First Chapter

Sly Moves
My Proven Program to Lose Weight, Build Strength, Gain Will Power, and Live your Dream

Chapter One

The Making of a Contender

Growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland, I'd spend my Saturday afternoons at the Silver Theatre, an old Arabian Nights-style movie palace, mesmerized by matinee idols like Commando Cody, Masked Marvel, and Sinbad the Sailor. Like the comic book characters I loved so much, these movie icons had powerful physiques that made them invincible, and as a 98-pound weakling, I couldn't get enough of their adventures. Still, none of them came close to making an impression like the mighty mortal they called Hercules.

I was 12 when I first saw Steve Reeves in Hercules, and I probably watched the movie 15 or 16 times that summer. My mind exploded! I saw a perfect physical specimen that was both heroic and human, and it was the first time in my life I started thinking about what I wanted to look like physically, how I wanted to develop in terms of proportions. So don't tell me films don't have a lasting impression on children. Sitting in that dark theater, being so enthralled by the images on that screen, is definitely the major reason I am here today.

My own life wasn't quite so heroic in those days. I was born in a clinic on Tenth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City in the summer of 1946. A forceps accident at birth immobilized the motor nerves on the left side of my face, leaving me with a crooked mouth, a droopy eye, and this famous locution of mine.

As I got older, people teased me all the time and I became a chronic misbehaver. I wasn't a big kid or especially handsome. And with my speech problems and a name like Sylvester, life was becoming a cruel joke with no punch line in sight. I transferred from school to school because of behavioral problems; one teacher actually introduced me by saying, "Class, we have a new student today. His name is Sylvester, as in the cartoon." So for the rest of the year I got "Hey, Tweety Bird!" or "What's up, Poody Tat?" Nice, huh? A real confidence builder.

Back home, my father taught me how to be physically strong. Just watching him was a lesson in the power of kinetic energy. He didn't lift weights, but he'd constantly be moving rocks, cutting down trees, and pushing heavy machines around. There was nothing elegant about it, but the guy was definitely in great shape. Country strong, they call it.

My mother, Jacqueline, was also very physical, but she was a little more scientific about it. Her father was a district court judge who'd once roomed with Charles Atlas, the most famous bodybuilder ever. Mom started exercising with her father when she was very young, and she grew up hitting a punching bag and tossing around a medicine ball.

My mother is a certified eccentric, and one of the most unusual things she's ever done in her life was to open a women's gym in Washington, D.C., in 1954, when hardly anybody went to gyms. Especially not women.

When I was in sixth grade, I was so obsessed with the idea that I could become Superboy, I actually tried to make it happen. I went out and bought some red dye and a wax crayon and painted a big S on a shirt. I found a barber's cape, dyed it red, and then slipped into a blue bathing suit. For days, I'd literally wear this crazy getup under my clothes. It was like I was telling myself that if I wished hard enough, the transformation would begin.

Unfortunately, I decided to share this top-secret information with my friend Jimmy. He promised and crossed his heart he'd never reveal this extraordinary information. Of course, he told the teacher. She brought me in front of the class. "Children, we have a special guest today, Superboy." She made me take my clothes off. Standing knock-kneed in my baggy Speedos, everybody could see what a puny superhero really looked like. After the laughter died down, I took my breadstick arms and pipe cleaner legs and blew out of there, my wrinkled cape flapping pathetically in the breeze.

But it didn't matter. I knew I'd found a superhero I could emulate in Hercules. It helped that Reeves was as impressive off screen as he was in the movie. The son of a farmer from Glasgow, Montana, he began bodybuilding as a teenager and soon developed one of the most remarkable physiques around. After returning home from World War II, he racked up titles as Mr. America, Mr. World, and Mr. Universe before Hollywood made him the biggest action star of his day.

Later in my life, Reeves and I became friends. What I most admired about him was how modest he was. He was never a poser or a show-off. He wasn't one of those guys who announced to the world how fit he was. Steve wore oversized sweat suits. Best body in the world and he covered it up.

Reeves was the real deal, and his influence on my life was truly profound. Here at last was a way out of my awkward youth. If I wasn't happy with myself as I was, maybe -- just maybe -- I could sculpt myself into the person I wanted to be.

After one of those Saturday matinees, I decided to start building myself up, so I went to the town junkyard and just started lifting whatever I could find: a brake drum, half a fender, a steering column. I started tying rocks together with ropes. I'd do curls with cinder blocks strapped to a broom handle. My friends probably looked at me back then and thought, "Oh, this too shall pass."

Soon enough, I found this dungeon-like weight-lifting place called Iron City. We're talking old school. The grizzled old stalwarts there would work out and smoke cigarettes at the same time. It was all iron bars, not a weight machine in sight. It was a hellhole to the passerby, but to me it was a godsend.

What I began realizing was that the body is nothing but an honest machine that will never cheat you. It gives back exactly what you give it, good or bad.

Sly Moves
My Proven Program to Lose Weight, Build Strength, Gain Will Power, and Live your Dream. Copyright © by Sylvester Stallone. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.