Honestly if drugs weren’t involved we’d have a better attitude. The work is questionable ever since studies shown that you can sit on a couch and develop muscles from steroids without any exercise. Sure you won’t get big but it kind of takes the romanization away from the actual effort to get big
I workout every day and it's very worth it for me. I don't want or need steroids. Having more strength and low body fat makes me feel much more comfortable in my body. Sure people might not be as impressed with my results, but that is no reason to not be the best version of myself that I can be.
One study showed an increase in fat-free mass. That's not the same as muscle. Steroids make you very, very watery. And the difference between the couch potatoes and the placebo wasn't statistically significant in the paper I know of. Unless you have a different study to refer to?
The result tends, for most people, to be very underwhelming unless you're a 1% hyper responder.
I know many lifters that jump on gear before their training / sleep / diet is even close to being optimal and they decide to jump on tren before fixing those issues.
So when they hop on tren, they're not making a good use of it.
What I'm trying to say is that bodybuilding is not a sport that you can excel in without at least putting the hours in. For that, in my opinion, it should garner respect. Natty or not.
This is coming from someone who will be lifetime natural.
With a lot of great progress in protein engineering and biology recently due to AI. It is entirely plausible new analogs and drugs will come up that outperform by many times over the current drugs that exist on the market.
Your point is true today but could be different as situations evolve.
And I’ve seen Icarus and other documentaries that show it’s not easy to test these drugs.
So yes I agree that with or without drugs you need lots of work. But if the amount of work shifted tomorrow being natty or not it would warp my naive mind too much. Everything is fake, these guys say they are natty but really put half the effort as the real natty guy.
You've zoomed out too much, and this is about the current state of anabolic steroids today.
Respect is up to the individual. If the steroid use is cheating in your view and doesn't deserve your respect, that's fine :).
But I'd like to debunk the notion that just because they're on gear doesn't mean they put half the effort as a natural lifter.
The core principles of hypertrophy training still applies. Mainly:
1. Lift with intensity.
2. Progressive overload.
Think about it. More muscle mass => increase weight to increase intensity. No matter what, to progress, they will still have to lift heavy.
I will forever be a lifetime natural because I'd rather not destroy my kidneys and grow my heart for my hobby. I love this sport (and others) because I my progress can be seen both from how I look and the weights I lift.
Today, if I see someone who is huge, I can safely say that they've put in the hours and I have massive respect for that. Natty or not.
The work is questionable ever since studies shown that you can sit on a couch and develop muscles from steroids without any exercise
This gets parroted without any sort of understanding or context.
Steroids don't just generate muscle, they enhance the mechanisms that create muscle. Those studies are incredibly short term (for health reasons) and basically can be attributed to something similar to "newbie gains" and eventually the person sitting in the couch is going to stop gaining muscle like that. The natty lifter will 100% outpace the enhanced sitter fairly quickly.
Yes, a huge amount of influencers and the top competitors you see are on gear. But its its not the reason they are as big as they are, it just brought them over the edge. Its like 90% everything else, 10% PED.
You can 100% reach a great physique naturally. People just love excuses.
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u/Yamabikio Feb 25 '25
More than jealousy, I think it's more like a cope. They're trying to justify to themselves that looking like a body builder isn't worth the work.