When Tryson Shigemoto peered into the mirror, he saw someone motivated to work out just to keep pounds off.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the barbell rack at the gym.

Other people saw something else: "They would ask me, 'Are you preparing for a bodybuilding show?' " Shigemoto said. "I'd laugh because I never thought about something like that. 'Cause, who would want to wear, uh, BVDs in front of a room full of people?"

Well, he, for one, as it now turns out.

The 5-foot-5, 178-pound Shigemoto will represent Hawai'i in the USA Championships in Las Vegas beginning Friday, hopefully of making a splash in his first national competition.

He won the novice title of the Paradise Cup in 2006 and overall open crown in 2007. Last month, the 30-year-old athletic trainer at SportsMedicine Hawaii won the open light heavyweight championship of the Hawaiian Islands Bodybuilding and Figure Championships.

Still, Shigemoto maintains, "I'm very, very blown away," by the success. "(A while ago) I would have never have imagined doing a national competition."

At Kaua'i High in the mid-1990s Shigemoto took up weights to stay in shape for a smorgasbord of sports: football, baseball, soccer and track. In college, at Nevada-Las Vegas, he resumed weight training to combat, "the 'freshman 15,' that weight you put on in college."

When he returned to Hawai'i people in the gym would ask if he was preparing for a show. But Shigemoto, a quiet, humble man, said he scoffed before coming to wonder, "if that was something I could do."

When Chris Faildo, who won the U.S. Team Unlimited title, saw him at Gold's Gym and gave him a pep talk, Shigemoto said he really got serious. "I thought maybe they see something I don't."

A year later, when he entered the Paradise Cup in 2006, Shigemoto said, "to my surprise I won (the novice title) and I started to think these people were right."

With training partner Mark Muramoto pushing him and Faildo advising him, Shigemoto said, what has happened, "from then to now, well, it has just been amazing."

He hopes to put an exclamation on that this weekend in Las Vegas.