When I left school at the age of 18 I was very skinny ; 5 foot nine inches and weighed about 8 stone (not quite the 98 lb weakling of the advertisements but not far off!) When I went to university I decided to go to a gym to put on some weight. There weren't too many around in the late 1960s, but I found a funny old place in Upper Queen Street. We'll call it 'The Warrior Gym' (the real name was similar to that.)
There was a small gym in the basement ; fairly basic but with all I needed. The next floor was office, bathroom and sauna, the top floor was the 'TV lounge', a bare room with mattresses on the floor and a TV. The guy who ran it was called Jim; he was an ex-boxer. He had an helper whose name I can't remember. In the morning the gym was reserved for women, but I had most of the afternoon free (a late lecture at 5 pm meant I had to stay in town anyway). So I could spend quite a lot of time there. I don't know how many women, if any, used it in the mornings.
Most of the clients were jockeys using the sauna to lose weight, or middle-aged men who went upstairs to the 'TV room'. I was very innocent in those days. The only other frequent user of the gym room was a young maori guy who was training for boxing. But I didn't see him too often.
Once I got used to the weight training I started to broaden out a bit (though I always had a light frame) and put on some muscle. One day Jim came down while I was doing my workout, looked at me and ran his fingers lightly down the front of my belly then he remarked 'Your abs are starting to show and they're looking good." The touch of his fingers had rather interesting results and from that day on I looked at him a bit differently. I decided early on that I wanted to develop really good abs. Jim, with his boxing background, recommended that I use weights with my abs exercises, so I started to do that as they got stronger. Soon I was spending an hour a day or more on my abs, and going to the gym five days per week, so they got plenty of exercise.
For my abs routine, I would first warm up with sit-ups; about 100 reps, then move on to sit-ups with weights on an inclined bench, side bends with weights, trunk twists with resistance, rope pull-downs with heavy weight, leg raises on a bench wearing 'iron boots', then various hanging leg raises with the boots. After that, usually Jim would come downstairs and punch my stomach for a quarter hour or so, or walk on it while I lay on the floor on my back. This really toughens the muscles up! As my abs got stronger I piled on the weights.
My particular favourites were the hanging leg raises. I would hang from an overhead bar, wearing iron boots with up to 40 pounds on each foot (once I got strong and tough). The act of hanging in that position tended to stretch my shoulder girdle, rib cage, back and legs, with good effects on my overall shape and posture. In addition, like stretching a rubber band, my waist tended to shrink as a result of being pulled longer, so I became more wasp-waisted, which helped counteract the bulking-up of my various abdominal muscles. I would then sloooowly raise my knees to my chest using my gut muscles.
Various variations coupled with twisting to the sides ensured that all of my abs got an extremely severe workout. The strain of hoisting 80 pounds of iron skywards using your abdominal muscles is considerable; I would groan while I did it, but I got an enormous 'high' from doing so, why not try it and see (if you're young and fit)! I would do several sets of about twenty reps of those various leg raises - an extremely tough workout. The only other person whom I know who had a similar workout was a woman - but that's another story.
The little gym was kept pretty warm, I had it to myself usually, and I didn't want to be hauling gym clothes around with me, so my usual attire, once I started to look OK, was a pair of bri-nylon briefs (remember them? the ancestors of lycra), which left little to the imagination and clung rather snugly. They were rather aptly called 'Vigor-8's'. I wasn't too worried about being seen nearly nude; several years at boarding school disposed of any inhibitions about nudity.
Now abdominal exercises, once your abs muscles start to develop and harden up, massage the internal organs underneath them pretty well as they flex and contract. I soon found that all of the time that I was working out my abs I had an erection. The thin briefs stimulated my sexual organs even more. The strain of working my abs against heavy weights caused my erections to grow ever harder and larger. When you're young and virile, running a strong erection for an hour or more every day has interesting effects; your cock starts to get bigger, due to being engorged with blood for so long on a regular basis. (Alas, once the 'treatment' is stopped the effects eventually fade, but they lasted for a number of years.) In particular, the various extreme hanging leg raises would find my penis jutting out to the point where the briefs had trouble restraining it; on occasion it would 'escape from custody'. Rather difficult to deal with when you're hanging from an overhead bar with heavy weights strapped to your feet!
Oddly enough, both Jim, his helper and some of the 'TV watchers' from upstairs started to take an interest in all of this. I often received offers to help me relieve my hard-on. Being young and innocent I politely declined them. I must say I was looking pretty good by this time; with a fairly ordinary face, but with a slim, tapered frame, very well defined muscles and virtually no body fat, and excellent chiselled abs. They had a small sun-tanning cubicle downstairs (unusual for those days) and so I worked on my overall tan. Despite being in the middle of the city, there was a small steep area of rough lawn outside the gym and well screened by trees and shrubs. So when the weather was right and I had some time to spare I would sunbathe out there, naked of course. So a nice overall tan soon evolved. Sigh; I don't look like that now!
Jim gave quite a good massage for a small fee, and I used to get massaged once or twice per week, either by him or his off-sider. The assistant (let's call him Joe) wasn't too bad either, but rather inclined to ask me whether I wanted my 'centre-piece' massaged; I always declined the offer, being rather shy still.
One day while Jim was massaging my stomach he remarked "I reckon if I give you a really hard massage here we can increase the separation of your abs." "OK, give it a try" said I.. So he forced his fingers deep into the valleys between the different blocks of my stomach muscles. He had very strong hands. This was really quite painful at first, until I got used to it but, hey, I was accustomed to him trampling on my stomach and punching me in the gut! Certainly it helped to force the muscle blocks apart and my abs showed more serration and got more deeply chiselled. It was quite an intimate business, really.
I was always nude during my massage, with just a towel draped over my middle. During my stomach massage I often got an erection, which was always quite obvious to the masseur. One day Jim said "You're developing quite a big cock there; how are your balls keeping up?" He lifted the towel, had a look and said "Could be bigger. Tell you what; I know how to make 'em larger to keep up with the cock. If I massage them really hard and squeeze them, they get bruised and grow."
"All right, I said, but if I don't like it you stop. OK?" He promised so I turned over and lay face down on the massage table. He removed the towel and spread my legs wide open. "I'll give them a stretch first!" He grasped a ball in each large hand and pulled them firmly downwards and backwards, stretching my ball sac uncomfortably. I must have given a groan because he said "Don't worry, I won't pull them off. This will hurt a bit, but you'll get to like it; I promise!" And he pulled some more.
