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Written by Doug Schneider Doug Schneider

Created: 01 May 2012 01 May 2012

Late at night on April 14, Rob Deluca and I were sending e-mails back and forth, trying to set up a time and place for a video shoot for the next day that would accommodate his schedule and mine, not to mention our locations – I was near Toronto, while he lives near Hamilton. Frankly, we were getting nowhere because we couldn't find a gym in a location that was suitable for both of us. Then Rob made the suggestion that I simply come down to his home, since he has a gym set up in the basement. I agreed to the idea but was also very reluctant about it – I'd never seen a home gym suitable for a video shoot. To make this work, I knew that we'd also need to have a really early start because I'd made some plans for later that day in Toronto. Rob agreed to the sunrise start and even offered to have a large cup of coffee ready the moment I arrived.

As it turned out, the time and the place couldn't have been better. To say that Rob's home gym is fairly good is like saying Russia is a pretty big country. Russia has the largest land mass in the world; likewise, Rob has the best home gym I've ever seen, as well as the largest, and it's chock full of equipment that he's handpicked over the years. He even has dumbbells up to 200 pounds – which he uses! What's more, Rob was ready to train when I got there and I knew immediately that this would be the ideal day to start the new video series that I'd been thinking about for some time: "Authentic Iron."

When I conceived the idea for "Authentic Iron," I knew I wanted it to give viewers a raw, no-holds-barred look into how top natural bodybuilders really train. I also knew that it had to be real – meaning training footage couldn't be staged for the camera. Everything had to be genuine, right down to the weights used for training – in other words, everyone and everything had to be authentic. Rob's gym is as authentic as it comes, and so, too, is his attitude toward bodybuilding as well as his training.

Rob, who is 46, has been bodybuilding since he was in his teens, and has a football-player-type ruggedness about him. He talks candidly about his disdain for steroid use, but talks splendidly about the bodybuilding stars he admires – most of whom compete in the drug-testing competitions, obviously. He's also looking forward to competing in Physique Canada's inaugural event on June 16, the Physique Canada National Classic. What really gets Rob going, though, is training – serious, heavy, hardcore training that would leave most wannabes in the dust. Rob had no qualms about me shooting his Sunday-morning back workout, which was focused mostly on astonishingly heavy dumbbell rows. I shot it from only a few feet away and, thanks to the multimedia-capabilities of the Internet, the world will now be able to see exactly what he does.

Print publications are constrained to what they can publish on a printed page – words, photos, and not much else. Online publications such as SeriousAboutMuscle.com aren't held back by those constraints – we can publish articles, photos, and, of course, videos, not to mention whatever other kind of digital media comes about in the future.

Screen capture of real footage shot for "Authentic Iron"

On April 15, SeriousAboutMuscle.com's "Authentic Iron" video series was born in Rob DeLuca's basement gym. On May 15, you'll be able to watch the first instalment of it on SeriousAboutMuscle.com, with many more segments to follow in the months to come. We hope that you’ll enjoy it.

. . . Doug Schneider, SeriousAboutMuscle.com Founder and Publisher