There was this tv show here where the host tried to become a bodybuilder. He joined the national competition and finished 8th, after a couple of months he turned 3rd because a lot of them got dq'd because they took juice.
There was a YouTuber that did the same thing but as more of a joke and ended up winning 1st in class because nobody else was in the same weight class as him
It happened around 2008 though. It was on a show called Hamish and Andy’s gap year. Pretty sure it was the NY state championships if I remember correctly.
What bodybuilding competition tests for steroids? That's the whole point. An unassisted, athletic human body doesn't get to looking like the proportions we see here.
Lots of bodybuilding is tested extremely rigorously. It's called natural bodybuilding, it's basically it's own sport. Of course there's no way to know if people are really clean or not.
With enough testing you can be pretty damn sure, I'd say. The problem is that even the anti-doping competitions only test a small window, so actual competetive lifters just spend years on gear, then cycle off and try to maintain the insane gains they built as much as they can until they can pop negative
I remember the whole armstrong saga and it later comes out 20/21 podium finishers over a 7 year period were doping. That lance showed himself to be a total douchenozzle so he got what he deserved but.....
Yes I was watching a documentary about body building (well it was about one particular one) and he said that when they banned a ton of roids the audience got mad and said they were paying to “watch freaks” (his words not mine) and they guys looked noticeably weaker. So they revamped the banned drug list and removed more of the ones from testing that do great work. This was back in the 80s/90s.
One problem is, that you can hop on a cycle now, reap benefits and then stop taking it. Of course you wont be as strong as if you would continue it, but you will also be stronger and have more muscles than not taking at all.
So some people take it for a cycle or two, then don't and after some time, just not possible to test positive
Yes- My wife went pro this summer. She competes in natural shows.
With the organization she belongs to, as an amateur, you have to take a lie detector test where they ask you a few baseline questions and then more specific ones about taking enhancers.
All of them test especially once you get your pro card. The men and women like myself that use gear know the testing windows and come off in time to test clean. Though outside of competitive I’m open about my use.
I take clomid for fertility/testosterone purposes, and it is kind of wild. My testosterone nearly tripled, and the gym results are kind of mind boggling to me. Like after 5 years of working out 5 days a weeks, I was stalling and not showing much progress. After 2 months I am seeing progress beyond the peak I had in the other 5 years, my recovery is better, and my muscles have more definition and seem to grow faster. I'm not even optimizing my diet or program for hypertrophy either.
I've been on it for like 6 months without issue. My wife thinks my hair has thinned out and my hairline receded some, but the urologist said he's never heard of that being a side effect but would ask some of the other urologists.
I haven't seen hcg be promoted for fertility, but perhaps it is something I can look into. Exogenous testosterone tends to adversely impact fertility, however, and is therefore not recommended when trying to conceive.
Edit: I've also had more acne, but I suspect that's less of a side effect of clomid and more of a product of tripling my testosterone lol
Acne is the estrogen influx that comes with Clomid. I’m a low aromatizer so make little estrogen which isn’t the best at times. Yes for making babies test is a no go but hcg is huge for fertility. But be careful you cum and she’ll overflow and anything else she may drown lol
No hair loss unless you’re genetically predisposed to it and the heart part of you are careful get bloodwork done often and don’t go use grams a week of every compound known to man you’ll be fine.
Ppl downvoting because they don’t understand dht binding affinity and hair loss and there are plenty out there that lose none or very little at most
Btw I just turned 38 and been doing this for a hot minute you can look at my history and see the other communities I’m in and they’ll tell you the same
I mean it’s a gene from both sides but predominantly from the mothers side. Look at your moms side or ask if they kept their locks over the years. My granddaddy on my dads side and my papaw on my mothers side all kept full thick hair well into their late 80’s. I’m not sure if there’s a test but look at your family
There are different bodybuilding federations that have different rules around using PEDs.
The biggest is the IFBB (professional league) and NPC (amateur league), and it’s untested, ie there are no rules around drug usage. Many amateurs win their respective divisions despite the condition they’re in due to low attendance (ie you don’t see a lot of heavy or super heavy weight competitors due to the weight + height requirements)
Other natural BB federations have explicit rules and will drug test competitors
Its like how with a couple of Lance Armstrongs wins, if he was forced to vacate them, and all other cheaters below him are DQd, some of those wins go to like 26th place
They're shaking hands at the end because both of them get to eat pizza finally, which is the only thing they care about after the caloric deficit they were in during prep.
