REVIEW BY AUTHOR AND FREELANCE WRITER, DAVID ROBSON

The Black Prince, My Life in Bodybuilding: Muscle VS Hustle



Adopting an approach used by its subject to achieve his legendary muscle size and shape, bodybuilding champion Robby Robinson’s long-awaited autobiography The Black Prince, My Life in Bodybuilding: Muscle VS Hustle leaves nothing to chance in documenting the life of a truly extraordinary man with an amazing story to tell. Well written and with an absence of the incidental fluff that so often litters similar such works, this book, 200 pages of some of the most revelatory insights into the fascinating and oftentimes murky bodybuilding world ever put to paper, is quite simply among the best of its kind. Like the man himself, the book’s insights are presented in a classy manner, do not hold back, are engaging and forthright.

Much more than a bodybuilding insider “tell-all”, The Black Prince, My Life in Bodybuilding: Muscle VS Hustle charts the course of Robinson’s life to reveal what makes pro bodybuilding’s man of mystery tick. Widely considered one of bodybuilding’s true renaissance men, and certainly one of its most endearing and successful champions, Robinson helped to pioneer the celebrated aesthetical shape which many feel bodybuilding

Robby Robinson Photo by Joe Valdez

has over recent years lost from its current mass monster ranks. Ushering in massive size combined with an unprecedented degree of class, symmetry and proportionality Robinson presented a very real challenge to the great champions of the ‘70s bodybuilding era, most notably seven-time Mr. Olympia Arnold Schwarzenegger. Having spent his early years training and competing in the southern state of Florida, Robinson, an outspoken black man, encountered his share of unfair treatment, which was often reflected in his bodybuilding placements. To counter such prejudice he decided he would become so good that he could not be denied, regardless of who served to judge him on his physical merits. Robinson’s book opens with a detailed account of his early years, where many valuable life-affirming lessons were learned, and where his renowned creativity, zest for life and penchant for questioning authority were, in earnest, born. As his book reveals, Robinson would again encounter many more obstacles throughout his long and distinguished bodybuilding career, a journey which rewarded his training and dietary diligence with several championship wins, including that of the first ever Masters Mr. Olympia title in 1994. To overcome his many trials, of which are featured in his book, Robinson would take the one approach that has never betrayed him: he confronted them head on with dignity and integrity, a method that won him the respect of many and the scorn of a few influential movers and shakers.

Never one of the flock and proudly independent, Robinson soaked up the bodybuilding scene he was immersed in for almost half a decade with a sense of detached objectivism that garnered him many unique insights into the various surroundings he inhabited throughout the different stages of his full and varied life. A key member of the Golden Age of bodybuilding elite, he trained with and influenced the best. True to the ‘rebel’ moniker which for many years he has been associated with, Robinson, in The Black Prince, My Life in Bodybuilding: Muscle VS Hustle, not only provides unprecedented controversial commentary on the many shady practices and back room deals done within the hallowed ranks of IFBB bodybuilding officialdom, but also gives startling insights into the drug culture that infiltrated the pro game during his time at the top. Weaved into Robinson’s life story are his own experiences with performance enhancing drugs – including all of the substances he used at each stage of his bodybuilding career – and training and nutritional methods, where he fully documents his secrets to building a lean, muscular physique.

-Robby in his 60s, looking better than ever!

From traveling the world as a bodybuilding ambassador, living the high life and schooling bodybuilding’s best on what a real championship physique should look like, to living as an outcast, regrouping and coming back better and stronger than ever, Robinson’s book captures the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat and the real essence of what it means to be one of life’s enduring winners. From a man whose outlook on life and intellectual capacities are matched only by his magnificent physique comes a book that will make you laugh and cry while motivating you pump iron to build a formidable physique of your own. Reading this book you will, with each turn of the page, feel the intensity and passion for life that flows from a source whose words provide a welcome gift in a world of cynicism and doubt.




Review by David Robson
Author of Heart of Steel: the Dan Lurie Story



TO ORDER:

http://www.robbyrobinson.net/books.php