Following Branch Warren’s “gift” of 2nd place at the Arnold Classic, a disappointed Arnold out against Jim Manion and the awful judging criteria.
Thank god!
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
Thank god![/quote]
Indeed.
Arnold’s point about asking yourself who you’d like to be built like is spot on.
Can anyone honestly say they’d want to look like Branch Warren? That dude is at the check-in counter at The Palumbo Hotel!
[quote]CLUNK wrote:
[quote]BrickHead wrote:
Thank god![/quote]
Indeed.
Arnold’s point about asking yourself who you’d like to be built like is spot on.
Can anyone honestly say they’d want to look like Branch Warren? That dude is at the check-in counter at The Palumbo Hotel!
[/quote]
Lmao. His body just looks worn and tired to me. Has no roundness really
Wow. You know things have gone a little off track when the Patron Saint of the sport openly calls you out like that.
Makes me wonder if Manion will have a reply, and if it will take Arnold’s points as worthwhile, support his judges, possibly talk about the slow direction of the athletes progression and fan receptiveness… just wondering aloud here I suppose.
S
[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
Wow. You know things have gone a little off track when the Patron Saint of the sport openly calls you out like that.
Makes me wonder if Manion will have a reply, and if it will take Arnold’s points as worthwhile, support his judges, possibly talk about the slow direction of the athletes progression and fan receptiveness… just wondering aloud here I suppose.
S[/quote]
Of course Arnold speaks for the sport overall, but since his name is on the Classic, he has a lot riding on it, and no one should have a problem with his views.
It’s time to clean house. Bodybuilding has continued on a downward trajectory since the Yates/Coleman battles. Look back at the '92 Olympia… The best physiques in the entire line-up were Shawn Ray, and Lee Labrada (an astounding specimen at a mere 185 lbs). Yet they got 4th and 3rd places respectively while a lesser Levrone got 2nd and Yates won. Yates looked the worst of the four!
well said by Arnold, and it’s cool to have someone like that still involved the way he is.
RIP Serge Nubret and good on Arnold.
Glad to see it. Dexter took a deserving first place but Branch should never have been top 3. Compton was clearly better.
The only way Branch was top 3 is if you were solely judging conditioning. His physique is truly “ugly” at this point in his career.
Maybe the mens physique guys will keep getting bigger and eventually look like the classic bodybuilders, their upper body is already comparable to early bodybuilders, even Arnolds era. They could always introduce a mens figure for not too muscular guys.
Well, I’m glad to hear him say that. Hopefully it makes some dent in things.
While I understand bodybuilding has always had some sort of “freak” status since the beginning, I’ve never cared for the more recent generations that seem to have lost the lines, proportion and balance of before. I would love to see a return to that.
It’s the guts. They ust look fucking horrible.
Should make the vacuum a mandatory pose.
To me Lee Priest is what the modern day Bodybuilding should be aiming for.
Who honestly looks at Kai Green and even Phil Health, who has incredible genes and symmetry, and says… Yeah I want to look like him.
I grew up a little after Arnold times, but hell I knew who he was and he didn’t look unnatural he looked bad ass and his accent helped that image…
I think just looking at the influence and following people like Zyzz, Harrison Twins and even Jeff Seid shows you how so many people have branched away from the core of Bodybuilding and Mr Olympia and how quickly Aesthetics having an influence on the current gym culture.
I can walk into any gym in my country and the amount of guys training for Aesthetics will always surpass those looking to be bodybuilders… Why not bring the two back?
To me Arnold, Franco and Zane had both fields on point…
[quote]Fluffybeginner wrote:
To me Lee Priest is what the modern day Bodybuilding should be aiming for.
Who honestly looks at Kai Green and even Phil Health, who has incredible genes and symmetry, and says… Yeah I want to look like him.
I grew up a little after Arnold times, but hell I knew who he was and he didn’t look unnatural he looked bad ass and his accent helped that image…
I think just looking at the influence and following people like Zyzz, Harrison Twins and even Jeff Seid shows you how so many people have branched away from the core of Bodybuilding and Mr Olympia and how quickly Aesthetics having an influence on the current gym culture.
I can walk into any gym in my country and the amount of guys training for Aesthetics will always surpass those looking to be bodybuilders… Why not bring the two back?
To me Arnold, Franco and Zane had both fields on point…[/quote]
I was thinking about this earlier, as much as i used to despise all the aesthetic-physique brahs that have become so popular over social media, hopefully this will help drive the sport back to a more pleasing/healthier overall level of development, not the competitions for who has the most freak-factor like we see today.
Funny thing is some of these young 20-something instagram bodybuilders who are relatively “normal” sized are making waaaaay more money than most hardcore pro bodybuilders ever will.
Given that the only “objective” criteria in body building is really muscular body weight and level of conditioning / leanness, I think we are at the natural “conclusion” of body building, and by that I mean if the point of the sport is to showcase a physique that is the largest and leanest it can be… Well then it’s going to be very difficult to award Frank Zane over Phil Heath. Even if you like Zane’s look more, you simply cannot argue that Phil is a “better” body builder… He has gained more mass as presented it in equal or better conditioning.
