They both have "actual strength" body builders train size which does from hypertrophy. This guy has an esoteric strength that comes from doing this specific thing day in and day out. Regardless of the activity steroids will make both men superior in terms of recover, strength and muscle mass.
no such thing, how does this shit get upvoted. literal brainrot. Muscle corellates 80% with strength, the other factor being CNS adaption.
All that is demonstrated by the pic is the worker has better technique, and only the muscles required for moving 4 bags of cement are developed (back and forearms).
Idk how much those weigh, but quikrete bags weigh 80lbs each... so yea carrying 360lb like that especially with the weird grip you have to do to be able to reach all the way around the whole stack is pretty wild.
Man who trains grip strength through his labour work VS bodybuilders who don't train grip at all beyond indirect work and rely on lifting straps frequently to sidestep the bottleneck, that's the actual answer here, you can't lift what you can't keep ahold of without slippage, any strength coach whether it's olympic lifting or MMA fighters will tell you, training specificity matters in strength.
Yes, but no. Steroids alone dont build muscle, they just increase the return on the work you do. Counter point to yours: top-tier powerlifters, arguably the greatest "actual strength" on the planet, use steroids.
This is pretty much the opposite of what studies show; steroids absolutely build muscle alone, in fact one of the premier studies on steroids and muscle gain showed that people who took steroids and did not lift weights gained more muscle than people who lifted weights without steroids.
EDIT: Sources showing there are changes to the musculature itself, increases to one rep max strength, studies disputing any interaction effect of steroids on exercise induced muscle gain, suggesting an additive rather than synergistic mechanism, disputing the 'water retention' argument, etc..
They gained significant and proportional amounts of strength too, larger than you'd expect just from increased water retention, and honestly surprising amounts given the high specificity of training for strength. At the molecular level, they show increases in RNA expression pathways that signal muscle hypertrophy. Do you have sources demonstrating that the gains in fat free mass and muscle strength are only due to water retention?
There are multiple lines of research showing increase in muscle size and strength from testosterone supplementation without exercise.
Furthermore there are multiple lines of research showing testosterone supplementation combined with exercise isn't synergistic. It's a combination of two different additive mechanisms.
Water retention will generally have a more beneficial effect on the strength-endurance axis, (IE improving your 10 rep max) than it will on a strength-power axis (your 1 rep maximum).
I'd like to see evidence that water retention alone is capable of increasing 1 rep squat max by 35 pounds.
Creatine works by recycling ADP into ATP by donating a phosphate molecule. It doesn't just make the muscle look bigger. Just like steroids don't just make the muscle look bigger. There's a reason why people take them for sports for Christ sake. This denial is ridiculous
Except you're claiming it's just water retention when the studies show that isn't true. You're the one saying shit like "more water in muscles = more strength", which isn't what's actually happening. Which was my point.
I'm not changing the context of the conversation. You're just flat out wrong, making stuff up with zero actual evidence backing your claims.
The studies you're ignoring clearly show that the steroids are building muscle mass and strength - even without exercise.
Steroids alone absolutely build muscle unless you already have substantial muscle mass. Two untrained people, one on steroids not working out and one not on steroids working out. The one on steroids will gain more muscle mass over a 20 week period. Studies have shown this.
What is dubious about it? There are many double-blind studies that evaluate and confirm the dose-dependent results of anabolic compounds on trained, untrained, aging, and post-op individuals. There are also countless studies that evaluate the effects of periodized resistance training. The 1996 study you are referencing gives exactly the results you would expect when comparing those cohorts directly.
Find me one other study that showed testosterone dosage + no exercise as better for muscle growth than no testosterone + exercise.
The cohort sizes were tiny, they only measured fat free mass, the duration of the study was short, there was no dietary control, no performance testing, no mention of baseline activity.
It also flies in the face of what we know about how muscles undergo hypertrophy. It just doesn't make sense that lots of testosterone + no exercise = big muscles given what we see and know about hypertrophy.
They also measured strength. Anyways, here are just a few sources showing lines of research showing increases in muscle size and strength, and it doesn't fly in the face of what we know. There is research showing that the mechanisms by which exercise induces muscle hypertrophy aren't directly related to systemic hormone concentration as well. The links I provided show independent mechanistic pathways for the maintenance and development of muscle for resistance training versus testosterone presence, suggesting separate and additive instead of synergistic pathways.
