Do you remember the string of fake naturals in the magazines in the 90s, before the term “fake natty” came around in the Internet era? You likely know exactly who I’m talking about.
I knew I didn’t have the best genetics out there but I thought I’d at least look sort of like then eventually.
That’s also when I had a skewed perception of any guy of average height competing at under 200 pounds was small. 
No need to apologize. It’s not like you came off as dickish. Just a normal conversation. BTW, here’s my experience with Weider: Joe Weider Killed My Gains
I wonder what Charles’ autopsy would show. He wasn’t big on cardio.
I took a break from buying mag’s in the mid 90’s so you might have to clue me in on the fake natties in case I missed them?
Late 80’s, early 90’s I remember Mike Ashley, and Jean Paul Guillaume, who claimed natty status. I believed them at the time. They looked fantastic, but lets face it they were likely on gear as well.
Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve posted pics of yourself on here, in peak condition, and you look pretty darn good.
I don’t think you owe anyone an apology. I remember reading Weider magazines in the 90s and it was pretty obvious that they exaggerated wildly for effect, but the underlying principle was true: training can be VERY good for your health.
It’s like anything that’s “good” for you - take it to extremes, and it’s not good for you anymore.
To be fair, he had a genetic predisposition to heart issues. I don’t remember exactly what it was but it has to do with magnesium malabsorption which gave him frequent arythmia and other issues. His father had the same genetic issue and also died fairly young of a heart attack.
He also lost a brother who died of a heart attack at 24 and another on who, barely lived, was born with a heart in the wrong position.
BTW, that’s the big reason why he was big on supplementing magnesium.
The problem is… you can have good genes.
And then there’s GREAT genes. Unfortunately bodybuilding is VERY unforgiving. To be a decent natural competitor (can’t be on TRT in natural competitions in Aus EVEN if you have a script. The same can be said for sport here, it’s fucking ridiculous. Not sure what it’s like in America)
You need to have great insertions practically everywhere, a good response to training, and the ability to tolerate a lot of abuse via the rigors of heavy weightlifting even when dieting down.
Now let’s say you are like me… on TRT and you want to compete… great!
Now you have to be able to tolerate gargantuan doses of anabolic steroids! On top of everything else
AAS may provide slight leeway say if you don’t naturally have the best delts (one or two muscle groups). But even then… bodybuilding is super unforgiving, look at how freaky the guys at the top of both tested and untested divisions look…
Take a guy with average genes, put him on cycle, get him to work out and diet for years… he probably STILL won’t look at good at the top competitors in natural pro divisions.
Genetics are everything. Very hard to be a good competitive BB with just “good” genetics.
We have all seen that one guy who is shredded, and has decent size without a lifting background (usually some sort of blue collar worker who is active all day).
Some people are just freaks… look at Mike Tyson at age 13 for reference… knocking out grown men and benching over 225
The guys who make it to the top in bodybuilding are like 1/1,000,000 genes. Look at Lee Priest when he was 13, or Dorian Yates after 6 months of training… or Eddie Hall at the age of 14 (Eddie Hall has partial MSTN mutation)
In todays world… THAT is what it takes to get to the top!
Other sports generally tend to be more forgiving. Strongman might be slightly more forgiving than bodybuilding as bodybuilding places pure emphasis on physical attributes that you are either born with… or you aren’t (the appearance of muscle bellies, hypertrophic response to training, ability to tolerate abuse).
Top strongmen have been as short as 5’3 and as tall as 7 foot. Generally there is a body “type” overwhelmingly present
But you don’t need to be super aesthetic. With years of training you can condition the body and get stronger.
Can’t trick shitty calves into becoming great calves…
Even with those genetics, Eddie Hall still had to almost kill himself to get to his ultimate goals. The weight he was carrying when he won WSM was stupid. I guess that echoes everything else you said, and the theme of this topic. Amazing genetics but still had to do incredibly risky things to compete with people with even better genetics (for the sport he was competing in).
Right, not natural.
