“The body is merely a vessel for the mind; your body does what your mind tells it to. Command your body to grow, and it will obey. Simple, right? I think so! But some of you punk-ass mother**kers have the gall to come up to me and whine with shit like, "CT, I told my muscles to grow, but they wouldn't listen." Boo-f**king-hoo!”   CT Fletcher

A man who could correctly be called “the stuff that memes are mad of”, CT Fletcher is both man and beast. The six time champion power lifter and self-confessed “baddest motherf**ker of all time” definitely practices what he preaches, and in tonight’s documentary, CT FLETCHER: MY MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION he does one hell of a lot of that.

Brought to you by the creators of the awesome – and at times, terrifying - GENERATION IRON, it is a story that has been begging to be told for a while now. Deemed one of the most motivated and influential fitness trainers of all time, the film explores the pain, struggle and hardships that Fletcher has endured throughout his life. From an abusive childhood to world fame, Fletcher’s career and personal struggles demonstrate the real power that self-motivation can have on the human spirit. 

A former world champion power lifter who won titles in the bench press and strict curl, CT Fletcher knows what it takes to get big and strong. Unfortunately, in his younger years this meant chowing down on the kind of fast food diet that was thought then essential to bulking up back then, but which also may have contributed to having emergency open-heart surgery in 2005. Now in his late fifties, the YouTube sensation and gym owner talks openly in CT FLETCHER: MY MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION about his upbringing, health complications and rise to fame, and for the real enthusiasts there is also what those in the know term “hardcore” new and old training footage.

Fletcher was born in Arkansas but his family moved to Watts, California not long after he turned one. Then it was on to Compton, where he grew up. “Needless to say, it was a tough neighborhood and even tougher growing up the son of a preacher man,” says Fletcher, and his formative years certainly made an impact on the tough mother reputation he has today. “Strict is too subtle a word to describe the discipline required in our upbringing, spanking is too gentle a word to describe the physical abuse my older brother and I had to endure,” he has said of the abuse the family suffered at the hands of his devout dad. The extreme discipline and the severe physical abuse “was our way of life; it was all I knew,” says Fletcher, and his escape was the army. In the 80’s he discovered weightlifting and outside of my family, the sport became his life. 

This lead to massive achievements and crushing blows in his quest on the road to becoming “the strongest motherf**ker without steroids”, and he literally had to eat himself into oblivion. The fast-paced documentary covers the bodybuilding star’s descent into medical nightmares, and you definitely get swept away in the tale of Fletcher’s highs and lows.

But is CT FLETCHER: MY MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION any good? Well I enjoyed it, and if you leave your own prejudices about what makes a doco’s subject matter “worthy” or not at the door, you’ll be caught up in his tale before you know it too. The juiceheads will love it for sure, but even if you’re not in the business of #shredding I reckon you will too.

CT FLETCHER: MY MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION validates the fact that CT is an international fitness phenomenon, and for that I salute him. In his words: “F**k Average. Never be satisfied. Always move forward. Always grow. That's the last and most important commandment. Never. Be. Satisfied.”