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21
Jul
How Harrogate's bodybuilding barber got back on his horse after a brush with death
Having four holes drilled in their skull and their brain case sluiced out would probably stop most people from doing whatever it was that caused it in the first place. But not Dave Steca.
One of Britain’s most successful bodybuilders, he is also undoubtedly Harrogate’s best-known barber, and to say he’s a man not easily put off is something of an understatement. When he ended up in hospital after a fall from his polo pony last year, he suffered a delayed bleed on the brain that threatened serious consequences.
He told the Stray Ferret:
A few weeks after the fall, I had a massive headache in the middle of the night and as the week progressed I was getting a bit ‘funkier’: missing turnoffs on the way home, dropping my comb and forgetting things. But I didn’t twig, because it had been weeks ago.
Eventually, I went to A&E and a CT scan showed the damage. I thought I was going to be disabled, or worse.
He was treated successfully, but the accident left its mark on the 65-year-old, and not just those four small scars on his scalp.
He said:
Most people will say I’m pretty chilled about most things, but I don’t sweat the small stuff at all now.
But it was a big knock for me, because I’d never been ill in my life. I’d be walking the dog or mucking out the horse, and I’d keep thinking ‘Is my head alright?’.
Dave in hospital several weeks after his polo accident.
It was a chastening experience for a man used to being fit and strong. Incredibly strong. He discovered bodybuilding by accident, but soon found success.
He said:
I was 26 and I wasn't into bodybuilding. I was into weight training, running, football and kickboxing.
I trained in a gym in Ilkley, and the girl that ran the gym did bikini figure competitions. She was taking a little team to the east coast championships in Bridlington, and she said, ‘Will you do the bodybuilding show for the gym, Dave’, because I was sort of Bruce Lee-ish: small but muscular.
I thought, that’s not for me: false tan and poncing about on stage. But she said she’d give me free gym membership, sort my diet out and let me have free sunbeds. I thought, ‘Go on then – I'll have a laugh’, and I went and won it, in the beginners’ class.
I thought, 'That's a nice trophy, and I didn't have to get kicked in the head for it. I'll have another go'.
Shaved and tanned: Dave in competition.
Within four years, he was Mr Yorkshire. Within eight, he was Mr UK. But it was the lifestyle rather than the trophies that he enjoyed. He said:
I love to push myself. If it hadn’t been bodybuilding, it would have been triathlons or something. It just grasped me. I liked being muscular and I liked being strong, and the competitions were just a gauge to see where I was at.
He was heavily influenced by a Californian bodybuilder called Tom Platz, whose philosophy was all about pushing the limits. Dave said:
I liked his way of thinking: if you think you’ve got another two reps in you, you’ve actually got six. It was a bit mental, to be honest. He took it to the limit on everything, so I did that too.
In his prime, Dave was bench-pressing 50kg dumbbells and leg-pressing 400kg for six reps. That’s roughly the weight of five average-sized men.
But he is wary of throwing figures about. He said:
I don’t want to sound too ‘bodybuildy’. There are a lot of bodybuilders who say things like ‘I eat five chickens a day and don’t drink any water for two days leading up to the show’. I think it sounds a bit tacky.
I’ve just been to Italy with a load of them, and – without being horrible – you just try and get away from them, because their whole life is just bodybuilding: there’s nothing outside it. It’s quite a big part of my life too, but it’s not everything.
Harrogate's strongest 65-year-old, Dave Steca.
It is, he says, simply a ‘hobby’ that he’s managed to indulge alongside his working life, with the backing of his “ultra-supportive” wife, Jackie.
Dave opened his first barber’s shop in Otley in 1989 and followed it with others in Ilkley (his hometown), Knaresborough, Skipton, Ripon, Harrogate and Leeds.
But over the the last decade he has sold them all off – including the landmark Harrogate Steca’s barber shop on the corner of Cheltenham Parade and King’s Road. Downsizing, he opened an altogether smarter shop – a men’s grooming emporium called Steca No 6 – in Prince’s Square, where he still works.
He said:
I still enjoy it. I've got clients now, and clients’ sons, and – dare I say it? - clients’ grandsons. I don't want to retire yet. What else would I do?
The answer to that question might seem obvious. After all, apart from a hiatus in his forties, Dave has continued to train. Just this month, he came second in the over-65s Mr Universe competition. In fact, he says:
I’ve won everything I can, genetically.
Dave in the fray during a chukka.
And then there’s the polo, which he took up at the age of 59 and puts down to a “midlife crisis”. He said:
A customer suggested it, and I thought ‘Polo? Who plays polo’?’. But it was in Tadcaster, which isn’t far away, so I thought, ‘Here we go – let's have another challenge!’.
The accident put paid to both hobbies for a few months, but as time passed, their lure proved too strong. He said:
I’m back in the gym and I’m playing polo again. At first, I didn’t, because I’d had a brush with death. But once I went back and saw my pony and saw the pitch, I just went for it.
I thought ‘I’ve been given another chance’. At 65, you think something’s coming to get you sooner or later, so screw it: I’m giving it a go.
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