Dr. Ing. (PhD; EMBA) Piotr Kaczka

My story

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What is bodybuilding to me?

You'll understand what bodybuilding is to me when you associate it with the first thing you think about when you open your eyes in the morning and the last thing just before you go to sleep, which electrifies, disturbs, but also calms you down. It makes you energized, soothes you.

Bodybuilding is not a sport, it is a way of life, a style, a passion, an essence, the maximum depth with which you feel your body and control it. Bodybuilding fills my whole being, but not greedily, assimilating into it, while allowing me to keep a part of the world that is ONLY MINE.

For me, bodybuilding is an attempt to quench an unquenchable thirst for the finest of all drinks in this world....

Why am I where I am today...?

There is no single, strict date that I can give to determine the moment when my fascination with bodybuilding began. It seems to have been in me all along, and at different points in my life, it just externalized itself in a more or less bright way.

I started working on the aesthetics of my own body when I was about 12 years old. At that time I had a Friend whose father was the principal of a school that had a room with equipment. As a result, we were able to use it on weekends or during the week, after hours.

All this was, of course, quite clumsy, without any supervision or guidance. The only thing we were guided by at the time were illustrations of exercises picked up, in Western bodybuilding magazines acquired with superhuman effort at the time. I remember to this day, hanging in my locker, precisely "scaled" from a bodybuilding magazine, a picture of Frank Hilderbrandt.

I told myself every day: "Someday I'll have a frame like his." Also, in addition to the interest in the sport, there was also motivation.

In high school I was kidnapped by a new sport - Taekwon-Do. It absorbed me absolutely. For the first 3 years I made huge progress, but I was still missing something, somewhere there was this insufficiency. I guess that's why, in addition to all the hours spent training in this martial art, I always still found time to practice with a dumbbell, one, the only one I had, borrowed from my brother-in-law, beautifully painted silver, with an adjustable load of up to 15 kg, a veritable marvel.

Occasionally I managed to get into the gym. Nevertheless, Taekwon-Do thrived in me. Unfortunately, just before high school graduation, I twisted my ankle leg and had to put Taekwon-Do training on hold for a long time, then high school graduation, college exams....

I returned to Taekwon-Do training in the middle of my first year in college, but it didn't last too long, as a constantly weakened ankle joint made its presence known. Another sprain, torn ligaments, broken metatarsal bones-it bode poorly for the future.

At that time I was also doing more and more strength training at home, I had one barbell, but a heavier one, one up to 30 kg, but I also knew that I had to go to the gym and strengthen my legs, make them stiffer, so that I could return to sublime Taekwon-Do.

So I went to the gym ... and that's how it stayed for the next 20 years.

At this point, in fact, my adventure with bodybuilding began in earnest....

At this point, in fact, my adventure with bodybuilding began in earnest... I was living in Warsaw's Żoliborz district at the time, and I discovered a gym very close by. Its owner was Krzysiek Gajewski. It was under his supervision that I began to exercise in a thoughtful and coordinated way.

Diet was somehow out of the question then, training was essential. Besides, I wouldn't have been able to afford a decent diet anyway, I fed on what was "at hand", like any normal student from the province (minced meat from Mom, Chinese soups 😉 ).

At that time Krzysiek was preparing some younger guys for the competition - they already had several years of training behind them, and they looked amazing at that time. For me - like monsters (in the positive sense of the word), and I felt like a child next to them. But it perfectly motivated me.... motivated like hell.

I began to become more and more interested in bodybuilding, both in the training methodology itself, its types and, let's call it, the molecular basis of muscle growth. The course I was studying at the time - biotechnology - allowed me to understand this in the smallest detail. I understood that the human body is the most complicated machine in the world... but still a machine, and like any machine, it can be regulated, triggering the reactions we want.

It was ONLY necessary to know what and when to give in order to accelerate, inhibit or weaken a given metabolic process. At some point, I stopped looking at food in a typical way, and started, as a set of active substances having a specific effect on my body.

Biochemistry, enzymology, physiology and biophysics opened my eyes wide to everything that was happening in my body and gave me the knowledge of how to regulate it. This way of thinking and acting began to bring the results I so desired - I grew like a yeast, which turned me on even more and ingrained in me, for good, the proverbial "bug" regarding bodybuilding.

I noticed that I had a talent for this sport, but, in fact, it would be of no use if it were not for the persistence and consistency of action, the heart I put into it all, the time, the dedication. Everything happened spontaneously, I just started living it, subordinating everything to one goal - to be better and better at what I do.

At this point, I can say with a clear conscience that nothing has changed in this regard. After about two years I had to change gyms to K2, in Bielany, because Krzysiek moved the club to distant Mokotow. At K2 I exercised for about a year, and this time I had to move. As it turned out, also to Mokotow, but it was still too far to get to my "old friend".

Closer by was a gym owned by Pawel Filleborn, at the time one of the most famous Polish bodybuilders and sports activist, co-founder of the Polish Bodybuilding and Powerlifting Association. All the time I was trying to learn the methodology of bodybuilding training and test its various variants on myself. I was also much more successful in sticking to a dietary regime.

