I usually don't read articles like this, but it was so well written that I was sort of sucked into it.
What was most interesting to me was not the various controversies about body aesthetics or even health consequences. What stood out to me was the author's description in the early parts of the article of how much she seemed to crave the approval of strangers, especially men. It was thought provoking and I'm still processing it. I find this way of thinking completely foreign. I know intellectually that many people need external affirmation... but from total strangers whom you barely interact with? I can't help but feel a bit sad that so many go through their lives this way.
I also found the article fascinating for the insights the author shows about her own thoughts and motivations.
When I started working out at a gym, when I was in my early fifties, I barely knew that bodybuilding existed. But the gym I happened to join in Tokyo turned out to be popular with amateur bodybuilders, and I exercised near them most evenings for more than ten years. I became acquainted with quite a few of them, including some of the top bodybuilders in Japan, and made friends with several, but I never really understood what drove them. Although most of them had full-time jobs, they worked out nearly every evening for a couple of hours, and when the summer competition season approached they would drastically restrict their diets and start spending money on skincare and tanning. It looked to me like self-torture, but many of them continued this year after year.
In my job, in foreign-language education, I think a lot about what motivates some adults to keep studying long and hard enough to become proficient in a foreign language, as relatively few actually succeed. I tried to get some insights about motivation from watching and talking to the bodybuilders, but I didn’t really learn much. This article helped.
I'm not a body builder, but I was a competitive powerlifter for awhile and still am a serious lifter now. In my experience, serious lifters of either gender (including myself) tend to have trauma from the past that got them into it and helped the hobby stick. Typically they were either fat, underweight, short, or weak; they felt looked down on; or some combination of these things, and they were angry about it. Alternatively, they felt powerless for some reason and they felt that lifting empowered them and gave them control.
As George Leeman (an accomplished powerlifter) once said: "to lift these kinds of weights is not a happy thing...you do not try and pick up 800 lbs and fucking look like you're going to fucking kill somebody before you do it because everything is fucking great".
>In my job, in foreign-language education, I think a lot about what motivates some adults to keep studying long and hard enough to become proficient in a foreign language, as relatively few actually succeed.
I'm not sure I would compare something like bodybuilding with foreign languages. At some point you become proficient enough in a language that you can simply consume movies, TV shows, books, news etc that the language learning becomes mostly effortless. Becoming really proficient at a language requires someone to immerse themselves in it (to use it for a purpose without easy fallbacks). The internet has been amazing for learning English.
I don't know anyone that became proficient at a language by studying it. It's always been through use. The studying just creates a base that allows a person to start using the language.
Exercise requires persistence. You can't really have gaps in it, because you lose your progress. Language learning is much more flexible in this. You might forget what you learned, but the next time you try to learn the same thing it's much easier.
> Exercise requires persistence. You can't really have gaps in it, because you lose your progress.
Well, maintaining your current level of strength is far easier to do than maintaining continuous progress (especially at more advanced stages, which you have to do a lot of fuckery around programming/scheduling in order to realize any progress at all). You just can't do nothing, but the same goes for languages. If you don't use a language at all, your proficiency atrophies over time as well.
It's just not something people really think about. If you were to reach a level of strength you were happy with, you could just figure out a maintenance program and focus your physical energy on other pursuits, extreme sports, slacklining, bouldering, hiking, whatever.
>If you don't use a language at all, your proficiency atrophies over time as well.
I don't think it's quite comparable. I was fluent in German more than a decade ago. I've not really used it since. It's difficult for me to speak or write in it, because I simply can't think of the words - I'll remember them in English instead. However, if I listen to German or read German text then I have no trouble understanding it.
This same thing did not happen with exercise for me. The strength I once had is gone.
Fortunately for you, regaining a strength level that one had in the past is vastly lower effort than what was required to get to that level in the first place. There are many fascinating cellular and molecular causes for the macro-phenomenon that we call "muscle memory" but it is a real thing.
TLDR, your muscles, unlike most tissues, have more than one nucleus per cell. Your "meat", which are protein fibers, can be atrophied through catabolism during diet or dis-use, and this is a form of protein recycling. But the multiplication of nuclei which occurred during your original training does not revert.
So a formerly strong person who let it go is sitting around with a high nuclei/cell ratio, and low muscle tissue. If he resumes his training and calorie surplus, his nuclei will act like parallel processors outputting the commands to manufacture new muscle fiber much faster.
RE language acquisition, I often wonder how much is circumstance. I have an engineer friend who on the one hand is making excuses but he points out his job doesn't really require him to talk to anyone, further, his programming job is almost entirely in English, looking up API docs or language docs in English, writing code while thinking in English, further he's somewhat introverted. So, his language skills are not so great for the amount of time he's lived abroad. Conversely his sees socialite colleagues doing jobs that require interaction doing much better.
My point is, some adults don't need so much intrinsic motivation. Their situation effectively carries them or at least is a strong helpful push.
You are definitely correct, but you need to factor in the actions that puts someone in a place to get that environmental effect. If your friend had motivation to learn the language they would presumably seek out ways to practice it (e.g engaging more with their colleagues or actively seeking documentation in the foreign language).
One directly practical example, since I'm also an engineer living in a foreign country: a lot of the times when I first interact with someone they will ask me if I prefer to speak in English or in their language, and I will always take the opportunity to speak their language to get the practice in.
Since this thread is about the similarity between learning languages and bodybuilding, I guess you could make the comparison between someone working a job that leads to natural exercise (e.g construction) and someone who works a more sedentary job but seeks out exercise on their own.
You don’t need that validation, but it’s still very noticeable. The difference between being slightly overweight and ripped is shocking. The world is suddenly a different place where you show up at a large party and several hot women hit on you etc.
Granted you need to be otherwise attractive, but it’s not just women men also treat you more positively. Women see a wider range of responses, yet it’s still generally a very positive experience.
Like walking into a bank wearing a suit and a good haircut vs ragged jeans and long hair. It’s also a big weakness of humans that they dole out trust this way, but it makes all the sense in the world that we do so.
I think one of the most remarkable demonstrations of this I know of is a study I remember seeing referenced somewhere (maybe "Influence" by Cialdini) that showed that people are more likely to cross a road on a red light if someone in a suit crosses it first.
Having been through this myself, my own experience:
Going from being ignored in nightclubs, and have people tap my shoulder if they needed to get past, to having people instead slide their hands over my pecs or stomach or pat them to get past (both men and women suddenly started doing that), getting my butt pinched half a dozen times a night, and having half a bunch of random strangers who also lifted weights want to high five me for no reason.
I'd never had women pick me up in nightclub before, as opposed to having to be the one to approach. Afterwards I did. I had random women want to make out with me within minutes of meeting on many occasions. Of course not all of that is necessarily down to the change in my appearance - it's very possible some of it was also down to my increased self confidence, but either way the difference was massive.
Looks and confidence are of course by no means the only things, but it's a multiplier, and you can up that multiplier significantly by lifting weights.
I was pretty attractive in high school. The most startling example of this I ever experienced was sitting at a table playing yugioh with only traditionally "nerdy" looking guys, and a girl came by and said "do you know how unattractive playing that game is?" and then she looked at me and said "except you, it's cute when you do it". It truly is a completely night and day experience in how you're treated, negative things about you become cute and quirky and you can do no wrong in many people's eyes.
When he was obese, people were like, ugh a fat slug who needs to stop eating 2000 calories a sitting. plus his nose is kinda crooked. When he got fit, all the sudden he started looking a pretty sexy guy who's got it together. that slightly crooked nose? now a cute quirk that makes his face more unique and charming.
I'd say you probably don't even need to be attractive physically in terms of having a pretty face. If you've got a charming personality and you are reasonably in shape, you'll get plenty of attention. You're signaling that you have value and people act accordingly.
I see a lot of incel-y talk on HN. Some of it seems predicated on Silicon Valley as a gold rush town, with men outnumbering women ten to one and the women taking that in a mercenary opportunity. Almost any discussion of dating will turn up a lot of such views.
A long way off-topic, but any talk of incel is likely to be taken as an insult (although some use it in a positive way). The word definitely doesn’t apply to me! Personally, I have never even heard the word used within my own social circles (some of which are geeky).
The hn crowd seems to be particularly international to me - making assumptions based on SV seems wierd. I am in New Zealand with a normal ratio of genders, and plenty of social situations to meet women since we have no lockdown, however I have heard that NZ has far too many sheep.
On topic: I am acquainted with one world-competing female body-builder. She comes across as extremely competent at the other parts of her life (good artist, good at running her own business).
Since the pandemic started, my interactions with strangers of the opposite sex have been quite curtailed. Last week a vague acquaintance in my condo complex, 35 years my senior, stopped me and spent a good 30 seconds telling me how blue my eyes looked, and musing on how my outfit made them stand out especially. On the one hand, this is weirdly objectifying, and I kind of wish she had the slightest interest in who I am as a person - she’s one of those archetypal condo neighbors who mostly just goes around complaining about people. But on the other hand, I had the distinct thought, “Hot dang, Daniel. You’ve still got it.” This thought was steeped in irony, but at its kernel, there’s a stark emotional reality there. I’m even tolerably well adjusted.
Positive attention from strangers is a singularly terrible thing to hinge your wellbeing on, but man. It sure feels nice.
I would comment that many men seem use sex with women as a form of self esteem boosting. Like, if I fuck enough women, the emotional void inside of me will finally fill and I’ll know I’m worthy. Women do the attention seeking stuff more overtly, and they’re encouraged and allowed to display themselves as objects. men have a pretty similar set of emotional drives, just have different avenues for acting them out.
> I would comment that many men seem use sex with women as a form of self esteem boosting. Like, if I fuck enough women, the emotional void inside of me will finally fill and I’ll know I’m worthy. Women do the attention seeking stuff more overtly, and they’re encouraged and allowed to display themselves as objects. men have a pretty similar set of emotional drives, just have different avenues for acting them out.
In the absence of a demonstrably testable and provable God (or Gods, or religion) the only real success is genetic success -- that's the way of things for 99% of the living critters on the planet. Getting laid a lot means breeding a lot means genetic success.
Kinda like money: having it is no promise of happiness, but not getting any will make you miserable.
To the parent thread: bartended a bit after getting out of the Marines. Now currently a fat beardly linux type. Night and day in terms of how people, of all genders and orientations, treat you when you're fit, clean cut, and dressed well.
This is so interesting. I had a similar experience like what you described. A friend of mine drunk dialed me when she was partying with her girlfriends, telling me that her friend thought I was cute.
It felt weird - that she was sharing photos of me with her friends - and a bit objectifying too. But yeah, I had the same thought as you. It felt nice.
Also, your writing style is amazing. If you ever write a blog or a book, I would give it a try just on the basis of how well you articulate thoughts.
Nice story (first paragraph; third paragraph rings all too true). I don't think being told you have beautiful eyes is necessarily objectifying, though.
Objectification is where you disregard all aspects of a person in favor of what they look like; the word literally means treating a person like an object. Think posters of swimsuit models on the walls.
Anyway like another person in this thread mentioned, while it's shit, at the same time it feels nice to get complimented on a feature of yours, especially if it's a novel experience. I've never felt like I was particularly attractive, because I got zero feedback on my appearance during my formative years - good OR bad. But I'm in my mid thirties now and my girlfriend has the hots for me, so that's nice :D.
> Objectification is where you disregard all aspects of a person in favor of what they look like
I know the context is largely missing, and I am obviously not telling the OP what they should think in a specific circumstance.
But as you say, objectifying is when an individual is seen only through the prism of a stereotype (though I don’t think it’s necessarily physical, but that’s another story). We tend to get very defensive because we reject others’ judgement (and crave validation at the same time; we’re nothing if not contradictory), but a compliment every now and then is not necessary wrong.
And I know what objectification means ;)
I recognise myself in the rest of your post, it’s uncanny. Are you me?
I was a ridiculously cute little girl and I'm pretty damn sure a lot of my social issues as a young adult were rooted in getting essentially trained to play to the crowd as a toddler. At that age, it's a form of brainwashing and it's amazingly hard to root out after you become an adult and are puzzled that your antics no longer get you adoration. (PSA: Please don't do this to your own children. It's an awful thing to experience.)
My oldest son was a ridiculously cute toddler but I never taught him that he was expected to play to the crowd. So when he got to be school age and found that too much social attention was actively problematic, he was able to choose to intentionally behave differently.
This is likely to some degree a gender difference. Girls seem to get a lot more social pressure generally to "be cute" and to engage socially in a performative manner.
You'd be surprised. Male attractiveness is simply NOT TALKED ABOUT much, especially around older people. But my mother, who is quite reserved, once blurted out that in his early years father looked 'like a young god'. And yeah, I've seen a black&white photo. He looked pretty much like Clark Kent. Square jaw, glasses, swole from muscles... except he wore a linen shirt instead of a suit. He always enjoyed labor. I wouldn't get this description if I just asked about him.
Many women don't feel comfortable openly saying they find some men attractive. That doesn't mean they don't care about it a lot.
Women having sexual preferences and predilections is not at all the same thing as men getting a ton of social pressure from all quarters to look and act a certain way.
A very attractive female actress once said "I dress for women. I undress for men." For that and other reasons, I'm not convinced that male sexual preferences really drive the female tendency to try hard to look good and dress well, even though that's the supposed justification. Society gives women a lot of silly ideas about what men want and I think most women don't really bother to ask men if any of that actually holds water or not.
When I was relatively young and married I bought a new coat and got all mad when my husband failed to notice my new coat at all and, thus, failed to compliment me on it. I have to wonder how much women go around demanding that men tell them they like and approve of X, Y and Z rather than checking to find out if he even really, truly cares about X, Y or Z at all.
During my long, drawn out divorce at a time when I did not expect to be in a position to make a relationship really work long-term, I just began asking men point blank what they liked about me. The answers were surprisingly varied and completely destroyed a lot of preconceived notions I had about what made me "attractive."
It was very eye-opening and life-changing for me. It also made me enormously skeptical of a lot of "standard wisdom" related to such topics.
A good demonstration of this can be showcased pretty heavily in the difference between how women are dressed in women's magazines vs. in magazines targeting men - whatever their state of undress.
Many years ago, I read some article about some guy who was seeing two women and the two women found out about each other. Neither woman dumped him. Neither woman gave him an ultimatum of "It's me or her!"
No, both of them began dressing completely differently and the brunet dyed her hair blonde and the blonde dyed her hair red.
They both had this internal script that said "The way you win a man is with looks, by god!" and neither of them ever bothered to ask the man in question "So, what would it take to get you to myself? Is that even possible? Why are even seeing two women in the first place?"
He didn't care how either of them dressed. He continued to see both of them and was quietly amused by their completely ineffectual attempts to "win" him and get him to themselves.
I mean, in competing for him instead of being willing to walk, they're basically validating his choice, and then putting him on a pedestal where they're making it clear to him they see him as higher value than other men they might find. I'd imagine it made him even more inclined to keep seeing both of them.
They behaved exactly as red pill proponents say. According to that line of thinking, a man popular with ladies is more attractive and they are more happy sharing a high status man than having a lesser man all for themselves.
Of course, this is just an anecdote and cases like this are more likely to stick in our memory. You be the judge.
Your experience, described this way, makes me wonder: to what extent are fashion and notions of sex appeal mostly unrealistic competitions, trapped in their own inertia, unhinged from actual human desire, just like those in the article.
I think there is a huge societal weight that is hard to escape because most sexual liaisons are also social relationships.
We date. We get married. The people we are romantically attached to in a public way get judged by others and that judgement impacts us.
The only way to separate your actual sexual preferences from your desire for social approval is to get involved secretly, out of the public eye. And that's inherently problematic.
How do you arrange such secrecy? Will it come back to bite you later? Can you successfully transition from secret love affair to public association with this person?
The plot for the movie Legally Blonde is rooted in family interference in Elle's boyfriend's love life. She's gorgeous and they are in love but she's not what his family wants for him.
There are countless other such examples in both fiction and the real world. Hollywood even coined a term for marriages intended to cover up socially disapproved preferences for LGBTQ stars during a certain era: the lavender marriage.
The world often interferes significantly with whom we can marry, which means it interferes significantly with whom we can openly be sexually involved with.
It's a quite difficult thing to escape, even for people who simply cannot make those expectations work for them (like gay men being forced to marry women and pretend to like sex with women, a still fairly common occurrence in the world). If your sexual orientation and preferences make those social expectations not overly onerous, the path of least resistance is to just go along to get along, at least publicly and superficially to some degree.
But I suspect it still does enormous harm in ways that go largely unrecognized.
I'm sure they are unhinged to some extent. But I've also come to realise over the years that a lot of it comes down to different priorities.
Ask a number of men what their dream women would be like, and odds are you'll get more descriptions of women we'll sleep with, than will want to stay with long term. Sometimes we'll even known this and still opt for the short term payoff, even if we "in theory" want the long term payoff, because impulse control is hard.
On a tangentially related note, I've noticed that many heterosexual men imagine the comedian Felix Kjellberg (AKA Pewdiepie) must be the height of attractiveness for women, while few heterosexual women find him particularly attractive. I found this very confusing, but after a few discussions with heterosexual female friends of mine we've come to the conclusion that the kind of playfulness and disinhibition this persona consists of is looks like vivaciousness in a woman but immaturity in a man. I imagine some similar dynamics must be in play there.
Physically, I just googled and found he won a most beautiful faces award this year and consistently ranked on the same list. Never heard of TC Candler but their youtube lists have millions of views. I doubt he’s actually objectively #1 but clearly they don’t think he’s unattractive.
There’s a lot of variance in female taste, so you frequently see comments along the lines of “[Objectively attractive celebrity X] is not attractive AT ALL”. And the comment is true, for that woman.
But it’s very risky to generalize based on a small sample, especially if it’s all from your personal bubble. I guarantee that if Pewdiepie wasn’t famous and you put his photos on Tinder they would do well. He’s lean, young, 5’10”, has good skin and a reasonable fashion sense, and there’s nothing obviously wrong with his face. That alone more or less puts him in the 90% percentile.
>He’s lean, young, 5’10”, has good skin and a reasonable fashion sense, and there’s nothing obviously wrong with his face. That alone more or less puts him in the 90% percentile.
Well yes, not to mention that he's a completely self-made multimillionaire with a charming accent. He's certainly what I imagine going for were I attracted to men. Having anyone who is into men say they're not interested is noteworthy, such a large percentage of even a fairly small sample size was definitely pointing to something unusual.
Have you talked to women about attraction? It’s extremely common to hear them say “ugh celebrity x is not at all attractive”.
No woman universally finds all celebrities attractive. Okcupid had an excellent blog series on attractiveness ratings by gender. When rating women, men used more or less a normal distribution.
Whereas the default female rating was “unattractive”, and only a tiny fraction are rated extremely attractive. And from my own experience the variance is high: different women find different types of men attractive.
I don’t follow pewdiepie and I certainly wouldn’t claim he’s the most attractive man in the world or anything. I’m pushing back against the idea that he’s unattractive or against the idea that some women saying he’s unattractive means he doesn’t also have a ton of women who find him attractive.
My point wasn't really about absolute numbers so much as how consistently men overestimate his attractiveness to women. I'm not saying he's the only one or would be considered more unattractive than the average man, just that it's surprising how poorly we understand what the opposite gender finds attractive.
If you doubt that is an objective observation, it would be quite easy to test and I'd certainly be interested in the results. One possible protocol would be to select several celebrities, make pairs of them at random, and ask your friends both which of the pair they find more attractive and which of a different set of pairs they imagine the other gender would find more attractive.
That’s fair, I suspect you might be right that if you to make some sort of index of “male overestimates of universal attractiveness of a celebrity to women” he might be high on it because he’s so popular with men on an emotional level.
As a heterosexual female, Matt Bomer is the height of peak male attractiveness. I'd say Charlize Theron would be tops for females. Pewdiepie - ha. I actually find him repulsive, but you are right it's the personality - too loud, too awkward, too ... zany. I think I'd find that offputting in a female as well.
Interesting, Theron is certainly an example of someone whose attractiveness I've mostly heard affirmed by people not sexually attracted to women - there seem to be a fair number of people who possess what we might call beauty without much in the way of sex appeal. What's strange is how unconsciously we'll imagine that someone is highly desired without ever encountering a reality check.
Agree. She has all the metrics (symmetry, blonde, tall, in shape) and yet she does nothing for me at all. She activates the sense in me of "That is like my mom: Female but not a sex object".
As I get older the more I come to terms with the most attractive women being those who Hollywood never tried to push on me: slightly thick, introverted, and grumpy.
Wanting affirmation from and to be attracted by others around you (total strangers included) is basic human nature. It’s why we adorn ourselves with clothing and perfume, not to mention our skin and hair, whatever gender you are. I am a male and always want to seem attractive in physique and in character to the opposite sex, and even in some level to the same sex. My wife insists she doesn’t care what other people think about how she looks but she spends hours doing her hair and makeup when she goes somewhere with me or by herself. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this and it is completely healthy from a psychological standpoint.
I generally don't care what people think of my appearance, but I'll still shave and comb my hair before meeting people -- not because I want to impress them, but because it says "I value you enough to make at least a little bit of effort if we're going to be seen together in public".
Honestly, a shower in the morning, a brush and maybe some product and being reasonably healthy already puts you at a great advantage over others. It doesn't take two hours of Bateman level prep (unless you aim to supermodel levels), or a life dedicated to sports.
Right. Who would count their karma points here on Hacker News and make a big deal about how many strangers anonymously clicked on the up arrow next to their post?
I actually know such person. That is exactly what happened - karma was supposed to be proxy for social status and mine was lower so I was supposedly not allowed to argue against that person.
This magazine is a great one for getting me to read long articles about things I didn’t think would be interesting. It seems like they attract writers that are more honest and human about their motivations than you see in other places.
I don't think for self-validation it matters much if someone is a complete stranger or not, it's more about where in the perceived social hierarchy that person sits. Attention from someone who you feel is "higher" in the social tree is a positive, ego boosting signal, and we're wired to react to that. That's the core mechanics behind animal groups organization, and while human society tolerates individualism to much larger extent than other animals, still we're hard-coded to strive for it. I think very few people have such amount of healthy ego that their self-esteem is completely independent from their environments social signals - and it's not necessarily a healthy sign, as it might be also a consequence of some personality disorders.
You've never wanted to be attractive to whatever gender you're attracted to? I find it surprising that this can be "totally foreign" to any human that's not asexual.
Being the most attractive version of yourself that you can be isn't just about sex, either. It really does open doors socially and economically. Right or wrong, people enjoy the company of people who put thought and effort into their appearance. And if for no other reason, your partner certainly appreciates it!
Not OP. But, maybe, a bit, it does surprise me. Most programmers I know in real life are not neck beards and quite presentable, despite what the cliche' is like.
The traits associated with technical skills definitely bump the distribution more to the side of 'neckbeard'. So, yes, most programmers are normal (well groomed, exercise, developed social skills) but the number people who show no compelling evidence they possess a theory of mind is noticably higher and account for the tropes.
I like that "no compelling evidence they possess a theory of mind". I spent some time worrying about what "people" would think when I was young, but never "what does that individual person think?" And I never spent any time trying to be attractive because I didn't find men attractive. Reddit helped me read everyone else's minds and made me more normal, but I still don't have conversations where I'm thinking "How are they reacting to what I said?" or "What will they do if I act like this?"
Of course I have. But that's not what she described. From what I read it was a near obsession, consuming her thoughts on a near constant basis. THAT is what I found foreign.
And of course being more attractive makes life easier. Did I say even once that it did not? That's blatantly obvious. But do you reallyactively think about if strangers that you happen pass on the street or in a store find you hot? This is what she described.
Everyone cares what some other people think of them. Friends, family, collogues, and people they're attracted to, etc. Some people care more, some people care less. But, I think, most people don't really care too much what complete strangers think to the point where they actively think about it while passing them by. Or do they?
I think that's one of the points of the article, or at least an observation. Bodybuilding made her more attractive to men, then as she excelled, made her much less attractive to them. The world changed around her as she changed appearance, as men held open the door for her or ignored her, corresponding to her attractiveness. Bodybuilding for women was for years obsessed with making sure the competitors preserved their femininity, as if building too much muscle takes that away from a women. One of her idol (Bev Francis)'s major contributions to the field were ignored by the gym friend, because he viewed Francis as being too unattractive to have sex with, and that was all he cared about.
Beyond that, I think it's extraordinarily hard to not care what strangers think of you. Not a particular stranger, but just strangers as a whole. Depending on where you live (e.g.catcalling is more common in particular cultures or more metro areas), you can have people commenting on your appearance every day. After years of that, of course you start noticing the comments being more or less nice, or more or less frequent, and I imagine it's easy to obsess over it. It should be pointed out though that it's clear the author doesn't enjoy obsessing over how men think of her - I imagine these are more intrusive thoughts.
I enjoyed a feminist lit book with similar themes of a character who embraced being 'unf*ckable' called "Dietland". The 2nd half of the book goes off the rails but the first half was thought-provoking to me, for anyone who might be interested.
I’m not an attractive woman so I can’t say for sure, but I have been obviously “checked out” by women before, and it made an impact on my mental state. If someone were to become used to that, I’d imagine clear changes to that feedback would become noteworthy, especially in a confessional essay.
This is much more common than you would imagine. And on both sides of the typical gender roles. (I’m speaking about western society here as it’s what I know, and where I feel like a lot of that need comes from.)
> What was most interesting to me was not the various controversies about body aesthetics or even health consequences. What stood out to me was the author's description in the early parts of the article of how much she seemed to crave the approval of strangers, especially men.
We very much stand on opposite ends.
Fools exist, and many fools try to phrase their foolishness in terms of gender so to arouse the impression that they have an excuse.
Not a day goes by that I see a man attempt to excuse his foolishness by claiming it stems from his gender, his ethnicity, his religion, or anything else.
Needlessly craving the approval of others has nothing to do with gender, — some do so, and some do not.
> I can't help but feel a bit sad that so many go through their lives this way.
Foolish behavior exists everywhere in many forms. Some crave the approval of others to deluded paranoia of rejection; others wish to control their fellow man for no purpose but control itself; yet others are disproportionally afraid of very specific, uncommon things, yet ignore far more common dangers. — it is old news.
Title: Duped by the “Frailty Myth:” USMC Gender Based Physical Fitness Standards
Author: Major Misty J. Posey, United States Marine Corps
Thesis: Female frailty is a myth; women Marines have the strength and ability to perform pull-ups and should be required to do so on the PFT in order to evaluate more accurately female upper-body strength, properly condition women for the likelihood of combat, and mitigate the negative impact that differing standards have on unit cohesion.
Except for winning competitions, is there any natural advantage of bodybuilding for both men and women?
For both, for advantage in most sports and attractiveness the typical calisthenics physique, sort of gymnast/football(soccer) one seems like the ideal one to me, yet a lot of people seem to be obsessed with getting overly buff.
For women especially, as they age about one-third suffer from osteoporosis, and lifting (heavy!) weights forces body adaptions that help strengthen bones. One also often hears about seniors slipping/falling and breaking hips, which can cause a downward health spiral: doing squats and deadlifts with respectable weights (1.0x to 1.5x your bodyweight) would probably help with that.
Some simple tests can reliably predict longevity: number of push-ups that can be done, speed of walking up stairs, and a sitting-rising test:
There's also the fact that strength is useful in life: from carrying children and groceries, moving (heavy) items, etc. It will also help in keeping one's independence when older: I see infomercials about electric chairs to help the elderly up and down stairs. That's completely unnecessary if one has sufficient muscle mass (which is harder to keep as one ages) for mobility and stability.
If one has a limited amount of time, the one activity that I'd do (and do personally) is weight training. The main disadvantage is that some equipment is needed, and with gyms closed nowadays it's hard to get much done. As a fall-back I have taken up running, but it's not my first choice (though I cycled to work pre-WFH).
I'd strongly second resistance training, it doesn't really take that much time either.
A simple program like Starting Strength will have you train for not much more than 60 minutes three days a week and you'll make significant strength gains up to 1.5x body weight easily.
For women reading this - beware, it's not that easy. I've followed Starting Strength a couple of times and I plateau at 1.3x my weight in deadlift and .75x my weight in squats. Sticking to the program doesn't get me past it. I have to shake it up a lot with more reps, smaller weight intervals, and nearly doubling my food intake.
It was a great way to get started though, and I'm really happy about the changes my body went through in six months or so. After that, you have to find a different program or a trainer.
I still think that SS is a good starter for the first 3-6 months, but once you can no longer jump by 2-5 pounds (1-2 kg) per workout, you've basically used up your beginner gains. (True also for men.)
SS isn't meant to be a long-term program, but mostly (a) getting people to actually do strength training with (b) proper form and (c) concentrating on the Big 5 movements that probably give the best bang-for-buck/time.
My apologies, my experience is from a male point of view on this, limits of my biology.
There is a starting strength lift standards which shows more what to expect from a female perspective and is indeed a lot smaller relative to body weight.
Starting strength is definitely a beginner program but it's simplicity is an excellent place to start.
After the SS program I've gone to the Texas Method and enjoyed great success, ymmv.
Speaking in effective time, it is obviously more than 60 minutes, I would say rather 160 minutes in the beginning and then getter lower with experience and getting used to it.
Resistance training is great, but let's not oversell it to others! A beginner not only needs to buy stuff (or commute to/from the gym) and create their plan and schedule it, they also need to account for spending extra time to correct their posture, have a longer recovery time, shower etc.
Thinking to get away with 60min from the get go might be discouraging.
Nope 60 minutes as a beginner sounds about right with correcting posture and whatnot. Once I was familiar with it that dropped right down. Starting Strength is a very minimal program.
Obviously no one is going to account for commute in how long a program takes. Some take hours to get to the nearest gym and others have home gyms.
Okay, maybe I did something terribly wrong as a beginner, but how did you make sure that your posture is good?
I used to do the exercise with little a no weight, record myself and double check for a longer time, until I found that I got used to the right movements.
At the beginning you should be on a relatively light on the weight anyway and as you progress you should be building locking in that form naturally.
Sometimes you'll need to deload to correct form and you'll likely be starting to look at different programs soon enough.
For one reason or another I've had to deload, usually missing training for a prolonged period of time. I'm at my longest sustained training period in awhile now and about to attempt a new 5rm squat tonight, I'm a little intimidated:). It soon becomes more about the psychology imo.
Video occasionally but once I knew what good posture felt like then I could feel when I was leaving it.
I always found good lifting form to be a will power thing more than a skill thing. Easy to maintain when the bar was empty, very hard to maintain on the last couple reps of my heaviest sets. Did form check videos occasionally to keep myself honest but really, I knew when I had bad form.
> Speaking in effective time, it is obviously more than 60 minutes, I would say rather 160 minutes in the beginning and then getter lower with experience and getting used to it.
I seriously disagree with this. 60 minutes is more than sufficient if you aren't screwing around. I also think it's baffling that people are still recommending Starting Strength when there are far more efficient and productive programs to start off with.
Especially as a beginner, you can get a significant training stimulus without having to waste 2-3 hours of your day. How absurd. Think 80/20. I even think spending that much time would be more detrimental than beneficial in the beginning.
yeah.. 60-90 min workout, but probably a minimum 30-40min recovery time to feel okay afterwards, plus extended sleep! You really tend to sleep longer.. You want that 8 hour sleep, if you are actually working with weights about 3-4 times a week. Compare that with 30-40mins of medium-to-intensive cardio.. Massive cortisol peaks after intense workout sessions, etc etc..
Some of the training may be similar, but I see resistance/strength training as different from body-building.
You do the former to become stronger, the latter to look it, and even ignoring the substance abuse (which happens in strength training, too) that adds aspects to training that are unhealthy.
I also think that strength training reaches a plateau fairly soon where endurance training gives bigger benefits than further strength training.
The "natural" footballer (soccer) physique is far from ideal: it's basically just thick legs and very rigid back. It's only in the last 20/30 years that footballers started training the whole body, mostly because "why not" - their physios are now well-educated professionals with degrees, they're already at the gym on most days, and it helps them look cool.
This said, they are definitely closer to "ideal" natural proportions than most bodybuilders. They are also more balanced than tennis/basketball/baseball players, who have to work quite hard in the gym to compensate for the extremely unbalanced efforts their sports require.
There is a lot to be said for the rugby physique; sadly the sport is insane on the grounds of personal safety.
I know in person someone playing in the Polish highest division, not exactly a beer league. Eventually the club got rid of him for disciplinary reasons - the physios didn't approve him training his upper body too muscular that makes you less 'elastic'. He obviously didn't agree with them but by looking at his career trajectory they were probably right.
They're wrong. The reason that every athlete should train every part of their body is because it raises overall testosterone and promotes blood flow throughout the entire body, which speeds development and healing of the muscle groups that are predominantly used in whatever sport... e.g. I'm a sprinter, so I train my upper body as well because it helps my legs grow and heal faster.
Many competitive sports have requirements to be unbalanced for weight reasons.
E.g. pro cyclists have to avoid any upper body activities like swimming since they'll put on upper body mass that hurts their performance; the opposite is pro climbers where training quads will lower the performance since they'll grow extra leg mass that arms will have to lift.
That’s true to a degree for cyclists but depends on which discipline and what their objectives are.
A time trialist or sprinter would be much less concerned about upper body weight than a pure climber.
Even when he was as shedding weight for the Tour, Wiggins was was still doing dead lifts (with a low weight) and other upper body exercises because having a strong core is very useful.
By bodybuilding, you probably mean steroid-fueled muscle building.
Most natural body-building will never reach that level. On the other way, there is plenty of good health reasons to train with weights, and build a good/solid muscle mass. It also improves a lot of other aspects in your life (social).
So, weight-training, bodybuilding - lite is great. Steroid ladden/extreme body building one is probably not healthy.
The issue is not building muscles, in almost any body building competition, what comes with it is lowering body fat to unhealthy levels.
Know well that something as simple as visible abdominal muscles already requires a body fat percentage that is lower than what is generally considered healthy.[0]
One's musculature should not be “defined” for optimal health, — that requires dropping below healthy fat levels.
Professional body builders go far beyond that, of course.
The article points out that for visible abdominals one needs to maintain less than 10%, typically 8%, and that doctors recommend between 15% and 20%
10% is at the outskirts of what is generally considered acceptable, it is not a disaster such as the 3% that some body builders go for, but gaining more is definitely better and to achieve 10% one must in general consciously malnutitrion and avoid eating food that the body can use to synthesize fat.
Just an anecdote, but I've had multiple dexa scans in the 8-12% range spanning across years of bulking and cutting and I've never had better than what I consider mediocre abs - probably much better than the average adult male in the U.S. but never magazine photo worthy or anything like that. Other people did comment on them at ~8%, though, so my own perspective may be negatively biased.
> to achieve 10% one must in general consciously malnutitrion and avoid eating food that the body can use to synthesize fat.
No, no! If you are eating foods that humans should eat and exercising about an hour a day, you will naturally fall below 10% no matter what else you do.
I never limit the amount of food I eat and in no sense am I "malnourished". I am 80 kilos at around 8% body fat and I still have a lot to spare before it would start to affect my athletic performance as a sprinter. Go take a look at the typical 100m sprinter physique and tell me that any of them are malnourished!
> No, no! If you are eating foods that humans should eat and exercising about an hour a day, you will naturally fall below 10% no matter what else you do.
Perhaps if you mean with that what human beings should eat without that exercise.
> I never limit the amount of food I eat and in no sense am I "malnourished". I am 80 kilos at around 8% body fat and I still have a lot to spare before it would start to affect my athletic performance as a sprinter. Go take a look at the typical 100m sprinter physique and tell me that any of them are malnourished!
Sprinters are very much malnourished to keep weight to a minimum.
You will notice that in other sports that do not rely on reducing weight such as shot put or powerlifting, the athletes tend to develop a very different physique.
> Sprinters are very much malnourished to keep weight to a minimum.
This is NOT how any professional sprinter trains. Due to the nature of the exercise and the massive caloric expenditure that happens during sprinting, the mindset is more about trying to fit in in as much food as possible (while keeping to reasonable macro-nutrient ratios) rather than attempting to "keep weight at a minimum".
Haven't you ever seen how practically every 100m sprinter looks? It is not a physique that could be described as minimal, at all! My PB for the 100m is ~10.4s, so not quite pro but very fast.
why would you link an article from "fatherly.com" as a reputable source
contest bodybuilders get lean and that has detrimental hormonal effects and tanks their metabolism / NEAT, but evidence on post-contest weight rebounds suggests these are acute effects and don't have long-term adverse health outcomes. if you want to read more, look for papers on "metabolic adaptation" by Helms, Trexler, or Schoenfeld
Nonsense, if your abs aren't visible as a man then you are carrying too much fat.
What's unhealthy about body bulding, beyond the direct effects of the roids, is that these guys are like 300+ lbs. That and becoming severely dehydrated from taking diuretics before competitions.
Then I'm sure you can produce a source that runs contrary to my own on that matter, because even searching with neutral phrases such as “Is having a sixpack healthy?” returns nothing but results to me with experts saying that it isn't, and that to achieve it one must go below the minimum recommended body fat percentage.
In countries that aren't undergoing an obesity epidemic it is completely normal for men to have visible abs. Any man who does aerobic and anaerobic exercise for an extended period of time (and doesn't eat garbage, like 90% of Americans) will develop a six pack without even trying.
You cannot possibly think that men like this are malnourished...
> In countries that aren't undergoing an obesity epidemic it is completely normal for men to have visible abs.
Umm, which countries are you talking about here? I've been to several countries and I really don't think I've been anywhere where it's "completely normal" for men to have visible abs (let's say for definition's sake, I don't think I've been to a country in which >10% of the adult male population has abs). Not that I could necessarily tell most of the time, most people have shirts on during the day.
I do agree with your point though - I don't think visible as are unhealthy.
Not only do I do think they are, but I couldn't help but notice your lack of source as I asked.
They are very much malnourished and their body fat percentage is lower than is optimal for good health and they most likely suffer from the associated complications of too little body fat.
I find it interesting that most of my friends/social set will (rightly) dismiss "high school health class" fearmongering over drugs, but when that drug is anabolic steroids suddenly every warning is true.
It seems reasonable to me that the same skepticism applied to claims about any drug's danger - claims which frankly derive from government sources interested primarily in social engineering - should also be applied to steroids.
My reasoning is the following, and as someone who likes to do weight lifting I would love to be proved wrong: if steroids are not necessarily bad and we surely know they work wonders how is it possible that, in a world obsessed with looks and moving so much money in all kind of (absurd) products, they have not been legally commercialized somehow.
They absolutely have been legally commercialized. In the United States (and presumably elsewhere) you can easily find a doctor who will legally prescribe you a host of steroids, growth hormones, and various other "anti-aging medications".
My understanding is that many of them don't do bloodwork to test existing hormone levels and many that do use very liberal interpretations of what standard levels in men should be at a given age, etc.
Think of the "pill mills" that lead to the opiod crisis where as long as you had the cash someone would write a prescription. Note that I'm not insinuating similar levels of risk or harm, merely pointing out the flexibility of medical ethics for some doctors in these areas.
Use your favorite search engine and search "anti-aging clinic". They're in many US cities, available online, and a popular medical tourism destination.
EDIT: I also suspect these kinds of medical "interventions" are prevalent in Hollywood and elsewhere. For example, Hugh Jackman in Wolverine. This guy was born in 1968, which puts him at ~44 years old during filming. Look at his physique as a 44 year old man and tell me that was just from broccoli and chicken (especially considering his physique in roles leading up to Wolverine).
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that the chances that so many of these mid to late 40s Hollywood actors have a physique that would be excellent on a 20-25 year old isn't likely due to just freak genetics, diet, and hard work at the gym. Especially when the budgets of these films can easily exceed $100 million.
> medical "interventions" are prevalent in Hollywood and elsewhere. For example, Hugh Jackman
Another factor is that there is relentless competition from a huge number of people trying to become a famous star: severe filtering that will select for intensely driven people (amongst other attributes that would drive someone towards interventions).
Same as why vodka is legal but mdma isn't: deeply entrenched interests, on both sides. Listen, kids: All Steroids Are Bad, and anybody who disagrees is a Bad Person, and probably a criminal.
But that is exactly my point: we have legalized lot of substances bad for health and yet we cannot buy steroids freely. Steroids have at least an upside compared to vodka.
We could ask this question about almost every substance which has been declared illegal.
Indeed, we should.
I don't use androgenic steroids, but I'm right on the cliff where natural levels start falling off, and once I'm over it, I will give it some serious consideration.
Just go to an "anti-aging" clinic and get testosterone replacement therapy (TRT). For $1000/month it's not hard to find a doctor who will find your test is low (below 95th percentile of a 25 year old man).
Vitamin D is technically a steroid, not a vitamin. You can also do nutritional support for hormone-producing organs in the body. Off the top of my head/anecdotally: Peanuts have proven to be good pituitary support (though they are pro-inflammatory and I have to limit them for that reason); good quality salt is important to the adrenals and adrenal support is important to thyroid health.
I probably know more than that and haven't paid that much attention to hormones per se, so I imagine if this interests you, you could figure out a whole lot more from readily available information on the internet.
> is there any natural advantage of bodybuilding for both men and women?
I'm especially curious about the long-term effects of training muscles for hypertrophy rather than functional endpoints (strength, power, endurance). It's always stuck out to me that workout guides just treat this as normal — "everyone" wants big muscles, so we should all do painful eccentric reps to stress them out and build up lots of not-so-useful tissue? It's not obvious this is directly comparable to normal exercise.
Culturally it bothers me — fitness should be for everyone, but being a gym rat under whatever name (Crossfitter, etc) has become an identity that you either cling to or retreat from, to the detriment of both camps.
For naturals, there is significant overlap in the training style that produces maximum strength gains and maximum size gains. Larger muscles are stronger muscles. Studies have shown very similar size gains between groups performing high weight sets and more moderate "hypertrophy" style sets, though training with higher weight maximizes strength gains. One thing not revealed in short term studies, but which I have observed[1], is that training for strength early on eventually produces better gains in size, since when you do shift to "higher rep" training, you will be able to use more weight -> bigger muscles. Regardless, I don't think it's all that important to stress over these details, and progressively overloading (increasing weight/reps) the compound movements (squats/deadlifts/bench press/overhead press) over time is far more important than rep schemes and intensity.
For steroid users, the equation changes some, as they benefit more from very high volume, high rep training that pumps the muscles full of blood. Natural lifters cannot recover quickly enough from this sort of training.
[1]standard disclaimer about taking this with a grain of salt as I'm just some internet stranger, but I do have > 10 years experience with this
regarding [1], you would have a hard time getting agreement from big names in evidence-based lifting circles. e.g. I'm fairly certain Israetel, Nuckols, Helms, and others have all disagreed, and I am less certain but believe others (James hoffman, James Krieger) have too
I don't think so. My understanding is that being overweight always makes some health problems more likely, especially long-term. Even if it's muscle. And that's not even considering the effects of taking excessive growth hormones / steroids etc common to body building.
Being fit is something else altogether, and produces better health outcomes AIUI.
The mental and physical requirements coupled with seeing the weekly changes in the mirror were damn near the only thing that kept me sane over a busy period of work, combined with lockdown, combined with my wife being away for over three months due to work/family illness and unable to see each other due to travel restrictions.
I also went from an unhealthy BMI, high but not yet dangerously so cholesterol levels to nearly stage lean (have since raised my weight to a saner level) and having excellent blood work all round to the point of my doctor being completely astonished. (Note, I did not take any androgenic substances, so I wasn’t expecting much other than positive changes in my blood work)
bodybuilding is far less injurious than other strength sports and those are far less injurious than any team sports.
you are almost certain to sustain significant acute injuries doing gymnastics, football, basketball, etc over a long training career. the same cannot be said for bodybuilding - you might develop overuse injuries or wear and tear, but still less frequently than in other sports.
it's really, really, really hard to tear an acl, break a collarbone, or dislocate a shoulder bodybuilding. yet I know someone who did all 3 in one season of rugby!
I think it really depends. I mean the extremes of bodybuilding also involve rigid diets (maximizing calories for maintenance and bulking out, minimizing them + dehydration around competition, down to dangerous levels of fat (people have fainted at competitions), or lifting to the point of tearing muscles, prolapsing, etc. A competition weightlifter can only go for a record attempt once, maybe twice a year - their nerves are fried after that.
And there's enough dumb people around that try and lift too much without being spotted.
no, it really doesn't depend. there is well-established research on the relative safety of bodybuilding [1]; you have to provide evidence that somehow the diets involved in contest prep increase the injury rate of bodybuilding by a factor of 10 (to be comparable to other strength sports), or >100x for other dynamic sports. such an increase would mean diet-related injuries account for 90/99% of bodybuilding injuries; anyone involved in the sport can tell you that's not even close to true.
you would be on the mark if you mentioned the anabolic agents in contest prep, especially fat-burners/diuretics/insulin. those absolutely shorten the lifespan of bodybuilders drastically, but natural bodybuilding is a perfectly healthy and popular alternative.
> A competition weightlifter can only go for a record attempt once, maybe twice a year - their nerves are fried after that.
it's unclear whether you mean a true olympic weightlifter or a powerlifter - neither is true. the bulgarian weightlifting team under Abadjiev famously competed dozens of times per year while training just as hard throughout the year. the IWF olympic qualification (before covid changed the timeline) required athletes to compete in 6 events from november 2018 to april 2020 - that's more than twice a year alone. a top american weightlifter might compete at pan ams, IWF worlds, and USAW nationals alone each year. in powerlifting, an elite american lifter at minimum has to do USAPL nationals and IPF worlds, but might also do the arnold or local meets.
Depends what you mean. Genetics plays a big role in competitive bodybuilding, but it plays a big role in any sport. Some people are genetically predisposed to put muscle on easier, some people genetically can be leaner, all of these things can help. At the upper levels of the sport you will see people that work very hard, have good genetics, and do lots of steroids.
Assuming you mean natural body building (without hormones etc): More muscles means better circulation, so you are less likely to feel cold. More muscles also increase the basal metabolic rate so you are less likely to get overweight.
I think many women enjoy feeling small, petite next to a swole guy. Or just a big guy. I'm extremely tall and random girls and coworkers have commented how small they feel next to me, but always with a smile.
Is that actually so? Looking at US homicide statistics, over 75% of cases involve firearms. Would a bodybuilder have better chances of surviving a bullet wound?
What approaches do you have in mind? War? Government enforced famine? Selling me cheap cigarettes? Something else? And how much will bodybuilding help me avoid getting killed by these?
Fast people are harder to kill. Many short and fast people are fearsome opponents in karate kumite for example. Strong and big people are often also slow... but it depends on the motivation. Everybody can be killed in a lot of ways, sadly.
You need to compare the rates of success, not the absolute numbers. I bet there are more homicide attempts on men than there are homicide attempts on women.
Leaving all the ridiculous gender politics aside, body building is very comparable to those so-called “pro-ana” models in how unhealthy it is, and I believe it should be treated the same, which is, of course: allow a man to do what he wants.
However, it strikes me as a particular dual standard that some jurisdictions have tackled models whose body fat percentage is dangerously low, but who do not have steroid-built, unhealthily large muscles with it that their body fat can't healthily support, but seem to be completely fine with adding said unhealthy muscles, to the former.
