The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding
believermag.com
believermag.com
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.
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.
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".
[0] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0104782/mediaviewer/rm2696479744/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Self confidence plays a role so it's a sort of self fulfilling prophecy, but there's no question others treat you differently.
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.
But qualitatively different attention IMHO.
Great looking guy with zero personality: shallow attention e.g. one-night stands or pure accessory.
Ugly guy with great personality: veer towards long-term relationships or maybe friend-zoning.
Actually I was talking about what I have seen in friends and acquaintances, although I have seen exceptions too.
Might depend upon country too...
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).
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.
The addictivity of facebook/youtube/instagram/hackernews upvotes condensed in a single sentence, great insight!
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Of course, this is just an anecdote and cases like this are more likely to stick in our memory. You be the judge.
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.
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.
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.
https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/pewdiepie-most-handsome-20...
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.
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.
Check out okcupid’s graphs here, see the chart female messaging and male attractiveness: https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyo...
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.
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.
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.
Great piece on the reality of living in Las Vegas: https://believermag.com/the-people-of-las-vegas/
An interview with Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python) from one of the early publications: https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-terry-gilliam/
This volume came with a DVD that had a bunch of great artsy videos I used to watch a lot: https://believermag.com/product/the-believer-december-2004-j...
Hope you get some enjoyment from reading these or finding other things.
See if you can find links to the audio-visual cds/dvds too.
I am working a lot for the next 2 days but I’ll try and reply, check back in 3-4 days.
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 that we should go around calling people 'neckbeards', it's rude, but there's a reason the term exists.
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 really actively 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?
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 will try to read it!
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.
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.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwvKWSxwvalaR01ZT1dEY1ZtWTA/...
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 the 'extreme' of what most competitors go through? Probably not.
But resistance/strength training more generally is probably beneficial:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_training
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:
* https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/simple-sitting-test-...
All involved strength more than aerobic ability.
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.
* https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/want-to-live-...
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).
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.
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.
* https://www.bretcontreras.store/products/strong-curves
* https://old.reddit.com/r/StrongCurves/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
like, it's hard to imagine what you would do for a better posture other than highbar squats, deadlifts, rows, etc
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.
For beginners i doubt there is much variation in progress from one program to the other, and remember SS is for beginners.
The benefit of SS is its simplicity, 4 basic lifts with simple programming. Beginners benefit from such simplicity.
what do you need to buy? what posture correction are you doing? how is showering a meaningful amount of time when most people already shower daily?
you're inventing problems that don't exist.
One definitely should aim to eat well and sleep enough, but that's generally true anyway.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[0]: https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/how-to-get-six-pack-...
Agree on the unhealthy BF% for bodybuilders though
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.
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!
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
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.
You cannot possibly think that men like this are malnourished...
https://yorkshireccc.com/uploads/crop_image/260/270/20140516...?
https://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Sainsbury+British+Champi...
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cJwna2z0LQI/TeJHl4AZW9I/AAAAAAAAAO...
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1b/8b/fc/1b8bfcef69fdb3c9aae7...
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/06/04/article-2647902-1...
Steroids are not necessarily always bad, tho taking your body to the extremes of competitive bodybuilding probably is.
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 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.
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).
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.
trenbolone and other 19-nor substances are neurotoxic and thrash your internal organs.
fatburners like clenbuterol or dnp are uh, not good.
insulin (which is massively anabolic, btw) can kill you very easily if you mis-time your meals.
growth hormone enlarges organs at supraphysiological doses
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.
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 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
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)
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!
And there's enough dumb people around that try and lift too much without being spotted.
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.
[1] Keogh and Winwood, or Siewe et al.
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?
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.
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?
Some jurisdictions do not allow models under a certain b.m.i. to be commercially featured:
https://www.euronews.com/2017/09/06/counties-fighting-underw...
> 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.
> Source?
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/legendary-bodybuilder-died-bod...
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.
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.
There is actually a body dysmorphic disorder called Muscle dysmorphia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_dysmorphia). It is pretty easy to see the similarities of similar disorders.
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
> 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 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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Don’t expect to be judged well if you’re showing parkour steez at a gymnastics competition.
It doesn’t mean the sport is wrong, it just maybe means you should pioneer an alternative sport or category to suit your target aesthetic.
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.
That's called calisthenics
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)
> BB is more an art than a sport 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.
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?
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.
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.
It was upvoted, however, but it's probably because it's a polarizing opinion that some very much agree with, and others very much dislike.
Ctrl/Cmd-R will get you back in sync.
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.
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.
The mini gun was an M134. Those weigh between 41 and 85 lbs, depending on the model variant.
So, yeah, it was heavy, but not crazy heavy.
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.
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]
[0]https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and...
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
This is wrong. None of the pro competitions do drug testing and no one stops using a week out. If they did test there wouldn't be any competitors.
https://naturalbodybuilding.com
https://www.worldnaturalbb.com
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.
I can understand the frustration, but I don't think it's a good idea to take a paternalistic approach in this case.
Clearly strongmen on the international stage are using though.
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.
If it's not measured in meters or seconds, it's not a real sport.
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.
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.
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.
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.
THE FEMININ E PHYSIQU E
But then I switched to Firefox's focus mode and everything was better again.
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.
So do male bodybuilder/fitness competitors. What's your point ?
Like with any other sport, peak performance is timed for competition and the rest is time for after.
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.
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.
https://jesshutchensfit.com/npc-bikini-competition-steps-to-...
And here's her idol Bev Francis: