickly muscled that it looked like it belonged to an alien from a science fiction movie. His calves resembled cartoonish tree stumps that uprooted themselves at every step he strode. But it was when Yates hit that first front lat spread that my body went so numb that the only words I could utter from my lips were some incomprehensible gibberish. People in attendance that night at Hofstra University were all dumbfounded. Yates had set the new standard. In fact, he dorian yates 175 1993upped the bar into the ethereal heavens. Lee Haney had set a record in 1991 with his 8th consecutive Olympia win, but he did it at a bodyweight of 245lbs. Yates would go on to win the Mr Olympia in 1993 at a gargantuan 265lbs. In one single swoop, the man they called “The Shadow” had bulldozed the 80’s mindset that 300lbs was just some mythical number. The 1990’s became the new era of mass monsters and 300 was its calling card.
It was at this guest-posing that I promised myself that I, too, would one day weigh 300lbs. And in 1995 I achieved that goal, weighing 305lbs prior to dieting down to a ripped 258 at the NPC Jr Nationals. I, convincingly, won the heavyweight class at that contest and everyone wanted to know how I did it. The simple answer to that question had its roots in the fact that the true limits of muscular development are only those imposed by the mind. What the mind can envision, the body can achieve. Dorian Yates unlocked the limits on my mind and enabled me to take my physique to a place I never thought possible.
Flash forward 2 years to 1997. I, distinctly, remember the day I met IFBB Canadian Pro Bodybuilder Greg Kovacs for the first time. Why, you may ask? Well, it’s because I was never so intimidated by the sheer size of another bodybuilder in my life. At almost 6’2”, Kovacs had already far surpassed the 300lb barrier in the offseason and was competing at nearly that weight onstage. He was one of the largest men I had ever met in person and he was equally kind-hearted and warm, all at the same time. We instantly hit it off and became fast friends. We’d spend hours talking about diet and supplements and gear cycles; on 6ad6f0a914b2fbfa864a92b199a11fcathe phone and in person. We both were just as obsessed and devoted to finding the fastest, best, ways to get monstrously huge. While I was happy topping out at 315lbs, Kovacs had decided that his Pikes Peak would be the never-before-discussed 400lb mark. Personally, I thought he was searching for the mythical white unicorn. After all, how could any human being weigh a lean muscular 400lb? But Greg had no doubt about it; he was gonna get there, and then some.
Looking back at what I did and how I felt when I first hit 300, I now realize I was a man possessed with doing whatever it took to achieve my goal. Part of what it took was eating 6 food meals and 6 protein shakes per day. That worked out to downing some sort of nutrition almost every hour that I was awake. I would eat so much food that by the end of the day I couldn’t even stand the idea of having to swallow another calorie. Likewise, once I hit the 300lb mark, I was so winded just from carrying my new body around that my favorite part of day was, honestly, bedtime. In fact, I would often fantasize about how good it was going to feel when my body finally hit the pillow every night. Quite a life, huh? But hey; I weighed 300lb!
Fast forward to 1998, and Greg Kovacs was sitting at the MuscleTech booth in Madison KovacsGregSquare Garden at the Mr Olympia contest where Ronnie Coleman would, eventually, stun the world and win his first of 8 Mr Olympia contests. At that show, Kovacs was tipping the scale at roughly 420lb and he was so big that he could barely move. Back then, Greg used to carry around his own battery operated fan to keep himself cool at booths, on planes, and in restaurants. In fact, Greg and his wife (at the time) bought me my very own fan as a gift. And that fan (that everyone used to make fun of) saved me from sweaty plane rides more than once in my travels. But to get a true idea exactly how huge Greg Kovacs was, you’d have to see him in person. At his biggest, he could barely fit into the passenger seat of my 5 series BMW; even with the seat reclined all the way back. He was so enormous that when walking with him in a shopping mall, people didn’t even notice me (at 315lbs). His body was so massive that he even broke a fiberglass Jacuzzi tub in his condo while trying to climb out of it.
What most of you are probably wondering; however, is how the heck did Kovacs became the first and only man to ever weigh a lean 400lbs? Well, the formula is very simple; train with the heaviest weights any many in the history of the sport of bodybuilding has ever lifted, consume some sort of high protein meal every hour around the clock, and sleep and rest as much as humanly possible. No one lived bodybuilding more than Greg Kovacs. No one was more passionate about bodybuilding than Greg Kovacs. No one was so single-mindedly determined to be the largest, most muscular, man in the world more than Greg Kovacs. And because of these emotionally charged, passionate, doubtless beliefs; Greg Kovacs became the 400lb muscular freak he envisioned.
However, on November 26, 2013, 44 year old Greg Kovacs dropped to the floor and lost consciousness while at his home on the outskirts of Toronto, Canada. He died while the paramedics frantically worked on him for over 20 minutes. Kovacs was recovering from cardiac surgery to repair his mitral valve just two weeks earlier and, from the text message he sent me 3 days prior, he was “feeling great”. Unfortunately, “great” to a bodybuilder who routinely lifted insanely heavy weights and who lived and trained through injuries and pain, doesn’t really qualify as medically reliable data. I believe that what Greg was truly trying to tell me was that he was at peace.
While Greg Kovacs never had the successful competition record of Ronnie Coleman or Dorian Yates, he probably made as much money from guest posing and endorsement deals. I remember Greg telling me that Europeans would routinely pay him $10,000 plus 2 first-class plane tickets and 5-star hotel accommodations for him to guest pose. But Greg never cared about money or material possessions. As long as he had enough cash to pay for his food and supplements; that’s all that mattered to him.