It comes as no surprise to me that such jurisdictions elect to primarily use the very unreliable and pseudoscientific body mass index in lieu of the more reliable body fat percentage as an indicator of “underweight”, for had they elected to use the latter: it would accurately show that most body builders are unhealthy low in fat, and would be struck down under the same rules.
But of course, that is not what they desire, for that falls under what they consider to be their conventional ideal of beauty, and “health concerns" have always been one of the first thing the authoritarian reaches for, to enforce his own will and social control over others.
We ban drugs, for they are unhealthy! but alcohol? well I don't know about that... they are socially acceptable, after all.
> some jurisdictions have tackled models whose body fat percentage is dangerously low [...]
What are you talking about here?
> unhealthily large muscles
Taking steroids and other activities related to bodybuilding and sports more generally can sure take their toll, but I'm pretty sure nobody has problems because of overly large muscles.
> most body builders are unhealthy low in fat
Source?
> But of course, that is not what they desire, for that falls under what they consider to be their conventional ideal of beauty [...]
Aren't you contradicting your point now? Or maybe I misunderstood what your point is?
> Taking steroids and other activities related to bodybuilding and sports more generally can sure take their toll, but I'm pretty sure nobody has problems because of overly large muscles.
They do, their low body fat can't support them and they suffer from a myriad of complications.
Even if they had the body fat to support them, such as in many professional athletes, the strain to achieve them is not particularly healthy.
As the article says, professional body builders often go in the 3-to-5% body fat range, which is very unhealthy.
> Aren't you contradicting your point now? Or maybe I misunderstood what your point is?
Not at all; — I'm saying that “health” is but a convenient excuse to ban what the authoritarian considers not socially desirable, in this case for an ideal of beauty, whereas he is fine with letting stand that which he considers beautiful, no matter how unhealthy it might be.
About the Euronews link, I disagree with your conclusion. The mentioned laws are just red tape (for an explanation see my reply to pacaro here). The hard limits on BMI seem to come from industry self-regulation.
The politicians allow this nonsensical, pseudoscientific self-regulation instead of demanding that they switch to b.f.p., because they know well that it would outlaw body builders, which they do not want, despite their being as unhealthy.
The industry came up with this method, of course, to allow bodybuilders to continue, and only having to cull the the hyperthin.
It's a nice unspoken understanding between them that enables both to place the blame on the other.
If the industry had found such a clever way to allow the hyperthin to still continue, one could be certain of that the politicians would step in to order a halt to it.
And thought woud suddenly be given if the industry's self-regulation found a way to permit the models they want to ban because they think them too ugly.
Indeed, not much thought was given: they found certain models to look ugly because they were hyperthin, so they instinctively searched for a rationalization to ban them and selling it as something other than social control, and “health” is very often the first excuse to be reached for then.
> I'm sure these same politicians have medical advisors, who advised them against using b.m.i. and also pointed out what I said here.
Body builders, especially female body builders were completely irrelevant to discussion about fashion models. They were not the ones who were ever shown in those magazines. In terms of body shape, they are not actually thin despite having low fat.
Female body builders are not contemporary beauty standard and never were.
And why do you suddenly bring gender politics into an issue that never had them?
Many magazines feature body builders, whatever their sex be, that have a body fat percentage that is very unhealthy and were it not for the muscles to move their mass up, the fat percentage alone would give them a rather low b.m.i. if they had average muscles.
I do not see how their sex is relevant for the politician's stated goal of promoting health.
If their desire would be to only promote female health, male health be damned, then they should have said so, which they obviously never did, as that would raise quite the eyebrows.
But their real desire was, as said, simply to ban models whom they find particularly ugly, and “health” is simply an excuse, as it often is. — the very same reason why arbitrarily alcohol is quite legal in many jurisdictions where other drugs are banned for “health concerns”.
So many unhealthy things are perfectly legal almost everywhere that I find any politician who claims to do it for the health dubious by default. — it is nothing more than a rationalization to justify his moral and fashion control.
In general I would also suspect a higher rate of injuries related to those exercise that maintain that large muscle mass, and potential risk factors in regard to diet.
The existence of a disorder means little more than that a psychiatrist has given it a name; it has nothing to do with the actual existence of the symptoms so named in the disorder.
No doubt symptoms for virtually any desire to have something with one's body exist. Personally, I am unnaturally obsessive with my haircut and even the smallest imperfections with it that only I can see annoy me to no end with no one else seeing the difference. — I am quite certain that if this were more common, some psychiatrist would give it a name, and thus it would “exist” as a disorder. Regardless of such nomenclature, the symptoms exist in at least one man, and probably many more.
> I'm pretty sure nobody has problems because of overly large muscles.
Well, you're wrong. Your heart has to work harder to pump blood whether you are 300 lbs of muscle or 300 lbs of fat, it doesn't matter. This is well-known, so maybe do a little research?
Indeed, weight. — they all use b.m.i. as an indicator, rather than the far more reliable b.f.p., because they are hampered by the fact that the latter, correctly, indicates that most body builders are very unhealthy, and the former, as one of it's many problems, fails to correctly indicate that, or even indicates that they are overweight, when they are severely underweight.
And correct science is a politician's greatest enemy, for it demonstrates that his ideals and morality are arbitrary, and that the explanations he proffers to substantiate his moral control are purely ad hoc.
The very reason they choose b.m.i. is because it was never about healthy, as they proffered, but about subjective æsthetics standards, so they needed a scale that indicated that, rather than health, all the while masking as one that was reflective of health.
That is, if you're a model, you just have to get a doctor to "certify you healthy", which I'm sure isn't at all difficult as they can pick any doctor. Note that the modelling agency will probably "help" with this, as it's very much in their interest to do so. And note the quote from BBC: "But the final version, backed by MPs 2015, allows doctors to decide whether a model is too thin by taking into account their weight, age, and body shape." (so the decision is arbitrary).
On a related topic, I recently watched an excellent documentary on disordered eating among rock climbers, especially professional climbers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thtDQJGrO5s
The encyclopedia of “modern” bodybuilding by Arnold (it’s old now) was written with the help of somebody who writes (elsewhere) about female bodybuilders frequently. It’s exceptional writing, with long chapters about aesthetics and the meaning and goals of the practice. Other chapters on psychology and how to talk to your friends about your important goals that they might not understand. I haven’t followed what happened in the decades since it was published but I hope there are some positive stories
> What was left was mostly tilapia and cod, kale, low-sodium broth, and colorless, calorie-free shirataki noodles. Sasha’s rules around food and training, handed down to him from other coaches as bodybuilding doctrine, were inscrutable to me. I found myself living in a world where green bell peppers were OK and red peppers were not
I just want to say that while this is representative of what some bodybuilders do. It's also completely wrong and not representative of how you can diet for a competition.
Modern bodybuilding is not "witch" magic. You count calories, macros, and your exercise output and manipulate those to lose weight. Anyone who is saying one bell pepper type is okay but another isn't doesn't know what they are doing, and it's not fair to judge bodybuilding based on that.
Yes, the article mentions that later, and she switches to a more sensible regimen:
> My own research had proved that many of his ideas, though common in bodybuilding, were scientifically baseless. ... your daily intake of macronutrients—protein, fat, and carbohydrates—falls within the prescribed ranges, you can eat whatever you want.
> it's not fair to judge bodybuilding based on that
It's bunk, but if it represents a large portion of the population then I'd say it is fair to judge bodybuilding based on that; community and culture are part of the sport.
(I don't know any bodybuilders even from my gym rat days so I don't make any claims as to what the common dieting methods actually are; the ones I knew that did strength sports were pretty much focused on calories and protein and let the rest fall where it may)
> It's bunk, but if it represents a large portion of the population then I'd say it is fair to judge bodybuilding based on that;
Do you usually judge groups based on the worst actors in them?
Part of the problem is that at the high levels of bodybuilding everyone is on steroids and other drugs, thyroid, clenbuterol, diuretics, etc and there aren't any studies to tell people how those should be taken in order to make yourself really lean-- those are the spaces that pseudoscience jumps into the most.
Not the worst actors, but I'd say typical is fair game. And there's a whole lot of nuance there of course, both in terms of what's the scope of "typical" and what you do with that info.
As I said I don't have much exposure to high-level bodybuilders so I can't speak to that specifically. But if you take a look at fittit there's a *lot* of broscience repeated by the majority of posters, and to the extent that the bullshit increases the friction that beginners experience and provide little to no benefit (either in relation to the effort expended, or worse yet in absolute terms), it is detrimental to the casual majority.
I realize we may be talking at cross purposes since I can't speak to personal experience with bodybuilders, just the popular perceptions of their habits.
> Anyone who is saying one bell pepper type is okay...
This assumes that Sasha's only concern with food consumption is nutrition alone, where other aspects of discipline and adherence are likely to also be important.
Asking for red, green and blue but specifically no brown M&Ms doesn't mean that you think brown M&Ms are fundamentally different in any way: there was another reason why Van Halen did that.
It was Van Halen’s unit test for the gig. If there were brown M&Ms he knew not to climb on the equipment as obviously the venue didn’t read his instructions
I don’t think this was one of those cases. The Italians I know have firmly held beliefs about what foods should be eaten when and why that don’t seem at all grounded in science. If the bodybuilding subculture has developed beliefs about food, they’re likely just as firmly held.
The bell peppers in particular sound like believable pseudoscience. nightshades are poisonous and if one is looking to avoid bloating, perhaps it’s a legit concern.
For sure, I have experienced the same thing - and yet, the Italian diet is revered globally and considered to contribute to longevity.
Something about their approach appears to be working.
It strikes me that creating pseudo-science rules might remind you and help you to also follow the really useful rules, through dedicated practice and having multiple fall-backs.
For example, the rule "Eat green bell peppers not red bell peppers" reminds you to always be consciously aware that bell peppers and then vegetables in general are an extremely important part of your nutrition. If you don't have superstitions about bell peppers, maybe you just aren't thinking about them often enough.
That's not why it's done though. It will often be accompanied by pseudoscience justification that doesn't hold up to rationality or accepted science.
Even if that wasn't the case though, what do you expect to be gained by enforcing that discipline?
You have a finite amount of variables you can control, and wasting time thinking about details that don't matter is a massive drain. When training for a show, you should be focussing your effort on the things that make the biggest difference: overall food intake, macros, exercise, resistance training, meal timing, micros, etc.
Forget that and forget runway modeling. They told a friend (former with benefits now actual friend) of mine, who is demonstrably a cute and hot girl she "could never be a runway model because her butt is too big." while her French friend has an imperceptibly-slightly smaller behind is acceptable. TBH, she has a perfect, bitchin bottom. What the actual? That industry's standards are beyond insane.
Let's suspend societal expectations, dispel myths, and look at different types of exercise.
Diet and exercise alone will never make any woman "look like a man." Only steroids or seriously-unlucky endocrine dysfunctions can do this. Not working out at all makes a woman subjectively appear less healthy, less defined, and less attractive, IMHO.
The stereotypical "flat-bottomed, upper-income, undefined physique" etiology is the result of excessive "more is better" cardio, yoga, and so forth is offset by a lack of significant and efficacious weightlifting recruiting type IIB muscle fibers, and converting IIB into IIA. All that running on the treadmill or elliptical doesn't lead to strength or muscle mass, it leads to endurance and joint degradation. IIA is tiny in volume compared to IIB. "More is better" is worse.
Short duration, high-intensity weightlifting until failure is the most efficacious activity to classify as exercise, with a limited amount of cardio to maintain practical endurance without converting too much muscle fiber. This applies to both adult men and women. If anyone wants to be healthiest with least cost, time, and net effort, this sort of approach is preferable. And tell the gymrats: Pain and time don't win merit badges, results do. Hopefully, they'll respond: "do you even lift, bro?" :]
That's my (100-80)/10 cents.
PS: Body by Science by Little & McGuff (2009) obliterates many gym tradition superstitions, factoids, and popular misconceptions with evidence, experience, and studies.
There's a line somewhere where the sport does become wrong IMO. For a different example, dog shows have selected for objectively unhealthy genes (see sloped back & hip dysplasia).
