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Living for fitness Photo by Bob Pennell Aaron and Brandy Maddron have made a career out of being strong. They own Medford's Flex Fitness health club and both have qualified to compete in professional body-building competitions. Medford couple choose to live `out of the loop' of body builders By BILL KETTLER You'd expect to see Aaron and Brandy Maddron on the streets of Venice. That's Venice, Calif., where fitness is a way of life. Where people work out most of the day to get stronger and leaner, and restaurants serve egg whites and oatmeal to body builders. The Maddrons spend most of their time in the gym, too, but you're more likely to find them in Medford than Venice. Oregon's only two professional body builders have resisted the lure of Southern California to own their own business and live a more normal life. "We're out of the loop," says Aaron, 29, who won the national amateur bodybuilding championship in October. The victory qualified him to compete against professional body builders around the world for cash and product endorsements. "Living here keeps everything real," says Brandy Maddron, 28. She has qualified to compete professionally in women's "fitness,'' a sport that combines aspects of body building, dance and gymnastics. "There are so many distractions down there," says Aaron Maddron. "People don't know who we are here, which is nice." The Maddrons came to the Rogue Valley four years ago to own their own health club. They were managing a health club in Eugene when they were offered a chance to buy Medford's Flex Fitness gym on Barnett Road. Now they divide their time between running the club and working out to keep fit for competition. Staying in shape to compete in professional body-building ranks can mean four or five hours a day of aerobics, jogging, gymnastics and weight lifting. Only about 300 men around the world hold the professional card issued by the International Federation of Body Builders. Only about 100 women have earned a pro fitness card. Body builders often pair off in couples because the training is so demanding, says Wayne DeMilia, who supervises professional competition for the IFBB in New York. "When you have this lifestyle, it's hard for someone on the outside to understand it," he says. It's a lifestyle that demands almost constant diet discipline, broken by periods of near starvation. On the weekend after Thanksgiving, the Maddrons' refrigerator holds things like egg whites, fat-free cheese, nonfat milk and salsa. There are no chips in the pantry. Body builders may eat as many as six small meals a day, and they purge their body of fat in the weeks before competition. When Brandy Maddron competes, for example, she reduces her body fat to about seven percent of total body weight. (A woman's body fat typically accounts for as much as 20 to 25 percent of total body weight.) When her husband competes, he pares away about 40 pounds of fat from his 290-pound frame to make his muscles stand out under a thin layer of skin. "We can empathize with each other a lot more," he says, after seven years of marriage. "I'm not going to say it's all peachy keen. Sometimes one of us will get very tired." The only downside they've found to living in the Rogue Valley is financial. "We could get more work modelling and posing for magazines," he says. "But when we started to become more successful we always told ourselves we needed to keep our priorities. We put our faith in God and our family and each other." Winning the national amateur competition made Aaron Maddron a celebrity in the body-building world, but the only local people who know him are the ones who read muscle magazines or visit his gym. Right now that suits him fine. "I try not to draw a huge amount of attention to myself," he says. "I don't uncover myself much." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA