BUFFALO, N.Y. — You know Mike Norwood as half of Buffalo’s “Singing Cops.”

But there's more to him than smooth vocals.

"Growing up I watched my dad playing ball and I said this was something that I definitely wanted to do,” he said. “Once he put the basketball in my hand at an early age, I basically took to it."

Norwood's game took him to ECC and then Coppin State, before multiple international pro stops as well as time in what was then called the NBA D-League.

But a broken foot made Norwood pivot off the court.

"Once I got hurt playing overseas, it kind of took the life out of me because I'd worked so hard to get over there,” he said. “And even though I had some other stints with other professional teams, I could kind of tell that the career was coming to its tail end. That's when I said, ‘hey, I got to find something else to do,’ and that's when police basically kicked in."

Norwood joined the Buffalo Police Department in January 2013, with the Singing Cops stardom shooting off six years later.

But while in the national spotlight, Norwood found himself searching for something more.

"Because of my competitive nature, something was calling me to basically get back into some type of sports,” he said. “I consider myself to be a hardcore competitor and I needed something to push me. I basically got into a mental phase of where, hey, can I do this again and can I actually be better at it? I had been talking about doing men's physique for some years, and I got to a point where I was like, I can't continue to sit here and get older and say, ‘man I wish I shoulda, coulda done this.’"

So in January of this year, Norwood started training — hard.

Over two-hour workouts, eating seven meals a day to intake around 3,000 calories.

All in hopes of going pro again.

"It's almost like it's an obsession,” said Norwood. “I'm obsessed with bodybuilding. I'm obsessed with wanting to get bigger. Wanting to get leaner. Wanting to be the best that I can be because you're talking about going against the elite guys in the country … it's like everybody is doing the same thing. Everybody's training just as hard. You always keep that in the back of your mind, so you're going to sacrifice a lot of your time. It's a nonstop, constant grind."

Norwood competes in a national qualifier in late July. A top-five finish there earns him a spot at nationals on September 1, with a top-two finish giving him pro status.

"When you're in the gym, you have to block out pain,” he said. “You can't really focus on what's hurting. You got to go. It's a grind. When the pain kicks in, that's when you really have to push."

Don't worry, Norwood's just pushed pause on the Singing Cops, with more tunes coming down the line.

But first, he’s pumping up different pipes on stage.