It would be neat to see some sort of blend of function and form scoring. Look ripped, but put those muscles to work as well. Bodybuilding & weightlifting meets gymnastics. The need to perform athletically puts on some guardrails- less starving & dehydrating yourself, for example.
BB is more an art than a sport, Steve Cook articulates this idea very well and is partly why he has moved more toward CrossFit and other activities.
BB is primarily a competition with yourself for months and months with an expression of that work at the end that you hope is arbitrarily considered better than everyone else’s on stage by the judges (some of who may be trainers of other competitors on stage so good luck overcoming that)
There is another response to this comment that is marked as dead within one minute of posting, and I'm trying to understand why. Here is the entire comment:
> BB is more an art than a sport
Well, the Mr. Olympias were some of the strongest men in history.
Ronnie Coleman was doing leg press reps in the 2,300 pound range, and he admitted after retirement wishing that he had gone heavier. His dumbbell presses over 200 pounds at 10+ reps per set is incredible. He had safety spotters in case the equipment broke bolts, not because he failed lifts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSMaI63H9hc
The only person on the Terminator movies sets who could lift the gatling gun was Arnold.
How does a comment like this get killed within a minute? It's not the only such example I've seen today. The comment isn't particularly brilliant, but it is somewhat relevant and not at all nasty.
Is someone with multiple accounts running a kill-the-comment script, or is there an automated HN rule that could be doing this? Or is it just that five random viewers had a beef with it within a minute and I'm overthinking it?
While some bodybuilders are incredibly strong, they train differently than strongmen do in a lot of ways. The most obvious thing is that bodybuilders do more reps (further away from a 1 rep max) and do more exercises for smaller bodyparts like biceps/triceps/shoulders/calves/etc.
Sure, there are a few (very few) bodybuilders that can deadlift 700lbs (with straps, belts, and whatever else) but strongmen regularly deadlift much much more than that. I think the record is close to 1100 lbs.
To mark a comment as dead, only one user needs to flag it, I believe.
All it takes is one user to disagree enough. I've had upvoted comments flagged because there was one user who disagreed enough with it and it was about controversial issues.
[dead] usually means the user themselves deleted it, I think. I flag spam comments routinely and it definitely takes more than one user flag to get a comment to the [flagged] state where text is hidden.
one look at the users comment history tells you they are probably perma-banned and occasionally get vouched by users - which you could have done instead of reposting the comment.
Well, the Mr. Olympias were some of the strongest men in history.
Ronnie Coleman was doing leg press reps in the 2,300 pound range, and he admitted after retirement wishing that he had gone heavier. His dumbbell presses over 200 pounds at 10+ reps per set is incredible. He had safety spotters in case the equipment broke bolts, not because he failed lifts.
The strength of a body builder as a result of their training doesn’t disprove my point, that is just another side effect of their training - they become very strong. However world recording holding strength levels are not required to win body building competitions - the look of your figure as subjectively judged by other people is what wins BB comps.
If Coleman or Arny competed in powerlifting then they would do very well, but then they would be participating in a different domain, one that is undoubtedly a sport.
What does being strong have to do with it? Bodybuilders are judged closer to figure skaters are than powerlifters. Whether you think that makes it an 'art' or not is subjective, but the sport itself is very subjective. It's judged, there is no weight lifting on stage. It doesn't matter at all how much you can lift at the show.
The M134 weighs 85lbs without ammunition, and the actor has to hold it out in front of them in an awkward position. 85lbs isn't a lot to lift or carry close to your chest, but it's a lot to hold out in front of you. Add in the need to carry/consume a prodigious amount of ammunition plus the recoil generated by the blanks, and it's a lot to deal with.
It's fairly obvious the movie scene has the M134 in a sling, so that he's not holding the whole thing up with his hands. When he starts walking, he only has one hand on it, near the rear of the gun.
Not disputing it's heavy and awkward. It's just not, to me, something you would cite as "only a really strong person could do it". You can find videos of pretty normal looking people firing it while it's held by a sling and their hands.
The additional criteria is that he has to act a certain way and look a certain way while carrying it, on film camera. He needs the strength for it not to get in the way of the performance at all.
> 85lbs isn't a lot to lift or carry close to your chest, but it's a lot to hold out in front of you.
The way the anecdote is usually told is that Schwarzenegger was the only guy on set who could carry it at all, not that he was the only guy who could hold it out in front of him. Is that an exaggeration?
I'm confused as to who your comment is meant to address - the author describes how she pursued that consensus aesthetic, under guidance from various trainers that adhere to it. Her placement in competition isn't the point or the essay - the focus is on introspection about the thoughts that lead her to bodybuilding, the history of the sport that lead to the particular "consensus aesthetic" that she crossed paths with, and reflections on the toll that adherence takes on body and mind.
I found the tone remained neutral to admiring despite laying bare its rather gruesome flaws and crass backers, so if it reads as an indictment, I think it says more about the realities of the sport than the author's priorities.
Well, in case of bodybuilding you need very hefty dose of hormones to even start looking like low level competitors. The bodybuilding physique isn't good for any particular activity. It's neither useful nor healthy. It's all organized so you need to grow yourself like cattle (bodybuilders even take steroids designed for making cattle killed for meat muscular). This is already terrible enough for men but for women it's way worse as their bodies are even less equipped to cope with huge artificial levels of male sex hormones and their derivatives.
I think it is a terrible sport. It's not only terrible for the competitors but also for the culture as a whole as normalizing steroid physique hurts normal people. It's not only bodybuilding by the way. Fitness magazines and Hollywood actors take most of the blame to be sure.
>I think it is a terrible sport. It's not only terrible for the competitors but also for the culture as a whole as normalizing steroid physique hurts normal people. It's not only bodybuilding by the way. Fitness magazines and Hollywood actors take most of the blame to be sure.
The world is growing fatter by the year so it does not seem as though people are too stressed about those conceptions of the body being thrown around. If anything, the normalization of obesity is a far more pressing threat. Just looking at recent stats is awe-inducing, and not in a good way.[0]
While the obesity epidemic is certainly the larger societal problem, we can try and develop a better representation of what's actually healthy. There's a happy medium between single digit body fat percentage (what most bodybuilders are aiming for in competition, and the image people have of them not recognizing it's their competition form not their year-round form) and 25% body fat (lower limit of obese for men, apparently).
It's not even just a larger societal problem, but something on altogether different scales of magnitude (pun not intended). People suffering from health issues due to bodybuilding are a rounding error of a rounding error in comparison. Getting anywhere close to that is an arduous task that will put off all but the most dedicated, so the problem solves itself.
I'm all for a more informed population on health matters, but I don't see the point of going after the practitioners of a specific hobby on account of it potentially hurting other people's feelings, as implied in the post I was originally replying to. Reminds me a bit of the mindset criticized in Harrison Bergeron.
I think the logic usually goes that people get fat because they know they'll never look like what they see in the media. And so the argument is that if we bring those depictions more towards the attainable, then more people will feel like they can get there and not just give up altogether.
>The world is growing fatter by the year so it does not seem as though people are too stressed about those conceptions of the body being thrown around.
You are assuming that seeing an impressive physique would inspire people to attain it. That doesn't follow. Stress, depression, and low-self esteem can encourage overeating or a sedentary lifestyle. If someone believes they cannot compete with others, they may give up entirely.
I wonder if the issue is cultural. We've, mostly, come to understand the impact of the common media representation of (often) hyper thin "perfect" women on women and girls in general, which is a lot of the reason for pushback into various (often ad) campaigns to present more typical female forms. But, like many things, there's a lag in the appreciation that men can experience the same thing and have similar reactions. Perhaps because it occurs in smaller numbers (not sure), or just a different attitude towards how men should be. Admitting that men have similar body image issues and due to similar causes as women is harder for people to consider, let alone accept.
Just look at the evolution of male movie stars. A handsome face and slim figure used to be all that was required (Clark Gable, Paul Newman, Peter O'Toole). Today the men have to be jacked (Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, George Clooney).
You can bet that to be a male star in Hollywood requires a personal trainer and a lot of work.
I had a similar image (though different individuals) in mind when I wrote my post. Older leading men were also in good shape, notable in a number of roles when they appeared shirtless or in short sleeve shirts, but rarely did they get to the extreme leanness (and muscularity) that modern (2010s in particular) leading men seem to be aiming for.
I do not think most people are aware of prolific steroid usage is... It mostly boils down to people pumping themselves full of steroids up until a week or so before the competition so they test clean. With almost zero body fat, most drugs are metabolized and removed from the body really quickly.
It was pretty depressing to realize that body-building is totally gamed and drug based. Not because I was ever into it, I think it's corny, it's just a real disservice to the ideal of healthy living.
Movie actors, fitness/underwear models, basically everyone on the cover of Men's Health or on a movie poster. Hell, very significant % of not so impressingly looking guys in your local gym are on steroids. Just Google for stats on steroid usage, estimate how many people go to a gym and think what it means. The mystery of Hollywood diet and training to lose 10kg of fat and to put 5kg of muscle in 60 days starts to make sense as well.
In many areas of the world it's completely risk-free as well as you won't get busted for possession of Testosterone or even stuff like Trenbolone.
Also age - it's actually possible to lose 10kg of fat and gain 5kg of muscle in 60 days without any testosterone or whatever boosters when you're 22. I have a very, very hard time believing you can do this at age 48-50, like Josh Brolin did to play Thanos.
When I was 20 and started lifting regularly, I put on a lot of muscle very fast. But I plateaued in about 6 months and was never able to go past that.
I didn't do any steriods, because a friend of mine went from "pillsbury doughboy" (his assessment) to very jacked in about 9 months. He used steroids, and was shocked to find he'd lost a couple inches in height. The doc told him it was the steroids, and even worse, he'd still lose the usual height when he aged (we all shrink as we age).
He was pretty bummed about it, but still became very popular with the ladies and was happy about that.
>He used steroids, and was shocked to find he'd lost a couple inches in height. The doc told him it was the steroids, and even worse, he'd still lose the usual height when he aged (we all shrink as we age).
The things people believe constantly amaze me. Steroids don't make people shrink.
I did google that and found nothing that said that steroids would cause a healthy 20 something man to lose a couple inches in height. Your quote is quite wishy washy and not really supporting evidence to your claim.
Nevertheless, steroids are still implicated in height loss.
He took a lot of steroids (I don't know which ones), his doctor told him that was the cause, and nothing else accounted for it. Anyone considering steroids should consult with a physician first. Me, I wasn't willing to take the risk.
Those are corticosteroids not anabolic steroids. If you search anabolic steroids osteoprosis you will see that there is some evidence they should be prescribed to help reverse osteoperosis.
OP already stated they don't know what kind of steroids were used.
It's an anecdote and third-hand information, at best. Maybe OP misremembered something. Maybe the doctor was wrong or simply trying to convince the guy to stop using steroids. Maybe the guy lied about what really happened to protect their medical privacy.
None of us is in any position to determine what really happened. Facts as I understand them:
OP chose to not use steroids themselves because of scary story from person they knew.
Everything else is damn near wild conjecture as to "what really happened."
I wonder whether this height-reducing effect relates to the 'manlet' jokes one sees in various places online. There does seem to be a bit of an overlap in the demographics where one would see the two.
Trenbolone is Schedule III. It's illegal to possess unless you have a prescription, you can't legally order some without a vet prescribing it for your cow.
The actual drug trenbolone is scheduled, but a number of trenbolone preparations are (or at least were) exempted from the CSA because of their agricultural importance[1]. As I said, it instantly becomes a CSA violation the second a nonveterinary use occurs, but simple possession of unaltered Finaplix-H, for example, is or at least was just fine.
Modern actors aren't as willing to sacrifice their health for muscle as their historical counterparts, especially because the lean look is preferred over the muscle-bound appearance of yesteryear. Thus, (with rare exceptions, like Christian Bale between The Machinist and Batman Begins), what you see on screen today is hard-earned through hours a day in the gym, a very regimented diet, and hydration timing.
