photo by: Nick Krug

Lawrence pro bodybuilder Keith Williams works through a set of curls as his wife Tina Williams, also a bodybuilder, stands behind to assist on Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at Health Ridge Fitness Center in Olathe. The couple met in 2013 at a bodybuilding competition and live and train together. Both characterize themselves as competitive and believe that feeding off of each other is helpful to their success in the sport.

Keith Williams is in an interesting position. It is one that would have most of us sprawled out unconscious on the floor while our clothes burned to ashes in the front yard.

When it comes to directing criticism toward any part of his wife Tina’s anatomy, he pretty much has carte blanche.

In fact, not only can Keith speak his mind freely and openly about his wife’s thighs, mid-section or even her glutes, but Tina also welcomes every bit of insight Keith has to offer as her bodybuilding trainer and being a pro bodybuilder himself.

On a recent morning at HealthRidge Fitness Center in Olathe, while young moms are bustling their little ones out the front doors with wet hair, towels draping and swim goggles still on, down below on the main exercise floor, Keith and Tina Williams are hard at work alternating between sets of curls. Close by, a man in knee-length yoga knickers holds a pose on one leg while four or five men in sleeveless shirts rotate around the upper-body machines. An array of gym personalities abound, including the guy working out in a polo shirt and jeans, but in the corner of everyone’s eyes are the two bodybuilders from Lawrence, who appear to have never skipped a leg day in their entire lives.

It’s not just in the gym that the couple catch a lengthy stare. According to Tina, wandering eyes will linger around when the two exit their maroon Hummer, which proudly displays a vinyl print on the rear window with a photo of Keith, chest bulging and veins popping next to the moniker Midwest Monster.

“People will literally wait to see who is going to get out of the truck. Like, is he really that big,” Tina says.

Keith is that big, and a little over a week before, the family traveled to New York and then California where he competed in the 2016 International Federation of Bodybuilders New York Pro followed by the California Pro. Currently, both are training for the Wings of Strength Tampa Bay Pro in early August. In 2012, Keith received his pro designation after taking first place in the 2012 National Physique Committee’s Bodybuilding, Fitness, Figure, Physique and Bikini Championships. Before bodybuilding, he spent several years in the NFL after signing with the Denver Broncos in 1996 and finishing with the Minnesota Vikings in 2004.

Lawrence is now home base for training 25-30 clients from throughout the area and elsewhere, about half of which compete as bodybuilders. Of all his clients, Keith would likely argue that Tina is his favorite, but initially he was resistant to the idea of coaching her for fear of finding the right balance between being a loving husband and having the motivational tenacity to be her coach. Eventually, Tina persuaded him, and this year’s point of focus is to get her pro designation that is awarded with first place finishes in select, bodybuilding competitions.

“This is the year I think [she] gets her pro card,” Keith says. “She’s right there. I know she has what it takes.”

The only thing holding Tina back, according to Keith: her hamstrings. To explain it, Tina produces her phone with two posterior shots of herself flexing during two separate competitions. To view the images is like looking at a diagram of a human muscular system from an anatomy textbook with every striation present and accounted for. Keith points to her hamstrings as problem areas and says they need to make them “pop” for the judges, as he puts it.

“We nitpick each other because we’re perfectionists,” he says.

But when the lights come on and it’s Tina’s time to go on stage and shine — literally, with the help of bronzing rub — Keith says that he gets too nervous to even hold the camera still.

“I’m a wreck when she’s on stage,” he says. “You want it so bad for her because you know how hard she’s worked for it.”

On stage it’s clearly not just about whose muscles are best and biggest. Personality goes a long way, theatrics arguably go even further. To explain, Keith happily pulls up a YouTube video of himself from the Chicago Pro in 2014. In the video, he comes out dancing in a confident strut prior to landing a backflip which he then transitions into a robot-like dance.

A handful of minutes in the spotlight each year is where all of that muscle tearing, rebuilding and sculpting culminates. As for the drawbacks?

“You spend all this time, money and energy for literally two minutes,” says Tina, who juggles her aspirations and workout commitments with her job as a bar manager at Wayne and Larry’s. “You’re always sore. There’s times when I work until 2:30 in the morning and I have to get up at 6:30 or 7 when I’m getting ready for a show to do my cardio.”

“Grueling” is the word Keith uses to describe the couple’s workout regimen that starts with cardio in the morning, followed by a late morning/afternoon workout and then a bookend cardio session before bed. Despite spending nearly three hours each day in the gym, Keith insists that the most difficult part is the eating and dieting.

Dietary supplements, pre-workout fuel, post-workout fuel, amino acid mixes and others are all fixtures on the Williams’ kitchen counter. There is a tub of Carb Slam that is larger than the rice cooker just inches away. They approach eating with a drastically different philosophy than some of the most carb-conscious dieters. Keith meticulously plans, cooks and portions every meal for Tina.

“Oh you’ll love this,” she insists. “We’ll go out to eat and the waitress will come up and they’ll be like, are you ready to order and I’m like (turns to Keith) well, what can I eat?”

Keith admits that he catches some questioning glances during such moments but he laughs them off. Both rationalize the sacrifices they make as just part of what is expected to be competitive in their sport.

How this translates during mealtime is that their chicken breasts come sans Marsala sauce and would likely never be classified as “cordon bleu.”

“When you’re a football player you go to the dining hall and you eat,” Keith explains. “When you run track at an Olympic center you go to a dining hall and you eat. With [bodybuilding], it’s like, you’re eating chicken for the next five meals in a row.”

“With this lifestyle, You don’t eat for pleasure, you eat to survive,” insists Tina. “If you can get that mentality, you’re golden.”

In addition to a strict dietary regimen, the Williamses also begin depleting water weight from their bodies leading up to a show. Keith says each will shed about 10-12 pounds of it. The last 48 hours before they go on stage they drink no water to eliminate that film between the muscle and skin, which can mean the difference between first place and fifth place for the judges.

Back at the gym Keith and Tina finish up their workout for the day and head upstairs to get a quick change of clothes before swinging by the child care center to retrieve their 2-year-old daughter Kansas, who carries a hulking personality and a radiant smile to match her dad’s biceps. The family heads to the snack bar where Keith and Tina order peanut butter, chocolate protein shakes and Kansas gets some chips and an apple juice. Hoisting her bag of chips, Kansas raises her arms and starts flexing for her dad. Keith quickly joins in, and explains how she loves to walk around backstage during his and Tina’s competitions, flexing and grunting to the delight of the other competitors.

“She’s part of our experience,” Keith says. “As she grows up, she’ll understand what her parents are doing.”

On Thursday, June 9, the Williams’ are all at home and Kansas is using both arms to drag one of Keith’s trophies around their upstairs TV room. The trophy is a Schwarzenegger-like figure in a full flex pose and it is one of almost 20 that Keith and Tina have on display.

“She plays with these things like they’re Barbies. I tell people that I win competitions so my daughter has toys to play with,” says Keith, shortly before going downstairs to fix breakfast for Tina, who is on the couch nursing a sinus infection.

On the menu for the morning are Keith’s protein pancakes, which involve two whole eggs, three egg whites, a quarter cup of oatmeal, a quarter cup of Splenda, half a fresh banana and a half scoop of whey protein, of course.