Tucson's titanium man out to inspire those weighing joint replacement

Eleven years ago when Lee Johnson competed in his last bodybuilding contest, he could have uttered the Terminator’s most popular catchphrase.

Because’s he’s back.

And it’s appropriate, then, that the titanium man returned to bodybuilding for a competition titled the NPC Terminator.

Johnson, does, after all, have five titanium joints.

At Saturday’s competition, Johnson stood in the master’s over-50 line at the Fox Tucson Theatre to prove a point — a joint replacement doesn’t mean the end of a dream.

“I wanted to get myself in shape and motivate and inspire people tentative of joint replacement,” Johnson says. “I’m on stage, 72, and I don’t have any joint pain.”

Johnson also has three back surgeries — the result of a bad parachute landing in the 1980s.

But perseverance is something he has learned personally and from the students he has worked with during his career as an educator.

He decided to compete again to challenge himself “to train more intensely with the implants and see how I could develop myself.”

“It’s so much work,” he adds. “People get divorced or fired. If you’re going to get in front of people in your underwear, you better look good.”

He checked with his wife first. She was on board.

Johnson was also nudged to compete by Jered Plasentilla, a fellow bodybuilder he has encouraged since Plasentilla’s teen days in the 1980s. Plasentilla also competed Saturday, though not against Johnson.

“Bodybuilding is something you can do at any age, and Lee has always worked out and has always given that philosophy to us,” says Plasentilla, 42. “He told us you can overcome injuries and always do it at any age .... I just thought this would be a cool thing to show people.”

For the last few weeks, Johnson has been hitting three gyms a day — Platinum Fitness, Chuze Fitness and the Mid-Valley Athletic Club. The variety offers him cardio, tanning and machines that allow him to modify exercises for his implants.

He spreads the workouts throughout the day — it’s summer vacation; he can do that — totaling about three hours a day. During the school year, his gym time is half that.

Between 2000 and 2004, Johnson had both shoulders and hips replaced.

Leading up to that, he tried to ignore the pain, but using the hand crank to roll down windows in his car had become excruciating. He couldn’t wash the back of his hair. Walking hurt.

What he thought was a problem with flexibility turned out to be degenerative osteoarthritis. The cartilage in his joints was gone. It was bone on bone.

His hips and shoulder joints were replaced with titanium.

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But Johnson continued to hit the gym, as he had after his back surgeries. He found that staying home just made things worse.

“I thought, ‘If it’s painful sitting at home, it might as well be painful at the gym,’” he says.

About three years ago, his left knee was also replaced.

Johnson started weight training as a Pennsylvania teenager, scrawny and wanting to get bigger. He spent time at YMCAs, where he met bodybuilders. A seed was planted.

Johnson moved to Tucson in 1972 and entered his first competition in 1978, coming in third place in the Mr. Tucson contest.

He continued to compete, placing in other Mr. Tucson contests. In 1984, he won the Mr. Arizona middle weight. In the early ’90s, he won the master’s Mr. Arizona Copper Classic in Sierra Vista. In 2005, he won a Sun City competition in El Paso.

Each competition takes a personal pep talk.

“You talk yourself out of it, but then you secretly start cleaning up your diet, cutting cream, no Egg McMuffins anymore,” Johnson says. “Then you blow it, you have a couple beers and say, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’”

But here he is, tanned, chiseled and constantly hungry. He has a rule that he should never eat so much he can’t do 25 sit-ups afterwards. He picked a song, developed a routine of poses and selected a suit. He had to mind the flow of his poses — the implants make his movements less fluid.

“And all of this for 60 seconds on stage,” Johnson says. “It’s a vanity thing, not an athletic competition but an art show. You have sculpted your body and are now presenting this classic physique.”

This isn’t Johnson’s whole life. He already tried retirement, but it didn’t stick.

During the school year, he works with the Tucson Unified School District suspension program, dealing with students with offenses such as drug use, weapons possession, cyber threats and sexual misconduct.

“We don’t have bad kids, just kids who made mistakes,” Johnson says, after eight years on the job.

Before retiring, Johnson, who has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in special education, worked at Sahuaro High School for 26 years.

“I wanted to work with kids with different needs,” says Johnson, whose own interest in school was absent until he started studying special education in college. “I was drawn to them.”

In addition to working with special education students, he also trained students in weight lifting, organizing a bodybuilding camp for nine years. His goal: Build confidence.

That’s also why he took to the stage to flex and pose again. He wants to motivate others discouraged by joint implants.

“I am the self-esteem coach,” he regularly told his students. “I use weights.”