Written by Dave Palumbo
I remember it like it was yesterday. The year was 1993. Dorian Yates marched onto the stage at the NPC Bev Francis Atlantic States weighing a mind-boggling 285lbs. His back was so thickly muscled that it looked like it belonged to an alien from a science fiction movie. His calves resembled cartoonish tree stumps that uprooted themselves at every step he strode. But it was when Yates hit that first front lat spread that my body went so numb that the only words I could utter from my lips were some incomprehensible gibberish. People in attendance that night at Hofstra University were all dumbfounded. Yates had set the new standard. In fact, he dorian yates 175 1993upped the bar into the ethereal heavens. Lee Haney had set a record in 1991 with his 8th consecutive Olympia win, but he did it at a bodyweight of 245lbs. Yates would go on to win the Mr Olympia in 1993 at a gargantuan 265lbs. In one single swoop, the man they called “The Shadow” had bulldozed the 80’s mindset that 300lbs was just some mythical number. The 1990’s became the new era of mass monsters and 300 was its calling card.
It was at this guest-posing that I promised myself that I, too, would one day weigh 300lbs. And in 1995 I achieved that goal, weighing 305lbs prior to dieting down to a ripped 258 at the NPC Jr Nationals. I, convincingly, won the heavyweight class at that contest and everyone wanted to know how I did it. The simple answer to that question had its roots in the fact that the true limits of muscular development are only those imposed by the mind. What the mind can envision, the body can achieve. Dorian Yates unlocked the limits on my mind and enabled me to take my physique to a place I never thought possible.
Flash forward 2 years to 1997. I, distinctly, remember the day I met IFBB Canadian Pro Bodybuilder Greg Kovacs for the first time. Why, you may ask? Well, it’s because I was never so intimidated by the sheer size of another bodybuilder in my life. At almost 6’2”, Kovacs had already far surpassed the 300lb barrier in the offseason and was competing at nearly that weight onstage. He was one of the largest men I had ever met in person and he was equally kind-hearted and warm, all at the same time. We instantly hit it off and became fast friends. We’d spend hours talking about diet and supplements and gear cycles; on 6ad6f0a914b2fbfa864a92b199a11fcathe phone and in person. We both were just as obsessed and devoted to finding the fastest, best, ways to get monstrously huge. While I was happy topping out at 315lbs, Kovacs had decided that his Pikes Peak would be the never-before-discussed 400lb mark. Personally, I thought he was searching for the mythical white unicorn. After all, how could any human being weigh a lean muscular 400lb? But Greg had no doubt about it; he was gonna get there, and then some.
Looking back at what I did and how I felt when I first hit 300, I now realize I was a man possessed with doing whatever it took to achieve my goal. Part of what it took was eating 6 food meals and 6 protein shakes per day. That worked out to downing some sort of nutrition almost every hour that I was awake. I would eat so much food that by the end of the day I couldn’t even stand the idea of having to swallow another calorie. Likewise, once I hit the 300lb mark, I was so winded just from carrying my new body around that my favorite part of day was, honestly, bedtime. In fact, I would often fantasize about how good it was going to feel when my body finally hit the pillow every night. Quite a life, huh? But hey; I weighed 300lb!
Fast forward to 1998, and Greg Kovacs was sitting at the MuscleTech booth in Madison KovacsGregSquare Garden at the Mr Olympia contest where Ronnie Coleman would, eventually, stun the world and win his first of 8 Mr Olympia contests. At that show, Kovacs was tipping the scale at roughly 420lb and he was so big that he could barely move. Back then, Greg used to carry around his own battery operated fan to keep himself cool at booths, on planes, and in restaurants. In fact, Greg and his wife (at the time) bought me my very own fan as a gift. And that fan (that everyone used to make fun of) saved me from sweaty plane rides more than once in my travels. But to get a true idea exactly how huge Greg Kovacs was, you’d have to see him in person. At his biggest, he could barely fit into the passenger seat of my 5 series BMW; even with the seat reclined all the way back. He was so enormous that when walking with him in a shopping mall, people didn’t even notice me (at 315lbs). His body was so massive that he even broke a fiberglass Jacuzzi tub in his condo while trying to climb out of it.
What most of you are probably wondering; however, is how the heck did Kovacs became the first and only man to ever weigh a lean 400lbs? Well, the formula is very simple; train with the heaviest weights any many in the history of the sport of bodybuilding has ever lifted, consume some sort of high protein meal every hour around the clock, and sleep and rest as much as humanly possible. No one lived bodybuilding more than Greg Kovacs. No one was more passionate about bodybuilding than Greg Kovacs. No one was so single-mindedly determined to be the largest, most muscular, man in the world more than Greg Kovacs. And because of these emotionally charged, passionate, doubtless beliefs; Greg Kovacs became the 400lb muscular freak he envisioned.
However, on November 26, 2013, 44 year old Greg Kovacs dropped to the floor and lost consciousness while at his home on the outskirts of Toronto, Canada. He died while the paramedics frantically worked on him for over 20 minutes. Kovacs was recovering from cardiac surgery to repair his mitral valve just two weeks earlier and, from the text message he sent me 3 days prior, he was “feeling great”. Unfortunately, “great” to a bodybuilder who routinely lifted insanely heavy weights and who lived and trained through injuries and pain, doesn’t really qualify as medically reliable data. I believe that what Greg was truly trying to tell me was that he was at peace.
While Greg Kovacs never had the successful competition record of Ronnie Coleman or Dorian Yates, he probably made as much money from guest posing and endorsement deals. I remember Greg telling me that Europeans would routinely pay him $10,000 plus 2 first-class plane tickets and 5-star hotel accommodations for him to guest pose. But Greg never cared about money or material possessions. As long as he had enough cash to pay for his food and supplements; that’s all that mattered to him.
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