Be it the drugs or eating or both or something else entirely, something about attempting to be as big as possible causes the guts, and unless some arbitrary upper weight limit gets instituted for the heavyweights the problems will continue. So the obvious answer is to, like the 212 class, set some arbitrary upper weight limit on the “open” division as well. The guys aren’t getting much bigger as a group these days (Coleman I think tipped the scales at almost 300 one year ON STAGE, and its not like the average weight of the guys is over 300 these days) so I dont think it would stifle the sport to any degree as setting the limit back in the 70’s would have when 260 was considered the Mass Monster of the stage
For the reasons I mentioned in the first paragraph its simply too hard to award certain types of physiques that are more “streamlined” or “X framed” when they are so wildly muscled and conditioned, not to mention that everyone has a different ideal type of physique in their own mind so Arnolds idea of “who do I want to look like” is simply not satisfactory for judging in any meaningful way. You could literally end up with an 8 way split decision.
[quote]audiogarden1 wrote:
[quote]Fluffybeginner wrote:
To me Lee Priest is what the modern day Bodybuilding should be aiming for.
Who honestly looks at Kai Green and even Phil Health, who has incredible genes and symmetry, and says… Yeah I want to look like him.
I grew up a little after Arnold times, but hell I knew who he was and he didn’t look unnatural he looked bad ass and his accent helped that image…
I think just looking at the influence and following people like Zyzz, Harrison Twins and even Jeff Seid shows you how so many people have branched away from the core of Bodybuilding and Mr Olympia and how quickly Aesthetics having an influence on the current gym culture.
I can walk into any gym in my country and the amount of guys training for Aesthetics will always surpass those looking to be bodybuilders… Why not bring the two back?
To me Arnold, Franco and Zane had both fields on point…[/quote]
I was thinking about this earlier, as much as i used to despise all the aesthetic-physique brahs that have become so popular over social media, hopefully this will help drive the sport back to a more pleasing/healthier overall level of development, not the competitions for who has the most freak-factor like we see today.
Funny thing is some of these young 20-something instagram bodybuilders who are relatively “normal” sized are making waaaaay more money than most hardcore pro bodybuilders ever will. [/quote]
Why do we have to have one or the other. Some people like a freak show.
[quote]Lonnie123 wrote:
everyone has a different ideal type of physique in their own mind so Arnolds idea of “who do I want to look like” is simply not satisfactory for judging in any meaningful way. You could literally end up with an 8 way split decision.[/quote]
^This is a very good point. Believe me, I’ve been on judging panels and despite knowing who I would personally prefer their physique, there are established and agreed upon criteria that the judges should be striving their best (personal opinions obviously understood in certain instances) to adhere to.
As such, Arnold’s statement is aimed much more at the established criteria than at the folks sitting at the judges table.
Remember back in the late 90’s when the IFBB issued a directive to mark down excessively muscular women (in Female BODYBUILDING!) as well as Men with Visible mid section distention.
Neither directive really seemed to find favor in how it played out I suppose.
S
[quote]GrizzlyBerg wrote:
Lee Priest put this up on his instagram after this happened.[/quote]
Lee Priest is one of the greatest bbers ever, but hardly demands public attention as a personality.
[quote]eatliftsleep wrote:
[quote]audiogarden1 wrote:
[quote]Fluffybeginner wrote:
To me Lee Priest is what the modern day Bodybuilding should be aiming for.
Who honestly looks at Kai Green and even Phil Health, who has incredible genes and symmetry, and says… Yeah I want to look like him.
I grew up a little after Arnold times, but hell I knew who he was and he didn’t look unnatural he looked bad ass and his accent helped that image…
I think just looking at the influence and following people like Zyzz, Harrison Twins and even Jeff Seid shows you how so many people have branched away from the core of Bodybuilding and Mr Olympia and how quickly Aesthetics having an influence on the current gym culture.
I can walk into any gym in my country and the amount of guys training for Aesthetics will always surpass those looking to be bodybuilders… Why not bring the two back?
To me Arnold, Franco and Zane had both fields on point…[/quote]
I was thinking about this earlier, as much as i used to despise all the aesthetic-physique brahs that have become so popular over social media, hopefully this will help drive the sport back to a more pleasing/healthier overall level of development, not the competitions for who has the most freak-factor like we see today.
Funny thing is some of these young 20-something instagram bodybuilders who are relatively “normal” sized are making waaaaay more money than most hardcore pro bodybuilders ever will. [/quote]
Why do we have to have one or the other. Some people like a freak show.
[/quote]
How is the judging criteria supposed to fairly judge the 2 side by side?
The simplest answer as to “why” would be that high level pro bodybuilding in its current form will never be mainstream while the freak-factor that a competitor presents is so highly valued.