Generally, to get to the level of single-digits body fat you see on screen, you're looking at 3-6 months of clean eating (or more, depending on the actor's physique when they land the role), meaning among other things, no alcohol, no sweets, and lots of eggs or chicken meals. Someone being paid a few million dollars can afford to pay a nutritionist to custom-design a diet to meet specific appearance goals, a and they have a huge incentive to stick with that diet. For example, Chris Pratt had to give up beer, pizza, and all dietary pleasures for six months to go from being the fat guy on Parks and Rec to the main hero of Guardians of the Galaxy.
On top of the diet, the actor is spending hours on near-daily exercise for several months. Chris Hemsworth eschews cardio for pure muscle-building, but Paul Rudd and Kumail Nujani each spent a year preparing for their Marvel roles, using a blend of cardio and full-body workouts (as, in contrast to Thor, Ant Man and Kingo have lean physiques but neither actor was particularly athletic when cast), while Pratt spent nearly 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, for over 6 months on cardio activities to cut weight for the first Guardians movie (as he already had the muscle for the character underneath his excess bulk and just needed to reveal them).
But the real trick to the "cut" look on screen is dehydration; actors don't drink for several hours before shirtless scenes, which makes them appear thinner and more defined. (In several interviews, Kumail Nujani talks about nearly passing out after several filming several shirtless scenes for The Eternals, which required him to limit water consumption for nearly 12 hours before shooting.) This is something you can actually try yourself at home: take a before pic, spend a few hours on a long cardio activity like running or biking, and then take an after pic before you rehydrate. You will appear thinner and your muscles (if they were visible beforehand) will appear more well-defined, even though they aren't any bigger.
>while Pratt spent nearly 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, for over 6 months on cardio activities to cut weight for the first Guardians movie (as he already had the muscle for the character underneath his excess bulk and just needed to reveal them).
The problem is that they tell these stories, and people believe it. If he had really done six hours of cardio per day he'd likely disappear and have no muscle.
Diet and exercise is, make no mistake, a huge part of it - all of that has to be on point. The reality very much involves manipulating hormones, and that means steroids, growth hormone, etc.
If he had really done six hours of cardio per day he'd likely disappear and have no muscle.
I suppose if you spend all of your day in front of a computer, you'll have difficulty understanding what the human body is capable of on its own with enough time and discipline and you'll just assume everyone is taking shortcuts. Najani isn't some special case; he's a prototypical example of "easy gains" that pretty much any guy can get with a year of dedicated training and diet if you're focused on muscular appearance rather than muscular performance. (For those who understand the lingo, this means he focused heavily on large fast-twitch muscles which grow quickly and easily, at the expense of the slow-twitch and medium twitch muscles that would relevant for most athletic performance.)
Members of the military routinely do 12+ hours a day of physical exercise, including hours of cardio, and yet none of them have problems disappearing (and only about 2.5% of military personnel use steroids). Triathletes, similarly, can spend 6 hours a day or more on exercise.
Cardio doesn't consume muscle unless you combine it with starvation. Muscles are the last-ditch choice of fuel. On a proper diet, cardio burns glycogen and fat. And if you're as fast as Pratt was when he started his that exercise regime, you've got plenty of fuel for hours of daily exercise, no steroids or hormones required (except for the ones your body generates itself in response to exercise and diet).
>I suppose if you spend all of your day in front of a computer, you'll have difficulty understanding what the human body is capable of on its own with enough time and discipline and you'll just assume everyone is taking shortcuts.
You're assuming an awful lot. I am sure there are more than a handful of people here who know when there is reason to be suspicious of someone's gains.
>Members of the military routinely do 12+ hours a day of physical exercise, including hours of cardio, and yet none of them have problems disappearing (and only about 2.5% of military personnel use steroids). Triathletes, similarly, can spend 6 hours a day or more on exercise.
Members of the military get very fit. But the body transformations we're seeing in Hollywood are emphasizing physique. Practical fitness is less of a consideration. And many bodybuilders do very little real cardio. Even when getting lean for competition, some do little more than fast walking.
Triathletes competing in the Ironman will obviously do more than 6+ hours on event day. I don't personally know of any who train like that. Three hours per day would be more like it, and not necessarily every day. There must be room for recovery.
I can speak more personally about road cycling. Six hour training blocks simply don't happen. Even six hour races are not that common even at the top pro levels.
>Cardio doesn't consume muscle unless you combine it with starvation. Muscles are the last-ditch choice of fuel. On a proper diet, cardio burns glycogen and fat.
Obviously the diet is key here. And my original point wasn't specific enough about this, but here goes: a lot of these Hollywood "transformations" aren't being honest about the diet versus the claimed exercise regimen. I don't want to take anything away from them in terms of their accomplishments - it is tough to nail all of this to achieve the body they're getting. And steroids help.
Not all cardio activities exclude strength components that would discourage/diminish muscle maintenance and development. Rowing and swimming, for example, or lower weight/higher rep strength routines that can maintain a faster tempo leading toward a hybrid strength/cardio workout.
I'm not sure I get your point. They are two men with very different base body types. But even looking at Phelps, especially at his prime in the Olympics, he has no shortage of muscles but has obviously trained with performance as a goal over presentation.
I'm confused because the parent poster is saying there are ways to maintain Brad Pitt's physique AND slim down by swimming, so I looked at a swimmer and didn't see this.
You're the only one that brought up Pitt. They spoke of Pratt. Similar letters, different name, different men.
My point was that cardio-centric fitness does not cause you to waste away from a muscle mass perspective, and I pointed out two exercises which are generally considered cardio but which result in people developing more noticeable muscles throughout their body or maintaining muscles already present. Contrasting with exercises like cycling and running, which focus on a limited set of muscles and, without additional exercises, do not promote a strong upper body or maintaining the muscles of the upper body if someone already starts off with well-developed arms, chest, and back.
Just look at athletes before widespread steroid use. They have spent way more time training than actors and haven't looked like that even in sports that require dehydration like boxing.
That's exactly the problem with lying about steroids. It took a while for Arnold and his successors to admit that they were on 1000mg of test per week (plus other stuff of course; normal production of even high test men is below 100mg). Now people believe that yeah that bodybuilders are obviously juiced but physiques of elite athletes like soccer players or Hollywood actors are natural because they are smaller.
Remember, significant % of guys in your local gym are on juice. There are no doping controls in Hollywood. Testosterone won't kill you, it may even make your life better if you use it wisely. Would you take it if million dollars and fame were on the line? We know they take it because we know quite well how juiced up physiques look.
Besides, if someone who is not a professional athlete did 6 hours of serious training per day their body would give up sooner rather than later unless the recovery was "enhanced".
I don't condemn steroid use btw. I oppose widespread lying about it by the users and the media.
>I don't condemn steroid use btw. I oppose widespread lying about it by the users and the media.
Yeah this is the thing that annoys me. Recently listening to Tim Ferriss interviewing an amazing female powerlifter. She deadlifts 4x body weight and other sorts of remarkable feats.
So the entire 2 hour show discussed her insane training regimen and diet and other forms of wellness. Hearing how much she squats in a week was daunting (“what am I doing with my own weak training then!?”)
Then I googled her (Stefi Cohen) and she has shoulders like cannonballs (female Dan Green) and ripped abs like a male bodybuilder. So very obviously steroids play an essential role in her training /recovery capacity.
I have no problem or quibble with that. Want to take that, fine. Probably the only way you’ll meet the records she has established.
What I dislike, though, is the interview where everything BUT drugs is discussed. Drugs enable the recovery that enables her insane workload. Especially when Ferriss purports to dig into “the secrets of high performers”. Well this is one vital secret.
I felt like this interview was deceptive in a way.
Like I said earlier, I’m not opposed to steroid use. I decided not to use them myself. But it would be refreshing to hear about the high performers among us who do. I’d like to know their thinking around the decision. I’m sure it valid and more refined than whatever I’d expect them to say.
It's annoying but there's one obvious reason they don't talk about it: Not only is it cheating in their sport, but it's even flat-out illegal. So of course they don't talk about it. Even though it's completely obvious from everything else they're talking about. Hell, just listen to her voice! The testosterone use is undeniable.
Just look at athletes before widespread steroid use. They have spent way more time training than actors and haven't looked like that even in sports that require dehydration like boxing.
Athletes train for performance, generally meaning muscle strength and endurance. Actors train for appearance, generally meaning muscle size. These different training goals generally require very different training programs.
Would you take it if million dollars and fame were on the line? We know they take it because we know quite well how juiced up physiques look.
Clearly, you don't, or you would see immediately that Rudd and Najani are not juiced. If they were or had been juicing, they would be significantly more muscular after a full year of training.
Besides, if someone who is not a professional athlete did 6 hours of serious training per day their body would give up sooner rather than later unless the recovery was "enhanced".
With proper exercise form, proper diet and recovery, the human body can sustain elevated levels of serious training indefinitely. Our armed forces do it all the time; only 2.5% of the military uses steroids.
It depends how much you take. TRT like doses don't make you balloon like bodybuilders. They are also much healthier. You can do 200-250/week for some time then back to 100-150/week and you will get huge benefits in both muscle mass and recovery but you will still look natural at least to untrained eye.
> Just look at athletes before widespread steroid use. They have spent way more time training than actors and haven't looked like that even in sports that require dehydration like boxing.
How widely are you thinking, and where are you getting your stats? People have been using steroids for decades now, so comparing pre-steroid athletes to modern day athletes is apples and oranges. Exercise science has come a long way over the decades, not to mention the cultural ideal body images have also changed.
The article touches kind of similar topic - these competitions frame themselves as healthy look and wellness and what not, but the look is not achieved by healthy methods.
>Modern actors aren't as willing to sacrifice their health for muscle as their historical counterparts, especially because the lean look is preferred over the muscle-bound appearance of yesteryear
While it's true that the Schwarzenegger look isn't in vogue, it's a bit of a myth to think that steroid usage would lead to that look in any short amount of time.
There are many steroid "stacks" (meaning some kind of testosterone ester with other steroids on top) that are designed for the lean, dry look that many movie stars have reached in recent years. I don't doubt that some stars work for it naturally, but I do believe many have used them in the short term.
I also don't think it's incredibly risky to your health in the short term, depending of course on the steroid.
I don't doubt that many actors have used steroids, especially in the past. I simply doubt that many stars use them today, given that they don't need to anymore. Stars are given months to get in shape before filming begins (in the case of the Marvel actors, approximately a year before filming), and that's plenty of time for someone reasonable in shape to develop a muscular physique without steroids.
Getting a visible 6-pack is a lot easier than people think it is. It doesn't require steroids, just discipline and time.
A friend of mine blew out his knee in a skiing accident. After his operation, he needed rehab, and went to the best he could find. It was where pro football players went for rehab. He said he couldn't believe how hard they worked out, so he asked one.
The guy laughed, and said something like: "If I don't get back in shape, I lose several million dollars and my career." They're highly motivated, to say the least.
Even elite professional endurance athletes don't do 36 hours of cardio training per week so I suspect that part is an exaggeration. The practical maximum is something around 25 hours. More than that is counter productive because it doesn't allow for enough recovery time. Over training actually makes people weaker.
Nujani is on gear, and what's more, he has an NDA which means he can't talk about it even if he wanted to.
I can't prove it, of course. But don't fool yourself, that's what's happening. Look at his jawline if you don't believe me, what diet is supposed to do that?
Nujani is on gear, and what's more, he has an NDA which means he can't talk about it even if he wanted to.
Najani gave a series of press interviews in 2019/2020 as part of the original press campaign for The Eternals, so I don't know why you think an NDA would apply here. (And for that matter, the SAG agreement with the studio would generally bar an NDA of that nature.) He had a year to get into shape, and a wife to make sure he kept to his diet, and that sort of transformation is definitely doable for a normal guy in a year. If anything, his transformation is pretty underwhelming given that he had a full year to get ready; if he had been doing steroids his arms and chest should be significantly larger.
Look at his jawline if you don't believe me, what diet is supposed to do that?
His jawline in that picture is natural; that's what it can look like when you have <9% body fat and you're extremely dehydrated and sucking in your cheeks when the picture is being taken.