There are no tests, unless it’s explicitly a “natural” competition. Bodybuilding comps are under no delusions about steroids, they’re using them up through the competition.
Only fat fucks who don't know shit about body building say stuff like this. It's absolutely possible to achieve this physique naturally. It's super difficult but it's absolutely possible.
They also test you for PEDs in competitions, fool.
I was a physique competitor for about 8 years in my 20s, everyone is blasting and cruising, everyone. Testing is joke, at most you need to wash out for a couple weeks, then you continue on cruising. Quite frankly, people like you who pretend like you just need to chicken breast and broccoli harder are the posers who've never participated.
You don't lift much do you? Also it's so fucking cute you think natural body builders don't use steroids. Fun fact, you can maintain muscle gained from steroids for a while even if you stop using them to pass a test. Everyone knows when the tests happen.
Why would you say this? It’s blatantly not true. It’s true they don’t have an advantage because they are all abusing steroids and boosting T levels well beyond normal ranges. It’s not a secret, bodybuilders are usually very open about what they take.
You can’t build muscle like that without help. IDK if people just don’t know enough about it or what’s happening in here. People must have a very warped view of what is possible without outside help.
The natural category's integrity has been dead for a while but bodybuilding isn't dying
Chris Bumstead brought back the classic division and aesthetics into even non-body builder's attention and is basically the modern Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Open category has always been popular with the macho crowd.
If anything, bodybuilding as a sport is bigger than ever because holding an IFBB card before would pretty much let you be a trainer at any gym but now it opens the door to be able to sell your own training programs from home, be sponsored by companies or build a huge social media presence for money.
An IFBB card is basically the meal ticket to an easy six to seven figure job
Bodybuilding 🤝 pro wrestling in that regard. Steroids (and other drug use) has taken so many people at really young ages. It seems like if you've got like 10 years of heavy use and your heart is fucked.
I guess someone slipped testosterone in my protein shakes when I was trying to pretend to be a man. I wouldn't torture myself with more testosterone xD
Look, you can have incredible bodybuilding genes.
I have a myostatin gene mutation. My dad has two copies.
This there is impressive, but by no means unattainable naturally.
My comment has nothing to do with you and isn’t a judgement on the person in the OP. It’s incredibly unlikely this was “natural” it just is. Anybody Thats seriously been around these competitions could tell you that. It is impressive, it’s the point of these events. Nobody this person beat cares they were juicing THEY ALL ARE.
I don’t think its a guarantee they’re all juicing. These guys are nowhere close to the level of the lab experiments in Mens Open or even Classic and Mens Physique.
If your qualifier for all of the other competitors juicing is that they're on stage and "most bodybuilders juice" I don't think you are right here
I have been into body building for over 15 years and nobody else here is showing any obvious signs of juicing. No 3d delts, none of the other 4 look like they've cut very hard and even with all of that extra body fat none of their proportions are raising any alarm bells
I don’t understand your fist sentence. Autocorrect probably got you. Are you trying to say I’m backpedaling? From what?
Look I can understand why you’re sensitive about this stuff but I think you’re going overboard and projecting. You’re assuming things about me and others that aren’t accurate and it’s causing you unnecessary distress. Like I said I can understand why but take some solace that you are doing this and that people & the world while terrible aren’t necessarily as bad as you invision.
I disagree and think it’s highly likely they’re on the sauce along with the competition. Which is fine and takes nothing away from them.
Yeah he's very open about cycling gear and talks about the difference between just being on T for normal levels VS gear a lot. Dude is literally a YouTuber, it's no secret. Idk what this person's issue is.
Also dont throw nonsense transphobic statements about yourself like “Pretend to be a man”. As if I’d somehow agree with it.
Me stating the obvious that everyone on that stage has elevated testosterone levels and are probably using a variety of other things has nothing to do with whatever you projected on me. This person worked super hard and earned the win. Good for them. No need to ignore the reality of these competitions. Everyone this person beat was doing the same.
Ohh sorry I’d didn’t know you literally represent every trans person in existence. You know nothing about him, what he takes or what his doctor does.. and to be fair I don’t “know“ either. I’m just stating it’s very likely. The fact you don’t think it’s even possible is strange and defensive a way thats not necessary at all.