As an aside to the sourced comment I made, anabolic steroids are given to livestock all the time in unregulated markets specifically to induce muscle gain and therefore increase profits cause there's more meat on the animal. It's absurd to suggest that the mechanism makes no sense, it's well understood in other animals.
The mTOR pathway is fairly well understood. Why would an increase of strength and muscularity due to artificially raised hormone levels, as opposed to mechanical stress, fly in the face of what we know? The absence of stress would only inhibit lactic acid, cortisol, and other catabolic processes.
In the context of growing and repairing sarcomeres, your body doesn’t care how protein synthesis started, only that growth pathways have been signaled. It is a biochemical process. It would be dubious if the results pointed in the other direction. Similar studies would likely produce even more dramatic results with a cocktail of anabolics, but that would be unethical if not illegal.
Having said that, my comments should in no way be taken as an endorsement for recreational steroid use. Bicep hypertrophy isn’t a great tradeoff for ventricular hypertrophy.
It should also be stated that steroids aren’t some guaranteed cheat code around genetics. Those same genetics will also govern how well you respond to exogenous hormones and pharmaceuticals. Is it more likely you won 1 out of the 2 lotteries, or none at all? Everyone thinks they’re going to be an Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it’s more likely they’re a Jaxon Tippet.
This is incorrect, and constantly spread misinformation. That is exactly what they do. They just build muscle, even if you do nothing they build muscle (just not as much), that's why they're anabolic steroids, they cause anabolism.
Literally any search on the subject will find you studies that prove that time and time and time again.
Any search you do will find you one study on the subject, which gets constantly posted whenever this topic comes up. It’s not completely worthless, but it’s pretty flawed for a few reasons. It does show that someone taking steroids can add some muscle without exercise, over a short time frame. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that those gains continue forever; it’s pretty obvious that they don’t.
Steroids or not, there is not a single person in the world who looks like the guys in the video and doesn’t lift a lot of weights.
There are many, many studies on the broad concepts and mechanisms surrounding it. There's just only one under the very niche window of human-specific supraphysiologic dosing with no accompanying exercise. Many studies in other mammals though.
That being said, I agree with your statement. You won't get massive on steroids without exercising. Although, the mechanistic reason for hypertrophy from steroid use is different from the mechanistic reason for hypertrophy from resistance training, so steroid users can get the combination of easy newbie gains from resistance training on top of their steroid use to get pretty big without a lot of effort. The eye popping bodybuilders of the world are of course a combination of extreme effort and serious drug use.
3.2lbs increase in muscle mass over 10 weeks from sitting on the couch doing a straight test cycle, versus 2 pounds exercising naturally. Test plus exercise they put on 6.1 pounds of muscle.
So obviously steroids are synergistic with exercise, but they really do put on a chunk of fat free mass just by taking them.
The amount of mass that can be gained by taking anabolic and not exercising is insignificant. You would gain a small amount of mass as even sedentary people use their muscles in everyday life, but it really is minimal in terms of body weight percentage.
That fat free mass is mostly water retention, as the extra testosterone aromatizes into oestrogen.
There are literally academic studies that show the opposite is true. You're answering a post that gives you a link to one. What is wrong with you people just making shit up.
It's literally more than people who workout regularly without steroids are able to get. You sound exactly like nepo babies unwilling to accept how much of a leg up they actually got
That weight gain wont be muscle, but mostly water retention. The muscle gained will only be a fraction of that. The mass gained by the guys that worked out on the placebo will be pure muscle.
I'd like to see sources for this claim. Studies I've seen suggest that the water makeup of fat free mass gained from steroids is identical to the water makeup before use.
"The results show that the administration of 200 mg.wk(-1) of ND (intramuscularly) for 8 wk significantly increased body mass and FFM, whereas fat mass, bone mineral content, bone mineral density, and the hydration of the FFM remained unaffected. These data indicate that the changes can be attributed to an increase of muscle mass."
Steroid use is also just well known to induce muscle gain in other mammals and is used in unregulated markets to increase meat content of livestock. It's not like it's generating really watery meat.
