David Darcangelo

for MUSCLE MEDIA, November 1998

When Diana Diaz first met David Darcangelo she thought he was aloof and self-absorbed – in her mind, a typical bodybuilder. “I had this misconception that most bodybuilders are into themselves,” says Diaz, a newscaster/reporter for WSBN-TV in southern Florida.

Yet Darcangelo had come highly recommended to Diaz, who was interested in physical fitness and wanted a good personal trainer. After she worked with him regularly, she began to realize that what she had initially perceived as self-involvement was actually an intense dedication to the science of fitness and the art of helping others better themselves.

She also saw that he didn’t simply play lip service to those ideas, either. She noticed that, when she needed help, he worked overtime with her – at no extra charge – and that he did the same with many other clients. As she got to know him, she also saw that he was assisting a younger man become a trainer. She didn’t think much about it until she started dating Darcangelo and he revealed the man’s story.

“David was shadowing this guy as he worked, spending lot of time with him and supervising him,” she notes. “I found out that the kid had been in trouble with drugs and that David wanted him to get into training so that he would clean up his life. David helped him on road to certification and then helped him get clients as a trainer. David believed in him.”

It paid off, too. Darcangelo and Diaz recently attended the wedding of the young man, who has now become a fully certified trainer. “David made a big impact in changing his life,” claims Diaz. “I think he saw something in that kid that he also saw in himself. The kid had a drive to change things but just didn’t know how. David showed him.”

If David Darcangelo did indeed see himself, what he would have observed was a young man struggling with a debilitating mental disease that could have stopped him. Cold. A disease that he overcame through principles that he would later carry over into his high-profile work as a champion bodybuilder and model: hard work, discipline, and a determination to succeed. For David Darcangelo has dyslexia, a reading disorder that could have severely retarded his chances at success. Despite that, however, he has placed in the top ten of every regional, state, and national competition he has entered. And he holds a complicated job at an orthopedic supply house.

“David is probably one of the most determined people I have ever met,” says Diaz, who will be marrying the bodybuilder in April. “He knows his weaknesses and he works doubly hard, harder than anyone else, to better himself. He is very disciplined.”

Darcangelo, currently 5’8” and 190 pounds, was born 29 years ago as the youngest of six brothers and one sister in a warm and supportive Italian Catholic family in Rome, N.Y. His father, now 72 and retired, was the civilian foreman at an air force base. His mother is a housewife.

The Darcangelo family was healthy, and ate well (if unscientifically), beginning habits that David carried over into his adult life. “There’s no one in my family who is overweight,” he notes. “There was always food. That’s probably one of the reasons why I never got out of shape. I never longed for anything as a kid. My mother made six-course meals every night. And you ate a little bit of everything.

“I think people crave things because they are deprived,” he adds. “I ran into that when I began doing bodybuilding shows. When you start, you think you’ve got to cut out everything and you can’t eat fat or dessert. I think that does more damage to a person because you build up all this anxiety. People around you are miserable because you’re miserable.”

David’s dyslexia was diagnosed while he was still in the first grade. The disease is a disorder in which the victim reads letters and words in the wrong order. “If it’s not caught, you end up falling behind your reading level, and, as other kids are excelling in reading and writing, you’re just stuck in a little bit of a rut,” he notes. “I was really, really fortunate to be diagnosed that early because our school system had remedial classes where I’d go for 45 minutes a day and get an idea of what my problem was. It doesn’t have anything to do with someone’s IQ. You just interpret letters in a different way.”

Nonetheless, at first the boy was frustrated and angry, unclear about why such a fate was inflicted on him. David initially bullied others and got into fights before he realizing that it would be better to channel his anger into more productive pursuits.

“You don’t understand why you have to go to a special class, you say, ‘Why am I being separated?’” he recalls. “No one likes being different and I was different. But I was fortunate to be diagnosed so young. Throughout my high school years, I saw kids who were diagnosed later. By then, it’s too late. They’ve had years of disrupting the class and they’ve had expulsion problems.”

Darcangelo worked hard at reading and writing. “I had to train myself to recognize words. Once you learn the basic order and how things look, you catch on.”

He also discovered the gym, going to work out with his older brother. “The original reason I started working out was simple: with five brothers, everyone was in shape and we all played sports and you had to keep up. One day, when I was in the seventh grade, my brother Donald, said, ‘You’re going to the gym.’”

David began lifting weights. “I was disciplined in high school,” he explains. “We had an extremely good weight-lifting program along with a football program, and we had a coach who had played for the Jets, and he had a regimented lifting system. Once you get into a good program the first time, that benefits you more than anything. I learned the right way the first time.”

Later, at Ithaca College in upstate New York, David continued fighting to improve himself, both physically and mentally. He soon found his approach to dyslexia affected his bodybuilding, learning early on how important it is to be disciplined.

“When I did my homework, I didn’t have the luxury that a lot of other people had whom I went to college with: ‘Oh, I’m going to study tonight and I’m going to pass the test tomorrow.’ I had to say, ‘Here’s a test in four weeks and I’m going to gradually study for that test over the next few weeks.’ Because if I tried to sit down that night and read for a test that was the next morning, I would have never accomplished it.”

He says the same holds true for fitness. “When it comes to bodybuilding, I have a certain amount of time to get things done,” he explains. “So I go in with a game plan of what I want to do that night or what I want to do that week, or what I want to accomplish over the next four weeks. It’s never, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do today and what comes tomorrow comes tomorrow.’”

When training, David divides everything up into body parts, working out five days a week. The first day he exercises the chest and calves, the next day, back and abs, the third, legs and quads, the fourth, hamstrings and shoulders, and the fifth, biceps, triceps, and abs.

“When I try to get a little more size, I’ll increase the amount of weight I lift,” he explains. “I won’t go for reps; I’ll go for lower number types, as opposed to when I’m trying to lean down a little bit. I might increase my number of reps to 10s instead of 4s. When I’m in the bulking up phase, I’ll use lower reps and heavier weights.”

As for diet, he usually has about six meals a day. He wakes up at 6 and has a liter of water before 7. “Water is a great transporter of electrolyte,” he observes. “It keeps your body from retaining water. It keeps everything moving better.”
His first meal will consist of five egg whites and two yokes, a bowl of oat meal, and fruit. The second meal will be a half a Myoplex bar. His lunch is generally a tuna sandwich on pita bread with low-fat dressing or barbecue sauce for flavor. He will have a protein shake an hour to an hour-and-a-half before going to lift weights, generally at 6 P.M. He will take in a small protein shake after that. Ninety minutes later, he will have dinner, often low-fat chili. He does not eat immediately before bed at 11.

When he wants to gain size back, he switches to a higher calorie diet, taking an extra Myoplex shake during the day, an extra meal, and nine egg whites in the morning. “I’ll also have a much bigger dinner, which incorporates two chicken breasts, an extra helping of some kind of food. I usually don’t measure my food. I don’t go buy six ounces of that or four ounces of that. I can eye it and know how much I need to be taking in.” He also uses supplements: Creatin once a day and Andro 6 Precision Protein, twice. He also takes Phen Free and Phosphogain.

Darcangelo advises flexibility in dieting. “I’ve learned to take a day off or two days off during the week where I can eat pretty much what I want as long as it’s within reason. It’s not the biggest thing in the world to eat a small piece of cake. If people watch what they eat all day and ate little portions, they would be much better off.”

Such a regimen developed gradually. After college, David got a job as an intern in a management program at the 2,500-member Vero Beach Sports Club, his brother’s fitness center in Vero Beach, Florida. There, he learned how to “manage the place, run the books, deal with equipment sales, capital sales, things along those lines.”

He soon began working as a certified trainer – which in turn led him to enter his first bodybuilding show. “One of the trainers said, ‘If you do a bodybuilding show, you’ll create interest. People in the gym will want to know what you’re doing. They want to see you’re pursuing the fitness aspect as much as they’re trying to. That you’re trying to push your body to the next level.’”

Setting an example for those he was trying to help – and the challenge of succeeding at something new – appealed to Darcangelo. So he entered the four-county Florida Treasure Coast show in 1994, placing second.

The competition left him with mixed emotions. On the one hand, he was pleased with his success. “It felt good that I had spent 12 weeks of training and accomplished a certain goal. I wasn’t upset that I got second. I’m always happy with the results because I know I’ve tried my hardest. No one can take that away from me.”

On the other hand, he was unhappy with the way the promoters treated the contestants. “In the majority of bodybuilding shows, they take your money and entry fee, and the contestant is the last person that the bodybuilding promoter has in mind. There are very few that put the contestant first.”

Nonetheless, Darcangelo continued to enter contests. His next show was also the Treasure Coast; after that he appeared in the West Palm Classic, a state-wide competition; the Florida Natural; and the ANBC nationals, where he placed sixth out of forty. Last year, he ranked third in the Mr. America show in Orlando.

“I feel it’s important to have a good time at these events,” he observes. “If you take it too seriously, like anything in life, it ends up ruining your personality. You’ve got to remember it’s just a show. You’re there to display yourself and have a good time. People notice when you’re having fun on the stage.”

After years as a trainer, in 1998 David moved on to a new position as a sales representative for orthopedic equipment. As such, he had to have a complete working knowledge of all the products going into a patient and all the tools used in surgery. “My job is to have the surgery run as smooth as possible,” he says. “I need to know what the surgeons need so they can have all the basic equipment there to complete the surgery.”

To gain that knowledge, he had to take an intensive training course, observing the doctors at work, sometimes from 7 A.M. until 4 P.M., as they operated on patients. “I was seeing instruments, products, and a wide range of situations coming up,” he recalls. “The surgery could be fairly straightforward or extensive. I learned a lot.”

He is amazed at his success. “If you’d asked me ten years ago when I was in high school, ‘Where do you think you’re going to be in ten years?’ I would never have pictured myself able to converse with a surgeon about a technical procedure. I got here because of my approach. It’s all been about taking little steps and setting little goals. Just like in bodybuilding. You take little steps to achieve your goal.”

Darcangelo’s surprise is not false modesty, either. Diaz notes that people told her David used to be shy. “After he started training, he gained confidence in himself and I think it has brought out his real personality,” she observes.
David himself feels that fighting his disability has been helped by his bodybuilding. “When you’re doing a bodybuilding show, you’re trying to push your body to the next level. It’s the same when I am dealing with my dyslexia. I continue to try and push myself to the next level.”

Dealing with dyslexia has also taught David to be even-tempered and helped him reach out to others. “When he’s at the gym, he’s always talking to people he doesn’t know, helping them work out,” says Diaz. “These are not clients, either, but perfect strangers. He’ll talk to them and, if he doesn’t have the information about a supplement, he takes their number, gets the information, and calls them back. He is dedicated to health and wants to make a difference in other people’s lives.”

Nowhere is that philosophy more evident than in the story of a teenager who came to visit the bodybuilder. A 15-year-old who had seen David’s photographs in Muscle Media magazine wrote to Darcangelo. The bodybuilder wrote back and even talked with him on the telephone. Thrilled, the teenager visited Coral Gables, Florida, where Darcangelo lives.

“David spent the day with him,” recalls Diaz. “He took him around, gave him a workout, and had a meal with him. And then, later, the boy wrote David a letter thanking him and saying that no celebrity had ever responded to his letters before. He said that the day had been very special for him. But David does things like that all the time. He’s a kind person. He wants to help people improve.”

Darcangelo may be self-effacing but he does have definite ideas about the way things ought to be. He has just begun running bodybuilding shows and says he has tried to make them different. “I run the Natural Mr. Florida now,” he explains. “Last year, we did our first show and we tried to give it a family feel. I kept in contact with the contestants coming up to the show. I called them during the week to find out how they were doing. Then we had fruit for all of them after the show. I wanted to show them that I was concerned.

“You should go that extra mile,” he adds. “You should make it more of a social event. I did that because I know how I am as a competitor. I want to go to the shows and have fun. I don’t want to go there and have the organizer of the event acting like he’s doing me a favor by holding the contest. Because that’s not the case. The competitor is doing the promoter a favor by being there and by bringing his friends and family there. And the person who gets fifth place is just as important as the person who got first place because that fifth place person is going to want to come back and win first place, if the show is run right.”

What Darcangelo won’t reveal but which Diaz does is that the bodybuilder donated a portion of the proceeds from his first Mr. Florida show to the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. He also had Lani Deauxville, who bodybuilds from a wheelchair, emcee the show. “She impressed David because she has been paralyzed since she was 16 when she was hurt in an accident,” explains Diaz.

It’s not surprising that she moved him, either. Because overcoming adversity is not just a task for David Darcangelo. It is a cause, and one which the bodybuilder believes must be done naturally. “When I was starting out, I had thought about taking drugs,” he admits. “But I educated myself. I realized there’s got to be an inner goal driving you to the next level. That’s what amateur bodybuilding is. It’s an individual trying to take his body one step further. To do that, the natural way is the better way. It just blows my mind that you’re trying to improve your body but at the same time you’re pumping drugs into yourself. That is totally ridiculous.

“You can only eat an elephant one bite at a time,” he adds. “You’ve got to take everything carefully and plan out what you’re going to do. You’ve got to keep ahead of the game. I find that people get in trouble when they don’t plan for that little bit of adversity. But, you know, adversity happens. That’s life. If you don’t plan for the possibility of a traffic accident, you’ll be late for an appointment. In bodybuilding, as in life, you have to be prepared for the unexpected. You’re not always going to be dealt the cards you want. But, somehow, if you look for it, another door opens up.”