I don’t want to derail the thread, but I’ll just name a few and move on: Stan McQuay, Kiyoshi Moody, Jeff Willett, Skip La Cour, John Hansen, Ronnie Coleman working as a police officer, and the beloved Mike O’Hearn (though I do believe he was actually natural for some time in the 90’s judging from his appearance).
There have been several conversations on here about natty-or-not subjects and they usually devolve into ad hominem discourse (“You’re just jealous,” “You’re setting people up for failure,” “Why do you care who’s natural?!,” “Mind your business!,” “Why do you care who uses and who doesn’t?”).
Thanks for the compliment.
Funny thing, according to the Dr.'s and nurses, cardiac rehab people, etc. That has very little to do with whether or not you have a heart attack.
I was in the ICU bemoaning my sorry state and one nurse actually said “Dont feel bad. We just had a guy in here that did triathlons who didn’t make it. Just be glad you’re on this side of the dirt.”.
There was a study that recently came out showing endurance/ultra endurance athletes might actually be predisposed to plaque build up as a byproduct of their extreme training regimens!
However there’s a good chance the plaque of an endurance athlete is far more stable/less prone to rupture relative to a sedentary, obese individual.
There’s also the correlation between endurance exercise (taken to extremes) and a-fib.
I have a family member who brought on an arrhythmia requiring hospitalisation during a triathlon.
Exercise exists on a bell curve. Too little is bad for you, too much is also bad.
I think the trend now is to admit use, but claim these ultra low doses. It works, because most of the enhanced guys on YouTube are doing the it. I don’t think it would work well if it was just one or two guys, but I think a lot of them are doing it.
I saw a video on John Haack a few days ago, where he detailed his cycle. He claims 12 week cycles, completely cycling off. He claims the current meet prep cycle is 200 mg/wk of Test, and 50 mg of Anavar for 6 weeks, then 50 mg of Anadrol for 6 weeks. I think he ramps up to 250 mg/wk of Test towards the end.
It just doesn’t make sense to me. The guy is the best in the world. It doesn’t makes sense to me to compete untested and do a cycle like that when your competition is on 3-5 grams a week. It doesn’t make sense to cycle off for a guy like him.
It’s possible he is telling the truth I guess. He isn’t some mass monster. It doesn’t make sense to me though. I’ll say if he is telling the truth, it makes my genetics seem awfully shitty. The guy has benched over 600 lbs, and deadlifted over 900 lbs (raw, no suits or bench shirts) in competition at 198 lbs.
IDK, there is probably some good to come out of it. I think a lot of the newer guys to AAS are starting with a lot less because of the whole slew of guys claiming such small doses. At the same time, it probably gets more guys into using AAS since they think they only need a little sprinkle of drugs to get similar results. The fact is, 99.999% of guys could take 5 grams a week for years and not get to that level.
I think it probably increases your chances of survival though. I am not talking about elite cardio here. But someone who does some cardio regularly vs a sedentary individual will more likely survive in the event of a heart attack.
I’ve been watching Alone lately (survival show where competitors are isolated and have to survive off the land). I’ve watched about 4 seasons so far. So 40 competitors. There has been 2 instances of people being eliminated because of a-fib or very high heart rate. They aren’t doing much traditional cardio, but they are basically starving. They will often look very worn out just from walking 50 meters.
I think a lot of high level endurance competitors are starving themselves to be competitive. Not in the same way, but they are shooting for very low body fat, and they are doing exhausting exercise. I could see that causing issues like it does on Alone.
I dunno. Anectdotal, but @theBeth confirmed that weight trained people seem to pull through better.
Thats a good line of inquiry though.
With AAS there’s definately dimimishing returns.
It’s not always a 1+1 =2 situation.
There’s the prospect of AR downregulation with chronic use (though AAS also up regulate existing receptors initially). This downregulation is likely transient, but alterations in AR expression and myostatin regulation play a role regarding why gains stall out on cycle after a while.
If you look at the studies on dose respondant increases in muscle mass in response to T, you’ll notice (though sample sizes are somewhat small) guys taking 600mg of testosterone (administered in a controlled setting by physicians, placebo controlled trial) don’t actually gain 2x as much as someone taking 300mg
For most, gains start at 125mg/wk. There’s a jump from 125 to 300mg, and a jump from 300 to 600… but it’s not a linear increase in strength and muscle mass
There are diminishing returns. While i’m sure some do take 5 grams… I can’t imagine 5 grams is going to be that much better than 3 grams.