That depends heavily on the dose given, and the size of the subject. Also the time at which the measurements are taken is very important, as water retention will disapate after a few weeks. People who don't train are rarely tired sedentary, so they might gain some mass based on revert day activities.
Most anabolics are designed and manufactured for livestock. Humans have different receptors and so don't always benefit in the same way from them.
Show me a single legitimate source that agrees with you, because all the ones I can find say the exact opposite. Steroids build muscle mass, greater than the amount someone who works out without steroids gets. There's zero reason to believe "it's just water bro".
100% agreed, I'm just annoyed when people say steroids doesn't help unless you're some kind of elite lifter. Steroids work across the board, and obviously you need to make use of the ability to work out longer and harder and you'll do crazy well. But it's not like steroids stop working if you eat bon bons and sit on the couch, it's just a waste of potential.
There are studies that definitively show steroids build muscle without lifting. In fact, one study showed the group that did steroids with zero lifting gained more muscle than the group that did lifting with zero steroids.
There's also technique to consider. The bodybuilders were lifting with their arm muscles, while the worker was also making use of leg and back muscles.
Not really, both are related. The difference is specificity. Powerlifters specialise in olympic lifts and nobody would say they aren’t strong but a worker would still be better at them at his task because they are trained for it.
Also a bodybuilder would be „stronger“ at an isolated movement going for higher reps. Different types of strength. People just love ragging on to bodybuilders because it is deemed vain.
There is a difference there, but those 2 dudes are without a doubt strong as hell. This is more like a difference in grip strength and practice than anything else
I hate to break it to you but powerlifters take steroids and are insanely strong.
If you got the same worker to do a bodybuilding routine he would really struggle at it, because body and technique are not conditioned to doing that sort of work.
It's really pointless to take people that are adapted to different forms of lifting and compare them, as strength is extremely subjective.
But we aren't talking about powerlifters in the video, are we? Powerlifters use steroids to get stronger, these seem to use it to get bigger.
I've seen people train with dumbells above their head similar to how they are holding that bag, it doesn't seem like a movement that far off to what they do in training, yet, the smaller dude obviously looks like he's got way nore strength and control over it.
I'm not an expert, at all, so I'll leave that to the big folks.
I'm not an expert, at all, so I'll leave that to the big folks.
You've probably never even been in a gym on consecutive days much less a consistent basis. You're just hating on bodybuilders because for some reason unathletic coach potatoes consider them easy pickings and like to diminish their hard work and strength.
Guess I've hit a nerve. I could ingore your low effert attempt to attack me, but I won't.
Instead, I'll tell you that I did frequented gymns for years and years. Can also tell you I've used to cycle +100Kms marathons on a mountain bike. I know what it took to be fit enough to do it
I also never needed to inject myself to feel good about my body.
Ah just a pretentious mountain biker. Makes sense. Bikers/Cyclist always the biggest chips on their shoulders when it comes to people with big shoulders lol
Isn't that like being pretentious towards people that ride bikes? I have nothing against big shoulders, small brains in the other hand kind of trigger me a bit, while making me laugh at the same time.
You keep being agressive towards me, steroids side effects, maybe? But all I have for you is love buddy.
Sure bro. But I'm not a bodybuilder. Just an ex wrestler who likes to lift. These types of post pop up all the time and it's always the same shit so I commented on it. The mountain biker stuff though. Yeah, y'all are normally pretentious douchebags so I'm not surprised you put down bodybuilders.
Again, thanks. But I have nothing but disdain for you. Have a horrible day.
And if you're going to comment on someone's intelligence make sure you proof-read your comments lol
no such thing, how does this shit get upvoted. literal brainrot. Muscle corellates 80% with strength, the other factor being CNS adaption.
All that is demonstrated by the pic is the worker has better technique, and only the muscles required for moving 4 bags of cement are developed (back and forearms).
I know quite a few Strongman competitors who could complete this task with the same ease as the worker. Many of them are on steroids as well.
What we’re seeing here is specificity of training. This is about as surprising as watching a football player try ice skating for the first time, watching a pro golfer try competitive swimming, or watching a Redditor try to tie their shoes without getting out of breath.
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u/foolishbullshittery Feb 25 '25
Actual strength vs steroids.