"Success in bodybuilding is the product of many necessities properly combined. You need good God-given genetics, you have to have the right discipline to got to the gym and train consistently, you have to eat right and you have to perform the exercises correctly. Then, you have to compose all of them with equal import, not jus choose the ones you want. Your body is like a car: the engine won't do you any good without steering, brakes, fuel and thousands of other things, all working together."

Melvin attacks the weights six days a week, with a regimen he describes as "very intense, not a lot of rest, going as heavy as possible but doing as many reps as possible. Lots of people say 'I'm going to do a thousand pounds on the leg press for six reps. That'll make me grow.' That's bull. That might possibly give you some growth, but wouldn't it be better to do a thousand pounds for six reps, then quickly strip a couple of plates and do another 15 reps? You could get that much more blood in that muscle. Your quick-twitch fibers will react a lot better."

In all aspects of his training, Melvin is a high-numbers man. Even his total sets per bodypart are "at least" 16, which these days is bodybuilding heresy. "I believe in high volume," he emphasizes, "as well as four or five exercises per bodypart, staing with free weights in the offseason and bringing machines into it only when I'm getting ready for a show."

From the moment he started bodybuilding, his destiny was a national title, and Melvin knew it. Every year he trained harder, dieted stricter, gained more muscle and improved his intensity. A set never ended until his range of motion broke down completely. If, with dumbbell curls, for example, he couldn't keep the weight from tilting sideways on the fifteenth rep, or he had to duck his body under it to complete the contraction, that was failure. As Melvin puts it, "Most people do reps until they feel the pump stop. That's ridiculous."