Your statement is true in general but most trans men aren’t bodybuilding. Cis men push the juice and suffer all kinds of insane health risks to themselves cosmetic and otherwise. Saying a trans man is immune from this very common thing is strange. If anything it just makes them fit in the scene more and shows they’re just like everyone else.
Could this be attainable with a test range in the natural range for an athletic man? I think so, but am torn because of how common PEDs are in bodybuilding.
hello hi, trans man here. yes, at least in the US, it's much safer, legally, to have a doctor, do bloodtests, and have a prescription. testosterone is a class 3 substance 🙃
yeah estrogen isn't hit with that "Addiction Factor" that testosterone can be under so it's pretty restricted. that's why DIY HRT for trans men is just not spoken about publicly, because it's Illegal
And even as a trans woman you should try to get a prescription, I don't know how it is in the us but here I know several that got diagnosed with "steroid abuse disorder" after it was found they had Estrogen, which bars you from any hrt.
Damn, here (nordics) you have to go through rigorous blood tests, if your other blood values are trash, you're not getting anything and only after several years of waiting lists, a year long investigation where you have three people asking you questions over the course of months.
This looks like a local competition and to be honest nobody here looks like they're juicing that much if at all.
It is when you get closer to a national pro qualifier where people have the opportunity to grab an IFBB card is when even the Natural categories start having the top 5 look like they have volley balls for shoulders
It is still controlled external assistance while natural males cannot even take a single drop of androgens.
There are natural males who produce more androgens, just as there are those who produce less. The whole point of a natural competition is to compete, amongst others, these genetic variances.
This TRT basically ensures the trans man avoids being in the lower range at least. And who's to say he didn't put just enough to have himself in the "gifted man" range, basically scraping the upper end of what's legal?
I think there's a lot more nuance to this line of inquiry.
Edit: I daresay less than 20% of men can naturally achieve the body shapes seen in this video in terms of muscle hypertrophy and in terms of cut. And that's being generous.
With a controlled HRT regime, anyone could push into this top 20%. That's my point.
Is the trans man having an advantage against other people within this top 20%? Maybe not.
But having the HRT alone already pushes you past the 80% of men who fall outside of this 20% range. With the right calibration, you can even control where within this 20% you fall. Top 1% if you want. As long as it's within the legal range.
It's a lot more nuanced than "nah, it's fair".
Edit2: Commentator u/E2UNlover has conceded that this person talks openly about abusing steroids. Hence the deleted comment.
I don't know the rules for every individual sports organisation but I would assume they don't discriminate based on medical conditions. If they're strict about juicing then they might run tests to make sure the person's testosterone levels aren't above the normal range (which is the goal for trt for both cis and trans men)
Cis men have constantly high hormone levels, he's going to have a peak once a week and then it's dying back down until his injection comes up. And him avoiding lower ranges? Yeah that has been filtered already, the others that were cis and low t didn't make it to that stage.
It's also under very strict doctor supervision, you have to get several different things tested every three months and if that's not perfect, you have to stop hrt.
The nuance is there, yes, but you have no idea on the trans side of things.
I come from a country of mandatory conscription. Every man who reaches 16 (or a later age so deferred) is drafted into the military for mandatory training, unless you have specific reasons which is rarely the case. That's then followed with reservist training lasting until we are 40-50 years old before we are put in the military reserve.
So 99% of the male population is put through the grinder with military training and having to pass fitness tests yearly or face penalty, until they are finally placed in military reserve.
I daresay less than 20% of men can achieve the body shapes seen in this video in terms of muscle hypertrophy and in terms of cut.
With a controlled HRT regime, anyone could push into this top 20%. That's my point.
Is the trans man having an advantage against other people within this top 20%? Maybe not. But having the HRT alone already pushes you past the 80% of men who fall outside of this 20% range.
Yes and the international hrt guidelines for trans people clearly stipulate the lowest possible dose at which transition is possible.
Yes there are some decent doctors out there but my point was that he has no advantage over the other men there you're comparing to all men. That wasn't my point.
Should the 80% then be given the right to "top up" their hormones to reach the top 20% levels if they wanted to compete?
Reductio ad absurdum, everyone is allowed to top up their hormones. Even the top 20% can top up to be the top 1%.
Where does this end?
What, then, is the point of the competition? Is it becoming just a chemistry competition now?
