WITH NEW POWER ROLE, S.A. MAYOR PRESSES ON
Strength training helps to shape up Alamo City leader for heavy lifting
SAN ANTONIO — City Council is hard. But the heavy lifting really starts when you become mayor.
Fortunately for Ron Nirenberg, who’ll be inaugurated San Antonio mayor on June 21, he’s been lifting weights since he was about 14. In fact, he was a competitive body builder and powerlifter.
“I think I’m prepared both mentally and physically for the office,” Nirenberg, 40, said while pumping iron at the Barshop Jewish Community Center one afternoon recently. “And strength training helped me get there.”
With his cut physique and strength — he bench presses 225 pounds during workouts — Nirenberg likely will be the city’s fittest modern mayor.
Even with his current civic responsibilities, Nirenberg said he tries to lift at least three times a week, walk on the treadmill he has at home a couple of more times and “eat clean” as much as possible.
Exercise, he explained between sets at the Barshop, helps him maintain a much-needed balance between the mental and the physical.
“This is a neck-up career,” he said of the political life. “I’m in my head all day long. Working out gets the adrenaline flowing, the endorphins pumping. You get addicted to that because it makes you feel good.”
Debunking city’s rep
He’s represented District 8 on City Council since 2013, but Nirenberg is well aware that, as mayor, he’s going to be under the microscope more than ever before.
“If the mayor serves as the face of a city, I’m glad to present an image that belies the brand we have,” he said, an oblique reference to the city’s unenviable rep as “Fat” Antonio. “If I can help debunk that myth, it’ll be a good thing.”
Nirenberg noted that many members of the new City Council also are into exercise.
“We’ve got some who are boxers, who do CrossFit, who bike, run and play basketball,” he said. “This may be the fittest City Council we’ve ever had.”
In addition to exercise, Nirenberg also tries to eat well, not always easy for a politician who often attends banquets, works late and travels. But his size and nutritional requirements don’t always put him in line with accepted standards and wisdom.
“I’ll eat seven or eight small meals a day,” he said. “I try to eat 1 gram of protein for every pound of my body weight.” That comes to about 195 grams per day, compared with the minimum recommended amount of 56 grams for a man Nirenberg’s age.
Nirenberg estimates he consumes about 3,500 calories a day, more than the 2,800 government recommendation for an active man his age. At 5-foot-11 and weighing between 190 and 195, Nirenberg’s body mass index also technically puts him in the overweight category. But BMI isn’t always a good indicator of body fat and health risk because, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “muscular individuals … may have a high BMI because of increased muscle mass.”
Growing up in Austin, Nirenberg was inspired to begin exercising after watching the steroidal competition show “American Gladiator” on TV.
“I started lifting by myself, so I learned how to do it all wrong,” he said with a chuckle.
A wrestler in high school, Nirenberg entered Trinity University as a freshman weighing all of 110 pounds. During the following summer he started working with a trainer, who taught the willing student how to lift the right way.
“I learned the importance of discipline and consistency,” he said. “And how not lift so much, you get burned out.”
Strongman competitor
That discipline later helped him navigate a career with the Annenberg Public Policy Center in Philadelphia, Trinity University’s KRTU-FM and, working out of a studio he built in his home at the time, as a fitness and nutrition consultant.
Before entering politics and after a short stint as a body builder (he didn’t enjoy the “pageantry” involved), Nirenberg became hooked on competitive strength athletics, sometimes known as strongman competitions. He competed for seven years and, in 2005, placed first in the 220-pound class at the Texas Powerlifting competition.
His personal bests (all, he interjects, without gear such as weight belts and wrist straps), were a 320-pound bench press, 600-pound dead lift and 450-pound squat.
Those numbers, he concedes, are now well out of reach.
“I just want to maintain what I can do now,” he said. “My son Jonah is 9, and if he ever develops an interest in lifting, I want to be able to show him how to do it properly, instead of just telling him.”
Nirenberg doesn’t ignore the cardio, but said he does find it boring. He walks uphill on the treadmill he and his wife, Erika Prosper, director of customer insights for H-E-B, have in their home. And he said the miles of block walking he did during the mayoral campaign and runoff also helped him meet his cardio target.
He said that he’s wrestled with the idea of putting a Bowflex resistance machine in his mayoral office, and that he and his often City Council ally Rey Saldaña have joked about installing a CrossFit gym in the basement at City Hall.
Because everyone can use a little help when it comes time for the heavy lifting.