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Are you ready to move mountains, drink gallons of water, subject yourself to a very strict diet, and experience hell for a few weeks every year, out of sheer willpower and with the greatest modesty, without any prospect whatsoever of material gain? If the answer is ‘yes’, then perhaps you have a chance of becoming the World natural bodybuilding champion if you can manage to keep up this relentless exercise for more than ten years! Aside from supernatural stereotypes of bodybuilding monsters on steroids, this talk introduces us to three world-champion, top-level athletes who are members of the French team, and who are passionately driven by their discipline. They are the brilliant example that without intelligence, brawn has little worth. Despite being World, European and French champion a number of times, Frantz Hamousin, a caretaker at Paris’ École des Mines, has an unusual diffidence, and it is this which intrigues us and makes us want to learn more about the asceticism of these unusual champions.