Say the words "beauty contestant," and a guy like Brian Lee Allen doesn't typically jump to mind.
At 6-foot-2, with a 32-inch waist and a chest somewhere around 50 inches, Allen looks like a walking letter Y chiseled out of granite. His arms ripple and his 28-inch thighs bulge every time he moves. He's the antithesis of the willowy, feminine creatures typically associated with beauty pageants.
We caught up with him recently as he was preparing for the U.S. National Championships of the World Beauty Fitness & Fashion (WBFF) by doing an upper body workout that included tricep pulls with 150 pounds for each arm and shoulder presses with two 100-pound barbells.
He's wearing a tank top with Beast Mode printed on it that puts his impressive chest and arms on prominent display.
"Yep. Yep. Yep. Push. Push. Push," he grunts softly as he lifts the barbells above his head.
The WBFF bills itself as drawing the world's most beautiful people. As it turns out, A.J. Ellison, the current WBFF World Champion muscle model, lives in the Kansas City area.
Allen, a father of three and personal trainer at The Port KC Fitness and Performance in Westport, says he's going to take that title away from Ellison starting with the national championship show in April at Mohegan Sun Casino Resort in Uncasville, Conn.
And that's not a prediction, it's a statement, he says, laughing. "Yeah, I know I'm arrogant. You have to be to do this."
Sheri Pettit, owner of The Port KC, says Allen is a "character" who loves to engage in friendly trash talk.
"Brian looks big and scary, but he has a big heart," she says. "He will speak truth to you and not always in a tactful way."
Pettit trained for and participated in a WBFF show once, after undergoing major surgery for a chronic disease. Once was enough, for now anyway, she says. She did it to see what it was about and to regain a sense of control over her own body, but it required more time and discipline than she's able to extend as a business owner.
WBFF shows are similar to bodybuilding contests only competitors are also judged on how good looking their faces are as well as their presence and personality on stage.
"In bodybuilding you can't show your personality. It's, 'Turn. Turn. Turn. Get off the stage," Allen says. "With WBFF, not only do you have to have the body, you have to have a face that they can see in a magazine, in a clothing ad, stuff like that."
The WBFF has several categories for women, including fitness model, bikini model, commercial model and figure model, but only two categories for men: fitness model and muscle model.
Men's fitness models are for smaller men and include an evening wear category.
Allen competes as a muscle model, which is for the athlete who is too big to be considered a fitness model. Sixty percent of the muscle model's score is based on his physique and 40 percent is based on stage presence and marketability.
The organization wants competitors to look a certain way, so it stipulates height ranges for men and women and has "strictly enforced tanning guidelines" (they want it to look natural and not too dark _ a common sight in traditional bodybuilding where competitors look like over-baked loaves of bread) as well as apparel (they want to keep it classy, so no G-strings or clear stiletto heels.)
Allen's daily routine right now includes working out about three hours, drinking at least a gallon of water and eating clean.
A typical breakfast is steel cut oats with protein powder to sweeten it and a couple of eggs and egg whites with mushrooms and spinach, he says. Lunch usually includes a green smoothie with lots of spinach and blueberries or acai berries, hemp seeds, protein powder, cinnamon and turmeric.
"That gets my vitamins and minerals for the day, it keeps me up and perky," Allen says. Dinner usually consists of meat, some whole wheat pasta and broccoli.
The week before competition, he says, he'll "load water" sometimes drinking two gallons a day, which helps flush out water weight. Then a few days before, he'll reduce his consumption to a gallon a day, a half gallon a day, then just a small bottle the day of the show.
"Cutting water makes the skin tighter and gives a more ripped aesthetic," he says. "The problem is muscles are made of fluids, and if you lose that fluid, your muscles look flat. So there's a science to it."
And yes, he admits, it can cause electrolyte issues. He's seen competitors faint on stage.
"That's a regular thing, actually," he says. "I've never dehydrated myself to that point. I like to have a realistic look that's healthy."
Allen has been a personal trainer for six years. He got into fitness because he was having health issues.
During his 20s, he played professional arena and indoor football as a linebacker and defensive end for the Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz, The Amarillo Venom and The Wichita Wild. When he quit, his weight and his blood pressure spiked.
"I don't like taking medicine so I figured out what I could do to get myself back in shape," he says.
One day in 2014, one of Allen's friends told him he looked like he could compete as a bodybuilder. Allen said he wasn't interested. The next week, that friend came back and said she had registered him for a North American Natural Bodybuilding Federation show.
After that, he was hooked. He did one more NANBF show, then his first WBFF show, where he won the muscle model category, garnering a professional card from the group.
He's convinced his personality helped him win as much as anything, particularly a smoldering "sexy look" at the judges while flexing, though some of them told him not to overuse it.
There's one final step to preparing for that April 14 show: rendering his body hairless, which means removing his off season beard, cutting his hair and shaving his body.
"I use a clippers, because I shave everywhere," he says. "And I mean everywhere."
