Combining graduate school and body building may seem like a challenge, but Michael Carolan handles it just fine.

Carolan, graduate student in sociology, won the 1999 National Physique Committee North Star Body-Building Championship in Minneapolis on Nov. 6.

“Some people think grad school and lifting weights don’t work well together, but they actually complement each other because lifting weights is good for relieving a lot of stress,” he said.

Carolan’s major professor, Michael Bell, associate professor of sociology, also said he thought Carolan’s two interests go hand-in-hand.

“Mike is a great lover of books, and he particularly likes theory, and those are particularly heavy books, so it’s good that he’s into weight lifting,” he joked.

The mental aspect of weight training also suits academia, Bell said.

“I think people typically think of weight lifting as a physical activity, but in fact, it’s 90 percent a mental activity,” he said. “It’s a matter of applying your mind and getting your body to do something through concentration. So, it’s a perfect preparation for the life of the mind.”

The NPC Championship was a major regional competition that will allow Carolan to go on to national competitions such as Mr. USA next year, Carolan said.

This month’s competition involved several steps, he said.

“There’s actually a pre-judging, which occurs in the morning, and they just line you up with everybody in your weight class, and there’s a set of mandatory poses you have to do,” Carolan said.

This is followed by an evening show, in which competitors go through individual posing routines. The winner of each weight class is announced. Carolan won the light heavyweight class.

“Once they line up all the winners of the weight classes, they put the winners through a set of mandatory poses to compare them to each other, and then they announce the winner,” he said. “And that was me.”

Marty Dettman, graduate student in sociology, is Carolan’s girlfriend and goes to work out with him at the Lied Recreation Center. She attended the NPC Championship.

“There were about 50 competitors there, both men and women,” she said. “It was fun to watch.”

Dettman said she is very proud of Carolan’s victory at the competition.

“His family and I and my family were there, and we were excited and jumping up and down,” she said.

Bell also was pleased with Carolan’s achievements.

“I think it’s incredibly cool,” he said. “It’s really important, when you’re a student or an academic or what have you, to have another vocation, and Mike does a great job with his.”

Carolan has placed in each of the three body-building competitions in which he’s competed, he said. In 1993, he was Mr. Teen Iowa, and he placed second in the 1996 Power-Shack Classic in Iowa City.

He said he’s been working out for the past 10 years.

“I train six days a week for about two hours at a time, and I was on a very strict diet for about three months up until the competition,” he said.

Carolan’s early-morning workout habits allow him to juggle body building and being a teaching assistant.

“I get up every morning at 5 o’clock, so I’m at the rec center at 6,” he said. “Then, I train for two hours, so I’m in the office at 8:30 [a.m.] It worked out pretty well — it just made for a very long day.”