Okay, my first official post…

Welcome to the Muscleaneous blog!

On this blog, I will write about my own thoughts, experiences and opinions on training, nutrition and the latest news. I will take a – sometimes harsh – stand on issues, and will not keep my mouth shut. I hope you will appreciate my style! Don’t be afraid to comment on my posts.

For all who don’t know me, my name is Robin Roelofsen. I live in the Netherlands, am married and have three kids.

When I was fifteen, a neighborhood guy got me into contact with bodybuilding. I can remember skimming through his magazines and seeing my first pictures of the like of Tom Platz, Berry DeMey and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I purchased the latter’s book – ‘Education of a Bodybuilder’ – and started working out myself.

My first gym was a tiny gym run by a guy who used to play water polo at a high level and had the shoulders to boot. He eventually went on competing in the Mr Holland, the highest title in the country. He however moved his gym to a place that was a bit too far for me to travel, so I joined another gym in the nearby city of Utrecht. That gym turned out to be a breeding ground for competitive bodybuilders, and I met and worked out alongside well-known Dutch bodybuilders like Glen Gravenbeek and Hans Bolkenstein.

The trouble was, I was still in school and my grades started to deteriorate because of all the time I spent in the gym. So, after one and a half years of training, I quit the gym, finished my school, and did not start again until years later.

In 2001, I had a problem at work – I almost beat the crap out of my boss’s boss – and started working out again to release the aggression in the gym. I really got into it again, and signed up to get my fitness trainer’s certificate. I did finish that education, but I did not like to teach groups, so I started trying to sell my services as a personal trainer.

In 2002, I started a Dutch language website to promote my services. The website was called GIANT!, after the company I started for my personal training services. I am 6′7", so GIANT! seemed appropriate… However, the personal training business did not run too well at that point in time, due to the low level of fitness awareness there still was in the Netherlands at that time. I had some issues with customers not paying, and decided to call it quits.

My website however started to get more and more attention. Next to the sales pages for my personal training business, I had started to write articles and put these up, and it all got out of hand from there.

At the moment, the Dutch website is one of the best visited fitness and bodybuilding websites in the Netherlands, and I keep expanding on it as much as I can. I also take a lot of photographs at the various contests in the Netherlands, and show these on my website.

This year, the NAC World Championships were staged in the Netherlands, and I was invited to take pictures. Since I also sell my pictures, I finally had the drive to start translating my website into English, so foreign competitors could actually read my website! The website – called GIANT! Fitness & Bodybuilding – is still a long way from finished, but I am slowly making progress and it will become a top notch English bodybuilding website soon.

‘Till next time!

Robin