A memoir · Based on a true story
The Black Sword
The Incredible True Story of One Man's Fight Against Obesity and Addiction to Becoming a Champion
Philip Albenze was born early and spent his first days in a neonatal intensive care unit. He grew up with asthma in North Jackson, Ohio, served in the Army from 1987 to 1993, and came home drinking. Over the next twenty years he picked up three DUIs, did time in jail, was shot on New Year's Eve 2002, and reached 304 pounds. The Black Sword is his account of all of it, and of the day he decided his son would not grow up without a father.
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The story
By 2009 Phil's gallbladder was packed with stones and had to come out. The tests that came with the surgery were worse: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, early fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes close behind. He had been telling people he weighed 245 or 250. The doctor's scale said 304. "A ticking bomb," the doctor called him, with a body like a 70-year-old man's.
His son was in the room. "Those little sounds coming out of my son, his voice shaking, crying, scared, not wanting his father to die," Phil says on his podcast. Phil tells that day in detail in the book. On the podcast he describes the drive home: he pulled into a gym he had passed every day on his way to the liquor store, walked in with his son holding his hand, and told the man behind the desk, for the first time in his life, "I need help."
The first workout was punishing, and 15 minutes in he learned it had only been the warm-up. He quit drinking cold turkey. He weighed his meals to the gram, cooked them days ahead, cut out soda and fast food, and trained six days a week. He lost about 140 pounds that first year.
His trainer was a natural bodybuilder, someone who competes without steroids, and Phil followed him onto the stage. Natural mattered to him for his own reason. A man who could drink 20 or 30 beers and never feel satisfied, he figured, would carry the same habit into anabolic drugs, and they could kill him as fast as the drinking. In 2015 he won the Black Sword.
Then the people at his gym started asking him how he did it. He got certified as a personal trainer, opened Body by Phil in Austintown, and began helping others do what a stranger had once helped him do.
Why it is called The Black Sword
The Black Sword is the championship trophy of the NGA Northeast Ohio All Natural bodybuilding show. Phil won it in 2015 in the open class, where anyone 18 or older could enter.
Who wrote it
Phil Albenze is a personal trainer, Masters amateur boxer and owner of Body by Phil in Austintown, Ohio. His wife Kimberly encouraged him to write the book. "I felt very vulnerable," he told the Tribune Chronicle, "but I know what these people are going through." Recalling the worst years was the hard part, he says: "I had to recall a lot of these really awful times in my life that you kind of try to forget and suppress."
What one reader took from it
A Body by Phil member who ran her first marathon the year after breast cancer surgery read the book and gave it one of its first reviews. On Phil's podcast she named the line that stayed with her:
You said that you can't open new doors with old keys. And when I read that, it was like … one of those aha moments.
On the Body by Phil podcast, February 2026
Editions
| Edition | Published | Length | Numbers | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paperback | July 29, 2025 | 98 pages | ISBN 979-8896492818 · ASIN B0FKN75LYK | Amazon |
| Kindle | July 7, 2025 | 115 pages | ISBN 979-8896497806 · ASIN B0FM4H2LL9 | Amazon |
| Audible audiobook | September 2, 2025 | 3 hours 34 minutes | ASIN B0FPGT7BYJ | Amazon |
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company.
Also at Barnes & Noble · Bookshop.org · Apple Books · Google Play · Dorrance Bookstore.
Questions about The Black Sword
Is The Black Sword a true story?
Yes. It is Phil Albenze's own life, from a premature birth and a sickly childhood through twenty years of alcohol addiction, a shooting and jail, to the natural bodybuilding stage and his own gym. The cover says "Based on a true story."
Who published it, and when?
Dorrance Publishing Company of Pittsburgh. The Kindle edition came out July 7, 2025, the paperback July 29, 2025, and the Audible audiobook September 2, 2025.
Is there an audiobook?
Yes. The unabridged Audible edition runs 3 hours 34 minutes.
How long is the book?
The paperback is 98 pages, 6 by 9 inches. Amazon lists the Kindle edition at 115 pages.
Why is it called The Black Sword?
The Black Sword is the championship trophy of the NGA Northeast Ohio All Natural bodybuilding show, which Phil won in 2015.
Is there a sequel?
Yes. After the Sword came out in September 2026 and picks up after the bodybuilding years, with Masters boxing, his wife Kim and the clients he trains.