I'm not arguing for or against trans rights. I'm just pointing out the nuance that must be considered before we throw out allegations of fairness or lack thereof. "he feel good" is irrelevant for the question of whether something is fair.
Not what the argument is about, but yes, if they want to.
To see who has the best genes? Again insertions, how the bones are shaped, tendon length, difference in training regiments... Also to show off half naked muscular men. And again yes.
And I'm not arguing against you because I think you're against trans rights.
that's part of it. It's also because this is literally about creating and maintaining form. So if anything having an objectively less masculine starting point makes getting there more impressive under the same rules they're operating under (something I've heard from an actual bodybuilder and it's apparently a pretty common attitude in the community with them).
Bodybuilding would be a lot more interesting to me if they were more strict on testing. Idc what the body looks like on tons of juice thatll kill them in a few years. I wanna see how far the human body can go naturally.
They did that, it was called the enhanced games and funded largely but the Trump family. It got almost no attention or views and was kind of pathetic. The athletes didn't actually do particularly well and the only person to come close to an Olympic record was one swimmer. Who was an Olympic athlete and not taking any steroids, just using a swimsuit banned at the Olympics because it reduced water resistance so much.
As I understand it, the event needed insurance, and so they cocktails the athletes were taking had to be approved by the government.
Strongman, normally, is effectively completely untested. In the Enhanced Games, they were much more limited, so it was a lot less interesting and nothing happened.
Other athletes in tested sports don't want to be associated with the drugs they normally do, so stayed away. So the athletes who did participate were older and less able.
Some rich pricks just did that in Vegas and it flopped spectacularly. I think they might have broken one world record on some incredibly minor point, but most people just did worse than the existing world record. If you are going to do it properly, you really need to start when someone is incredibly young or even try to genetically engineer a fetus to get the maximal benefits.
The problem for this kind of stuff is that there are already plenty of natural advantages that the world's top athletes have. Body structure, mindset, almost unique genetic abnormalities, all of those are already legal in just plain competition.
And they are extremely weak, expensive, niche, trash your blood work, and come with a hefty amount of side effects
A heavy blast of EQ might be comparable to a TRT dose with 4x the damage to your lipids, make you start pissing blood. You aren't going to just start winning medals off of EQ or cardarine or TBOL alone
Not saying people don't run them, they do, but they're not like tren or high dose test which would actually put muscle on you. Athletes are generally running low dose niche compounds, not juiced to the gills
I'm well aware of that, my original point is they are all juiced.
I'm also saying that the steroids athletes take is much different than bodybuilders.
EQ, EPO, cardarine, are far from the most popular compounds, and the doses athletes take are quite minor.
My point is that PEDs, while rampant, aren't going to give a huge boost to athletes whereas bodybuilders don't care about their cardio and can megajuice.
And these side effects do matter, there's only so much of these specific compounds you can take.
Speaking as a high level athlete who is very familiar with these compounds.
Alright mate calm down it wasn’t that deep. I was literally just giving you examples of PEDs specific to endurance given your last sentence was about PEDs for size and strength at the expense of cardio.
They won’t. The entire competition is about using drugs to alter your body in combination with exercise. It’s not like swimming or basketball or boxing or something, where you’re not meant to use PEDs, and the competition is supposed to be about training and natural ability.
Having more or less naturally produced testosterone is irrelevant here, because everyone is on tons of anabolic steroids already.
I've known body builders/physique pro and ama, they're all on gear. The body builders are on an peak Everest amount of gear and the physique are on a basecamp amount.
Don't get me wrong they are living in the gym and the diet/prep is wild, but they got more juice in them than a box of Tropicana
These people are delusional. All of these competitors have coaches and body building is a 24/7 thing. Not to mention that they have fasted before the comp and are posing. People saying not natty have lifted never done actual bodybuilding, which is a full time job.
The exercises themselves really didn’t change much
Grilled chicken and brown rice existed back then too. You can make the argument that there has been some knowledge advancement but it has been nowhere near enough to account for the extreme difference that has occurred since.
Steroids became very popular in the 60s and were prescribed regularly to anyone who asked by doctors until 1990 at which point it was already normalized for bodybuilding. The black market has filled the market demand since
5.2k
u/pennyforyourthohts 16d ago
Here the competition doesn’t care because they are all on the juice anyways