Steroids are rampant among fitness influencers, trainers and bodybuilders
insider.com
insider.com
Taking fitness or nutritional advice from a bodybuilder is like taking financial advice from SBF.
Even with steroids you have to know what you're doing exercise/nutrition wise to get impressive results (and still need good genetics).
But a lot of people lie about steroids, I mean look at Hollywood - The Rock claiming natural at his age is just. It's definitely setting up wrong expectations for people.
At any rate, one thing that took me a while to realize when I was starting out lifting - BB advice is specific to highly trained people/bodybuilders.
Like "you can't gain muscle and lose fat". You absolutely can if you're high body fat % and untrained. If you're getting close to 10% BF - not as efficient even with steroids - that's why they cycle bulk/lean. But if you're just getting into shape - cycling will probably mess with your metabolism.
Any professional athlete is probably a terrible role model for healthy lifestyle.
To get impressive results yes, but not to get results: https://fitness.stackexchange.com/a/19397
> There have been documented tests that show steroid use without weight training will still increase your muscle mass just as someone who workouts and doesn't use steroids.
This reminded me of a pro cyclist write-up where they regretted the absence of oral hygiene… years of glucose gel being squirted into their mouths at intervals for hours and hours every day. cringe
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2018/jun/high-levels-oral-disease...
But we can be fairly sure that his transformation which looks to be a pretty center of the bell curve for people who are admittedly on steroids is in fact a far right tail case of the bell curve of people who do not take steroids, because that’s what scientists do right, assume the unlikely over the likely in cases where the prior would suggest the straight forward answer right?
What transformation are we talking about ? Due has been lifting since teens and posted pics AFAIK. Haven't followed that part of his career TBH.
Anyway the dude looks like upper limit natty - maybe he's on TRT maybe he isn't - his advice is mostly research based and he's basically the guy shitting on FOTM diets.
The ones not promoting heavy meat diets are generally recommending (and/or shilling) supplements of nutrients you get for free on a heavy meat diet, such as protein shakes and creatine powder.
There is a solid evidence base for creatine - it's one of the only supplements that actually has a decent evidence base. It's also relatively cheap and generic brands work.
Generally with the fitness industry, the key is looking for the quality sources of information. There are some good resources out there focussed on an evidence based and naturals or being open & transparent with information about "the dark side"...
- SSD abel - Geoffrey Verity Schofield - Team 3DMJ - Dr Mike Israetel - Stronger by Science - Brains and Gains with Dr. David Maconi
Also.....one of the biggest benefits of regular exercise and lifting for me personally is the mental health side of things. Really can't overstate this.
Requiring every nutrient to come from food seems arbitrary, especially with nutrients that tend to be added to the product upstream, like supps given to animals or vitamin D in milk.
Yet TRT tends to be peddled like it’s magic.
I don't know enough about steroids to care if someone uses them, but I think it's pretty toxic to promote unrealistic body standards to guys while claiming they got it because they were "genetically blessed" or were "dedicated to their craft". Toxic. Toxic. Toxic.
* People are becoming more aware of PED, what 'natural' looks like in comparison, and the number of people that take PED without admitting it. We should continue this education front.
* It's a shame we cannot trust people that look great and attribute it to a supplement, unique diet, or a workout plan and try to sell you things.
* It's a shame the bar for what a great body looks like it set artificially high.
* These have serious long term health consequences. They damage the heart and hormone production. Some people need to take testosterone for life because their body just won't produce enough of it anymore.
30 years ago it was a guy in a magazine on every drug known to man that would claim the reason for their size was Muscle Mega 3000 and then on the next page would be an advertisement for Muscle Mega 3000.
30 years ago Mike O'hearn was Mr Natural USA or some BS.
The same thing over and over.
If anything it was even worse 30 years ago when there was basically no information outside of bodybuilding magazines and even Mr Olympia would say they were natural. There was almost an unspoken code of silence and denial.
On the other hand, there are probably quite a few people today that everyone thinks are on steroids but they are 100% natural. People have such huge variance in natural testosterone levels.
This practice is very common and probably does more harm than good. I agree that looking up to, or aspiring towards an elite physique is good however people need to be realistic and realise that, for most people, it doesn't matter what you do, whether you take every steroid known to man, you will probably never look like Ronnie Coleman in his prime and that's okay.
the people that look really good in their 30s, 40s and beyond usually started in their teens and kept the results.
A while back at lunch with 6 coworkers I've had to Google Arnold Schwarzenegger admitting steroid use because they didn't think he used steroids.
Just let that sink in about general awareness of what's possible with natural BB.
People also fail this test for women who, for example, do barbell hip thrusts every day in the gym to get a nice butt that everyone takes for granted. “You’re so lucky to have a body like that. I wish I was.”
I think we see so many good looking people so often we lose sense of what it takes to get it.
I do think a lot of new lifters think work ethic + a few pills will get them influencer bodies / huge lifts. Strength training is a highly individual activity, largely done in commercial gyms where doing the activity somewhat diligently seems to bring big results relative to gen pop. But step into an athletic gym, or play a team sport at competitve level and it quickly becomes obvious that some individuals are just genetic phenomes, ultimately they're the ones that make it to top level, especially in something as genetically predisposed as growing lean mass or static strength, and no amount of hard work or drugs will even the playing field. But most novice to intermediate lifters and bodybuilders don't get this epiphany stuck lifting in commercial gyms. Like most people probably intuitively understand they can't simply train to sprint remotely on the same level as Bolt. But many gymbros think they can simply train to have the equivalent body or strength of influencers (many of whom are also just genetically blessed) when it was simply never in the cards.
TBF the bodybuilding community seems to be much better at nattyornot conversations in the last few years. Strength community also improving simply because numbers have gotten so big as popularity unearthed 0.01% talent that 5plate folks aspiring for previously 6plate world record recognize that, no, they'll never come close to pulling 7 plates. At this point even women's record are becoming untouchable to most men hovering in the middle of the genetic bell curve.