Jon “Jujimufu” Call opened up about his recent bodybuilding performance at the National Physique Committee (NPC) North American Championships. The show occurred on Aug. 31 through Sept. 3, 2022, in Pittsburgh, PA, and Jujimufu managed an 11th-place finish in the Men’s Open.
The video opened with an excerpt from Nick’s Strength and Power’s YouTube channel. Nick discussed Call’s chest being off compared to his previous appearances and believed Jujimufu may have injured it leading up to the show. Check out the video below, wherein Jujumufu addressed the take:
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Nick’s Thoughts
Nick’s Strength and Power suggested that the definition in Jujimufu’s chest was blurry and watery. Jujimufu’s outer legs also appeared that way compared to the inner sweep of his quads. Nick’s overall assessment was that Jujimufu’s conditioning was off and seemingly missed his peak.
Enter Jujimufu with his response to various videos and takes on social media that addressed his performance popped up since:
This is the second competition I have ever done, and…I bombed.
Jujimufu maintained his sense of humor about his lackluster performance, saying his mistake was “drinking an entire bottle of dish soap, like a 32-ounce bottle…it washed out my physique.”
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Jujimufu placed third in the Master’s 35+ Men’s Open Super Heavyweight and 11th in the Men’s Open Super Heavyweights. Thus far, he’s trained as a bodybuilder for about three years. He quipped that he’d never performed a leg extension or hamstring curl in his life before starting his bodybuilding journey.
I love bodybuilding, I love the process of it, I love the checklist lifestyle. I love the brutality of it.
Call competes in these shows to gain the experience of what bodybuilders go through to reach their stage-worthy physiques. He wants to empathize with the bodybuilders’ mentality while pushing his body to the highest level. Genetic potential aside, he believes if you want to do something because you like it, you should.
I like to experience what these guys go through. I feel like when I have gone through these bodybuilding preps, I can understand them better.
Call wanted to push his physique as far as he could because he enjoys that. Dialing in for a show, especially without a coach, is not something one simply figures out. He related the latter stages of a bodybuilding prep to playing chess:
You can do the exact same thing you did last year and get a completely different result.
Call admitted not fully understanding what happened leading up to the show that gave him that washed look, but he was proud of the package he brought. Jujimufu believed he added more muscle to his legs, but the prep was much more challenging than anticipated.
It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done physically. Maybe the results don’t show it, but…it took a toll on me.
Call explained that he didn’t have much energy for the last four to six weeks of his prep. Perhaps he needed more food as he struggled to sleep while on so few calories. He believed his physique on stage may have shown some stress-induced flattening. Additionally, he didn’t ease off his leg training soon enough, and his legs could have been inflamed.
During his prep, Jujimufu’s legs appeared puffier during check-ins. After a heavy leg workout, one’s legs may appear swollen from the pump rather than detailed.
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Always Learning
Call explained that he is still learning about his body. His poor showing in the eyes of the judges wasn’t a total miss as he couldn’t have learned what mistakes he made had he not pushed his body to the degree he did.
Jujimufu admitted that he was exhausted on stage. What many presumed was an injury due to noticeable stumbles on stage was simply the result of fatigue from prep.
I tried my best. It just maybe didn’t look good to other people. I think from a lot of angles, there are a lot of improvements.
Call doesn’t plan on quitting anytime soon. He already has plans on what he wants to do before his next show — a methodology called “crockpot bodybuilding” — meaning to grow slowly until he reaches his 40s.
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It’s not always about winning, it’s not always about becoming pro.
Jujimufu won’t let this setback stop him from competing on a bodybuilding stage in the future. He doesn’t have a current competition in mind for his next appearance at the time of this article’s publication but learned a lot at the NPC North American Championships.
Featured images: @jujimufu on Instagram
