‘Matt is a freak’

It takes an intense personality and a lot of gym time to beat your body into 220-pounds of muscle, say friends of Beaverton bodybuilder

By Stephen Alexander

The Beaverton Valley Times, Jan 7, 2010

Beaverton’s Matt Porter, 24, has won 13 bodybuilding contests for his weight class, including the San Francisco Bodybuilding and Figure Championships in October, where he was the overall winner.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BILL COMSTOCK

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A lot of guys long for massive arms no shirt can contain, if they are honest about it. They want their chests to stick out like Volkswagens. They would love to have the problem of shopping all day for jeans that can hold their quads. Naturally, six — no, make it eight — pack abs are required.

Basically those guys want to look like Matt Porter.

Porter walked into the gym at 11:30 on a Friday morning. It was arm day.

Porter headed to the cables. After two quick warm-up sets, Patrick Knight, a middleweight bodybuilder who trains with Porter, went to spot him. It was time for Porter to start lifting heavy.

Porter removed his warm-up jacket. In his tank top, Porter’s arms look as if they belong to a cartoon character; his veins jut out like garden hoses. Gritting his teeth, Porter did two sets of 10 bicep curls at 200 pounds—the entire weight stack.

Knight watched Porter and shook his head. “It’s almost like watching a freak show,” he said

After 12 sets on biceps it was time for triceps. To finish off a 12-set triceps workout, Porter moved to an incline bench. Knight handed Porter a 185-pound easy-curl bar. Without much difficulty, Porter did a set of seven “nose-breakers,” pushing the bar up from his face with his triceps.

After the workout Porter dumped 10 scoops of branch chain amino acids into a water bottle and sipped it slowly as he rested.

It was just another day at the office for the 24-year-old Porter, who is a student of bodybuilding, exhibiting the kind of commitment that rewards the people who want to build massive and sculpted bodies.

The Beaverton resident studies every piece of material he can get his hands on to find workouts and diets that will make him look the best. He has won 13 bodybuilding contests for his weight class. In the past year he has really started coming into his own. In October, he won the overall category, where the winners from all weight classes compete against each other, in the prestigious John Lindsay’s contest in San Francisco. In November, he took another overall first place in the Northwest Championship in Olympia, Wash.

“(Matt) is a freak,” Knight says. “And it’s great to be a freak when you’re a bodybuilder.”

Started out as a skater

Porter was not always a freak. During his sophomore year at Westview High School, Porter’s passion was inline skating. At 5-10, Porter weighed just 135 pounds.

But, that year, he took a weight training class. He began seeing results instantly. By spring he had packed on 13 pounds of muscle. The following summer he got up to a shredded 170 pounds. By fall of his junior year he weighed 185 pounds.

Porter became obsessed with gaining weight. He force-fed himself every day. That winter he reached 216 pounds. Porter admits the weight he put on after 185 pounds was not solid. He ate so much, often he could not hold the food down. Porter realized he was being reckless with his health. In four weeks he dropped back down to 185 pounds.

With more knowledge about nutrition and training, Porter got himself back up to a solid 210 pounds. He currently weighs an even more solid 220.

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