It’s hard to imagine a bodybuilder not looking at their body during preparation. “Will there be time?” and “I’m not that good”, for example, are phrases frequently said by athletes in the final stretch before the championship. Carlos Eduardo Fantini Martins, in turn, is an exception to this rule.
Suffering from retinitis pigmentosa – an eye disease that causes degeneration of the retina – and keratoconus – an eye disease that alters the shape of the cornea -, the 30-year-old athlete experienced a preparation in 2024 in which he was unable to analyze his own physique.
“Being able to do the whole process without worrying about self-evaluation was very good. It was 20 weeks of diet and training in which I was very calm. My physique’s response to this tranquility was also very good”, reports Fantini in an exclusive interview . “We keep asking ourselves: ‘Will there be time?’ And this time that didn’t happen, I just had to trust my coach”, concludes the retired soldier.
Fantini trains at DarkHouse, as the Training Center (CT) for Integralmedica and Darkness athletes is known. Without the availability of the location, there would be no way for him to maintain his preparation, according to the bodybuilder himself: “without the structure of the CT, it would be impossible.”
“I’m going to train alone, and for safety reasons, I avoid using free weights, for example. There, there is a large structure of machines”, highlights the Brazilian Army captain.
If the gym can already become a dangerous place under normal circumstances, this situation can become worse when the bodybuilder has only five degrees of vision. “How many times did I think I had broken my finger after hitting something (…) there was one time when I didn’t train my legs for months because I hit my knee on a ringer”, remembers Fantini.
The athlete also reports the importance of organization: “For me, it’s very difficult when people take things out of place. There were days when I changed my training because I couldn’t find a bench, a rope, etc.”
Another aspect of the gym that the bodybuilder needs to deal with is lighting, since both diseases he suffers generate sensitivity to light: “there came a certain point in the preparation when I could no longer train because of the pain I felt in the eyes (…) sometimes, the reflection of a light would break me, to the point of having to go home and stay in the dark”.
Before joining the sport, Fantini had never dreamed of the stage. However, he believes that bodybuilding is accompanied by several qualities that it presents. “I don’t think I’m very good at anything, but I’m average at many things. In other words, I’m constant. I’ve always been very disciplined, very focused. When I put my mind to something, I see it through to the end. It’s always been like that. I even I joke and say that I’m not like that because I was in the Army, but I went to the Army because that’s who I am”, he highlights. “I try to accept the situation and do my best within these circumstances”, he concludes.
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