>It mostly boils down to people pumping themselves full of steroids up until a week or so before the competition so they test clean.
The most common "base" of a steroid cycle is testosterone. If you stopped injecting testosterone a week before a competition, you would still show unusually high levels of testosterone in your blood (even if you were using a shorter ester). But as others have pointed out, they don't test for steroids in most BB competitions.
My personal suspicion is that pro BBers who use steroids but deny it do so to protect product endorsements they have.
There is also no ester test. You have to inject it daily (or more likely several times a day) but it's detectable for like 4-5 hours. This plus first two no-shows not counting as failed test makes it possible to juice in professional sports which do out of competition testing. Granted I don't think it's popular in BB circles because yeah no testing and injecting as much as frequently would be painful.
there would be no bodybuilding without steroids, at least not in the way it is commonly understood. The physical transformation the body undergoes by taking anabolic steroids at high doses is like night and day. Without steroids, all the physiques would appear flat or emaciated, without the 'wow' factor.
There are some competitions with testing. However, seeing the physiques of the competitors on the relevant websites, I'm convinced they do indeed use anabolics or at least something to cut fat:
I guess the testing may be somehow fraudulent, or maybe it's just a fundamentally misconcieved procedure: maybe it's not possible to test for use of all or certain substances.
There are tested orgs but most, if not all are not considered pro. They do lie detector tests. I don't know if any do actual blood tests. Steroids, especially test, are hard to check for.
Yep, this is known as a positional arms race. For other examples, see how everyone now goes to college: when 25% of applicants do it, it's a competitive advantage for them, so everyone else moves towards doing it. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/23501/1/DP-54.pdf
Everyone's trying to game the public, from clerics to tech workers to politicians. Bodybuilders seem like a relatively insignificant part of that permanent and massive sale.
I can understand the frustration, but I don't think it's a good idea to take a paternalistic approach in this case.
I think I understand your perspective. Alternatively, how about truly normalizing steroid physiques out in the open, instead of as an open secret. That might make clear the benefits, risks, and costs. The taboo & black market sourcing of synthetic hormones/PEDs hurt normal people in ways that would happen without bodybuilding, fitness magazines, & Hollywood.
I will say that strongman is interesting. It eliminates the cutting weight aspect of bodybuilding at least, though admittedly retains the steroid abuse aspect. I think it fundamentally answers an interesting question though in a way that bodybuilding maybe doesn't, namely: What is the absolute limit of strength that the human body is capable of?
While I understand that A LOT of strongman competitors are using steroids, it is entirely possible to compete without them. I know this because I've done it. Not at the international level but at a state level and placed very well. I've never taken a PED in my life. I was also a successful power lifter without PED's (550lbs bench press, 680lbs deadlift, and 725lbs squat at my peak). Those who don't compete don't understand what the human body can be capable of. Don't get me wrong I'm blessed with a lot of natural ability but everyone can be far stronger than they think without the aid of PED's.
I think mobility and staying injury free are probably more important at the level you were at than PEDs and an aspect that many people underestimate. My squat topped out at 300 simply because of old injuries and mobility limitations caused by them.
Clearly strongmen on the international stage are using though.
Staying healthy and injury free is obviously important, but that's important at every single level. Also to be clear, a drug free 725 lb squat is very impressive, that's not something most people would be able to achieve even if they managed to stay injury free.
It is, 725 is a lot of weight. In fact I believe it probably contributed to a severe back injury later in life. At the time I was a division 1 college heavyweight wrestler that was forced to drop out and NEEDED an athletic outlet badly. So I lived in the weight room and chased numbers. I wasn't the healthiest mentally at the time and channeled all of that into it. I actually wouldn't recommend that level of lifting unless you LOVE it.
No need to worry, I don't plan on aiming for that level by a long shot. I'd be happy to hit 4 plates on my squat and would probably go into maintenance mode at that point, although not sure if I'll ever even hit that. Sounds basic but the comment I replied to is exactly my issues, consistency and staying injury free - college years consistency was a problem with homework/sleep, post college years I seem to be injury prone in my non-lifting athletic activities (I'm convinced my knees hate me), and obviously this past year I've also lost a ton of progress with no access to weights. Hoping to come back with a vengeance once gyms reopen.
Those are great numbers. If you don't mind me asking, what did you weigh when doing those?
I agree with you, that people can get far stronger than they realize. I'm not genetically gifted, started quite skinny, and still got a 325 bp, 405 squat and 525 DL at 195 back when I was younger. All I ever took was creatine and whey. I'm fairly tall, which seemed to help the lever action with my DL, but always caused my squat to lag.
Thanks! I'm not really close to that anymore, wish I was but not enough to put in the work. I lived in the weight room back then. I was 19 and bounced between 265-285 depending on the time of year. I wrestled in college for a year before having to drop out and I was right at 265 during that. I'm 6'1" also so not a little guy and that helps a lot. More than anything though I lived in the weight room. I actually mostly hated squats, I had a little bit of a poor technique and I believe to this day that all the weight under load on my lower back with poor technique help contribute to a pretty severe back injury later in life. Moral of the story: we should all be more careful when chasing numbers.
I hated squats also, but loved DLs. I would DL all day every day if I could. No single exercise did more for me strength, body comp or confidence wise.
The heavy lifting is a gift and a curse. I tore my ACL wakeboarding while I was near my strongest and the surgeon said my base strength definitely helped in my recovery. Eventually I had to stop chasing PRs after hurting my back playing basketball (plus I got old hah). I hope your back healed up ok, b/c back pain is the most debilitating pain I've ever experienced.
Yeah, I was referring to the top-level international competitions, the ones where we find out the absolute limit of no-holds-barred strength. Your numbers are absolutely impressive of course, but wouldn't have qualified you for the highest levels of competition (as you know). Hafthor Bjornsson has deadlifted an unbelievable 1,104 pounds, and you know that he's not natural. But without all the juice, we wouldn't even know that breaking 500 kg is at all possible.
So Wrestling, Judo, BJJ, MMA, Boxing aren't real sports? Golf isn't a sport? Baseball, Basketball, Football, Volleyball, and Soccer are all won on points not seconds/meters. Power lifting? I can really go on all day. You might not care for the sport but that doesn't make it any less valid as a sport.
You're right of course. Unfortunately sports where the opinion of a judge figures strongly, like figure skating, suffer from inconsistent judging. You see this even in power lifting when a high squat gets white lighted. Power lifting could really benefit from some rule tweaks as well: being super flexible lets you crank the hell out of your back arch and minimize range of motion to comically small amounts at times [0].
The distinction between sports and games is less well-defined than you seem to believe it is. Some sports trend towards a more pure physical competition form (running, cycling), others towards a game-like competition (soccer, football). It's not all raw physical ability, which generally shows up in purer athletic competitions like track and field, but also skill (wrestling being a combination of athleticism and skill).
A sport is anything diverting or entertaining which humans do for leisure. Hence, being a good sport, sporting around, and declaring dastardly behaviour to be "not sporting".
The International Olympic Committee considers chess to be a sport. And they're correct to do so.
There is play, which does not have clearly defined rules. Then there are games, which is play but with rules, but need not be competitive. If it's competitive play with rules, then it's a sport.
Combat SPORTS (MMA, Wrestling, BJJ, Judo, Sambo etc...) aren't games. You don't play Wrestling for example. That is an exceedingly narrow definition of sport and one that I think does a large disservice to Athletes.
Yes and no. Different steroids have a ratio of anabolic(muscle building) to androgenic(masucline making) activity. i.e. Some will give you a big beard with little muscle, or a lot of muscle and a little beard. Most female body builders try to use steroids that have tilt more towards anabolic over androgenic activity. This usually isn't testosterone, this is usually drugs like oxandrolone, boldenone, nandrolone, or the more recent SARMs. Thus they can reduce the masculinization of their bodies while still putting on lots of muscle.
I’m sure they do at the very very extreme of competitions, but even a tiny bit of testosterone has largely unwanted side effects for women. (I am hedging with “largely” there, as there’s a whole gender identity thing to wade into.)
More common:
Oral anavar. Frequently used. Easily available in 5mg pills, actively marketed as “lady Var”. Anavar is generally regarded as a “mild” steroid, and was actively and usefully prescribed for a time. However, I’ve known women who have done anavar, and there’s such a range of variability in how they respond. I know a woman who was taking the 5mg dosage and fairly quickly had her voice start to drop. (Caveat there: who knows if the underground steroids are properly dosed.)
Oral turanibol. Queue the East German national anthem, this was the drug of choice for the Lovely Ladies Behind the Iron Curtain. Though nobody actually told them it was a steroid. “Vitamins”, per the Soviets, vitamins that literally put hair on your chest. Same caveats as anavar, and I never actually see turanibol marketed for women now.
Nandrolone phenylpropionate (NPP). The short-acting version of deca, the very well-known steroid. This compound was actively developed for women, and truly successfully used in clinical scenarios, especially in regards to cancer-related wasting, and osteoporosis, before we had better drugs. Very low androgenic properties, but quite the literal pain the ass, as you have to inject every day.
They do, albeit in much lower dosages to avoid or at least reduce the androgenic effects (hair/genital growth, voice deepening) of testosterone. Usually steroids with a better anabolic/androgenic profile are taken in addition or instead of testosterone.
Of course, there's also a small subset of female bodybuilders that lean into steroids to an extent to essentially chemically transition and I wonder if many of these might just be trans without noticing or disclosing it. As an additional caveat, in some places it can also be significantly easier to live as a woman on a lot of steroids than a trans man.
Testosterone is popular among women as well. Injections are in general safer than oral (because of liver health). Most women start with Anavar though as the risk of developing masculine features is reduced with it and the pill form makes it more palatable for many beginners.
Most fitness girls/celebs/models probably stop at Anavar as keeping feminine features is very important for them.
There is even a term for it in the fitness world. "Anavar girls". It's widely popular.
The Ms. Olympia bodybuilding competition just returned last year, after going away for the previous five years.
The large amounts of muscle the woman had to put on had basically fallen out of style with fans, and they e basically replaced it with “fitness” classes for the women competitors.
Slightly off topic but I find that green website frame to be incredibly distracting. Aren’t mobile phone screens small enough with adding extra padding around the inside? And the highlighting that unused space is a just bizarre to me.
"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful."
Many women choose to do Figure and Bikini competitions over physique.
Lots of women use the competitions as focal point to work on their bodies, fitness and get results.
I know several women that are generally out of shape frumpy looking, but spent time to get into shape for figure completions. They look amazing with model perfect bodies for competition. Then, right after competition, they celebrate by binge eating junk food for days and get fat. Then, the cycle starts over again.
The competition look is wringing out that last 10%. Women can maintain the 90% look indefinitely with basic maintenance diet and exercise. The basic Instagram model plan.
The extremes is what’s interesting, that they only go through the cycle if there’s competition. And, it’s fascinating to see in person how their bodies can balloon up so fast.
> Women can maintain the 90% look indefinitely with basic maintenance diet and exercise. The basic Instagram model plan.
Is this actually true? I was under the impression the Instagram model was only available to women of certain body types and compositions + photoshop and makeup.
TL;DR: It's more of a narrative than an article so it's not really feasible to abbreviate it. Best abbreviation, but it tells you nothing useful: Woman becomes interested in female bodybuilding, pursues it, and discusses the history and trends of female bodybuilding over the years intermingled with her own pursuit.
Why all the downvotes? lol. I started reading but noticed I won't have the time to finish this booklet of an article bjt was still interested in the gist of it ... don't get the HN community sometimes. Anyway thanks for the answers i got
That does not give much idea of what her bikiny look was like. I was curious about that too, it is very focus of article, but it is described be words only and hard to imagine.
What was most interesting to me was not the various controversies about body aesthetics or even health consequences. What stood out to me was the author's description in the early parts of the article of how much she seemed to crave the approval of strangers, especially men. It was thought provoking and I'm still processing it. I find this way of thinking completely foreign. I know intellectually that many people need external affirmation... but from total strangers whom you barely interact with? I can't help but feel a bit sad that so many go through their lives this way.