Scrawny reporter ventures into the land of meat & muscle

All strong, ripped, jacked, cut, buff, swollen, bodybuilders, muscle freaks, juice heads, diesels, beefcakes and gym rats: Welcome to Mecca.

Columbus, Ohio.

The Arnold Sports Festival is one of the largest sports and fitness expositions in the world. Attracting 170,000 fans from around the world, 18,000 competitors, dozens of promotional booths, and hosting 44 different sports and events, this weekend event is more stacked than Lou Ferrigno's v-neck shirt.

Talk about your fish out of water! I stand a lean 5 feet 10 inches tall and weigh in at 155 pounds soaking wet. My skin resembles that of a brand new baseball and I need a pair of water wings on my arms to fill out my shirts.

Now I'm surrounded by bronzed, oiled, gigantic balls of muscle. And that's just the women. Women like Sherri Gray. Gray, an armature bodybuilder from Wilmington, N.C., took second place on Saturday in the Women's Bodybuilding Lightweight Competition. She doesn't just flex for a living; she schedules her workouts around her fulltime job.

"I get up first thing in the morning and do a little cardio, between 20-30 minutes, and then I go to my full-time job," she said. "So I go to work, and then on my lunch break I go and do my weight training that lasts about an hour. My diet stays clean most of the year, but it changes up about every four to six weeks with the help of my nutrition specialist."

She's just an average Jane with pythons and two tickets to the gun show (that's big arms, people). According to Gray, you have to be fully committed in body, mind and soul.

"It's very mental so you've got to have your mind in it," she said. "Train hard and don't let anyone tell you that you can't do it, because it's a very individual sport."

On the flip side of Gray is Pat Barry, a professional cage fighter of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), who is currently 5-1 in his bouts, with a specialty of striking. He kicks butt for a living.

"I didn't start training until I was about 23, so for seven years now I have been training," he said. "But my entire life, I have secretly been a Ninja. I was a Van Damme, Ninja Turtle and Sagat from 'Street Fighter Fanatic.'"

From 8-10 a.m. Barry gets up, has breakfast and answers some fan mail. He then heads to the personal gym 30 feet behind his house for his 10-11 a.m. practice. From 11a.m. to 6:30 p.m. it's time to sleep. Then back to the gym from 7-8:30 p.m. for another practice. He doesn't sleep at night - he watches "Lost" until about 6 a.m. when the day starts over again.

Sometimes Barry struggles with why he first got into mixed martial arts, and before each fight the same thing goes through his head.

"Oh s***, why am I doing this? I have to ask myself every day 'man what is wrong with me? Why am I doing this?' It is an adrenaline rush that you can't find by jumping out of a plane, and no roller coaster can bring any type of feeling or emotion like this."

There is so much to do at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Watch the competitions, get autographs, sample supplements and compete in small competitions of your own.

And once you do them all, you leave with wide eyes, bags of protein, a sick belly and a realization that your arms resemble those of Gumby.