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Former Mr. Universe Bob Paris thought he was an artist who molded his body through a perpetual battle with gravity. His shoulders, biceps and calves became sculpture. Perfecting the sculpture became his obsession.

According to his memoir, "Gorilla Suit: My Adventures in Bodybuilding," the sport hooked an awkwardly shy yet explosive teenager growing up in Southern Indiana. He lifted weights like a maniac, rending his muscles like a young Michelangelo assaulting his first block of marble.

"I was pulled toward the life of singular devotion that my sport required," he writes, "using my physical skills to try to block out an overactive mind that seemed to grow louder the more successful I became."

The sharp angles of Joshua Hockett's face and the narrow circles beneath his eyes spoke of ferocious barbell routines. Hockett, 21, is a resident assistant in Sandburg Hall. He is majoring in kinesiology, the study of muscles, movement and exercise.

As a high school wrestler and football player, Hockett developed a passion for training that resurfaced at UWM, where he returned to lifting. In 2004, he placed first in a bodybuilding competition at the Wisconsin State Fair. On April 29, he will compete in the Fox Cities Fitness, Figure and Bodybuilding Championships in Appleton.

"I always had an appreciation for fitness, looking good and that kind of lifestyle," he said. "I find it extremely artistic. It's a thing of beauty. It goes back to the Greeks and appreciating statues."

Hockett has molded what he calls "more of an artistic-based physique." He lacks monstrous thighs or deltoids as big as melons, but his musculature possesses remarkable definition, symmetry and balance.

He is a natural bodybuilder who shuns performance enhancers like growth hormones or steroids. Natural bodybuilders are typically confined to amateur status since doping has become nearly universal in the professional sphere.

At 7:15 in the morning, Hockett rises for cardio. He lifts six days a week with his partner, a computer programmer, for an hour in the evening at Bally Total Fitness on Van Buren, a few blocks south of Brady Street.

The workouts are intense but "it's the diet that kills you," he says.

Hockett never strays from a strict diet. However, three months before a competition, his diet becomes tortuously precise. Breakfast is a 5oz top sirloin steak, four egg whites, half of a grapefruit and one half-cup of Quaker oatmeal.

Three hours later, he drinks a milk protein shake; for lunch, a 10oz can of tuna and a large salad.

Before his workout, he eats six more egg whites, a 6oz cod fillet and three cups of broccoli. Right after his workout, he drinks a whey protein shake. Two hours and thirty minutes later, he eats some more cod and another salad. Before bed, he drinks one last protein shake.

The final diet yields astonishing results.

"From here on out, every week," he said, "I will look like a new person."

About a week before the competition, Hockett begins to dramatically manipulate his salt, carbohydrate and water intake to gorge his muscles and dehydrate the surrounding tissues so his skin wraps tightly around his frame.

On contest day, Hockett will join his opponents backstage. His body will be shaved, tanned and oiled. At noon, as he strides onstage for prejudging, nearly every muscle in his body will rise firmly like a soldier at attention.

He will flex rigidly without stopping as he waits with the group. If called forward, he will pose for the judges so they can evaluate his musculature. Dehydrated and exhausted, Hockett will, he said, feel miserable.

"You are an athlete who can push himself through tortuous hours in the gym, but you'll leave the stage at the end of prejudging looking for a place to collapse," Paris writes. "If your mind isn't ready for this process, your body won't follow."

In the second round, each contestant presents a unique "posing routine" to music. Hockett will perform his routine to the soundtrack of a Bruce Lee movie. This will be his last opportunity to impress the judges before they rank the contestants.

Because Hockett remains natural, his body can only endure a couple competitions each year. The struggle of dieting, lifting and cardio, he said, is suddenly validated when he leaves the stage and feels like doing it all over again.

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