Nevertheless, nutrition was becoming more and more expensive, as was supplementation, so grades at the university also had to get better and better so that the academic stipend could cover as much as possible of my ever-increasing nutritional requirements.

 

The real breakthrough in performance came when I once again changed my place of residence - I moved to Bemowo and discovered Fitness Klub Aplauz, owned (and still owned) by Artur Borowski. The period when I started attending the gym there, in retrospect and subsequent events, I refer to as the "golden period of Aplauz".

The instructors there at the time were such icons of Polish bodybuilding as Darek Karpinski, Marcin Jablonski, Maciek Kaczorowski, Radek Brzuszczynski and other excellent instructors. I was very fortunate to find a common language with them and, I guess, to fuel each other's passion for bodybuilding, motivating the hardest workouts I can remember and , in general, I am myself able to imagine.

I learned a tremendous amount from each of them, in every possible area related to the sport. I was already working full time in Applause as an instructor, I was writing out diets, workouts, whole hundreds, dozens of them every day, and people were queuing up to me, which made it all the more strange that I was, as the rumor at the time said, the "worst" trainer in Warsaw (read: the most demanding), in a few years I gained so much practice and experience, "processed" so many personal cases that nothing really surprised me then anymore.

Applause, as the staff and all the people associated with it, at that time, was like a living organism that pulsed with life, emanating a mysterious energy that "absorbed", anyone who approached there. The atmosphere was amazing, I will never forget it....

From there, after finishing my doctorate in Biophysics at the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, I went from Warsaw to Debica straight to Olympus, or rather to Olympus for the position of Research and Development Specialist in the department for designing dietary supplements for athletes....ach.....breathed my full breath, sailing on the wave of life rigged by my only passion, bodybuilding.

I felt like a fish in water, and more projects and promotions came very quickly. Olympus Laboratories was definitely my place and my destiny...a great adventure that you soak in thoroughly and always have it already in your most wonderful memories.

At that time bodybuilding was already my whole life, I knew that this was it, and that it would always accompany me. During those few years of training and working in Appalachia, I developed incredibly. It was the moments spent there that made it possible for me to be where I am now and to have the honor of passing on my knowledge to others, in a very broad aspect, not only related to bodybuilding.

It was one of the happiest periods of my life and I will always remember it with the greatest longing....

At one point, even the position of Director of the Sports Research and Development Division at Olympus Laboratories was not able to utilize my capabilities and potential (I was running 36 international projects by myself at the same time, additionally coordinating more than 50 more of the same international importance), which the Company's Management Board observed perfectly and began to move me to more difficult for me, because new assignments.

I also had to implement myself more and more deeply into serious, pure science, which, by the way, I never wanted to part with, extensively developing active cooperation with the most eminent scientific centers in Poland and Europe.

Then there were more promotions, and so - Director of Innovation, then Director of Scientific and Medicinal Products and the final of the finals - Director of Medicinal Products and then the most interesting began. Medicinal Products and then the most interesting began, negotiations with Big Pharma - something wonderful to watch the sharks today bite your feet to the bone, and in 3 weeks whole packs of them are already afraid to approach you...beautiful, I never had to learn so fast and never so much was required of me...I wish this to everyone who thinks he is already Omega, because I don't even mention Alpha.

In 2021, after almost 12 years of work in this Polish Company, in friendship and with good wishes for the future, I said goodbye to the Board of Directors and left "my" Olympus deciding to focus on even more intensive self-development, not limited to the scope of duties, but go widely beyond them.

I embarked on highly specialized postgraduate studies in Clinical Research Methodology, Master Business Administration (MBA) in Health Care or Internet Marketing in Pharmacy, all of which were and are further building blocks that supplement my existing knowledge, but often greatly expand it into new areas, which gave me the comfort of looking at a problem from different angles and taking a comprehensive approach to solving it. The greater the challenge, the greater the satisfaction of solving it quickly and effectively.

Now I know that the only limitations we face are the limitations of our psyche and the fear of the unknown. Don't be afraid to make mistakes, because they teach you the most, but learn the most from the mistakes of others, because it is a waste of time in life to start something from scratch once again.... With one exception - the realization of your own dreams.

 

I wasn't used to leaving things unfinished, like Taekwon-Do, so after 22 years of hiatus from training I returned to this arch-noble sport, and after 4 months of training and losing 29 kg (at 112 kg) in the process, and tearing all ligaments in my left knee, I went to take the exam, which I passed with an unexpected at my age and with the hiatus from training I had (22 years!!!) promotion of 2 ranks....

One could say: " Something ends something begins", because bodybuilding and Taekwon-Do are mutually exclusive as disciplines in which you can achieve spectacular results, just completely different training methodologies, which for nothing can be merged, and unfortunately physics can not be cheated....

The goal is now one: black belt and White Eagle on the chest.... The game has begun.....ach.....I feel alive again....

As Bruce Lee said: "Don't think, feel! It's like pointing your finger at the moon - don't concentrate on your finger because you'll lose the whole view," and proper.... you will miss all the splendor of this world, and I additionally believe that:

 

"The road to success is still under construction" and this is my motto....