If you aren’t a pro and you are using 5 grams, re-evaluate what you are doing… unless you have PAIS, those people deserve sympathy… esp for pseudohermaphroditism…
A guy with PAIS might require 500mg test/wk just to maintain normal secondary sexual characteristics.
I agree, but the drop off in gains isn’t a cliff, and happens a lot higher than many assume. Like perhaps 1000 mg of Test doesn’t produce twice the gains of 500 mg, but 1500 mg might.
I have no idea what dose = what degree of diminishing returns beyond 600mg (600 and below I can refer to literature)
The most testosterone i’ve ever used was 250mg/wk, that was aaages ago.
There is a big jump from 100-125 to 250
But it’s not as big as the jump from serious hypogonadism to high normal.
I’d imagine stacking also changes the game a bit. For instance… is the LBM gain from 300mg test and 300mg methenolone better than 500mg test alone (on paper potency should be similar).
All androgens act on the AR (to different degrees). But from a pharmacological perpsective anabolic steroid A may have a very different set of characteristics to anabolic steroid B (what receptors it has affinity to, tissue selectivity or lack thereof, interactions with various enzymes involved with regulation of RAAS etc… long time since i’ve read up on this stuff.)
Hence why I don’t like lumping in “anabolic steroids” as one in the same. There’s a HUGE difference between a bit of primo and say… tren or ment.
I actually tend to think there’s a decent chance primobolan in an acute setting might be less toxic relative to testosterone provided we are referring to supraphysiologic dosing. Testosterone has a stronger effect re modulation of adrenergic signalling, tends to more readily promote hypertension, polycythaemia etc
Primo skews lipids, lowers E2 and fucks with hair… not great… but anecdotes alingside studies evaluating tolerability (doses of up to 1200mg/wk in women) appear to corroberate the claim that it might actually be the least toxic compound on the market.
From the dose response study:
Gains were significantly better on 600 mg compared to 300 mg. Units are KG. 600 mg resulted in 3.4 kg more than 300 mg. Also, 600 mg resulted in more fat loss.
3.4 kg is a lot. With that big of difference between 300 mg and 600 mg, I don’t see the point of severely diminished returns being near 600 mg (of course that is a bit subjective). I’d think you’d have to be north of a gram for “more equals better” to not be true.
But it is diminishing returns
Gains ALMOST reach statistical significance at 125mg/wk (which elicited a nadir TT of around 550 if I remember correctly, inferring peak is likely 2-2.5x that number going by median HL of test E)
2.9kg was the median gAiNz from 125mg/wk in normal men
At 2.4x that dose median gainzzzz was 5.5kg… if it were linear you’d be looking at 6.96kg
At 600mg you are looking at 8.9kg median gaaaiinnnzzzzzzz
That’s 1.61 x (roughly) more.
Not severely diminishing returns, but diminshing returns nonetheless. From this study the eventuating conclusion does seem to =/= more is better albeit with the caveat of more test = higher RBC count and decreased HDL (expected).
Decreases in fat mass however do appear to be linear.
Then the question begs… how much more damage are you inducing with 600mg vs 300mg?
How much can your body tolerate?
If 300mg is an effective cycle for a bloke on trt… why bother jumping to 600?
I get it if you are a cycle/PCT guy
But people on HRT have all the time in the world.
Marathon, not sprint.
I have a feeling the study did a poor job of accounting for bloating.
It is diminishing returns. But you are still shutting yourself down with 125 mg. For a competitive strength athlete, I’d think the health risks would be worth it for 3.4 kg of lean tissue.
For many, it would be worth 1200 mg/wk if they could get even an extra 2 kg over 20 weeks compared to the 600 mg.
People who have already reached an elite level of physical conditioning will be subject to further diminishing returns
Put it this way. I’ve had six surgeries in the past year (looking at more now)
Say I decide to run say… 100mgs of test and 200mgs of primo for 3 months following severe atrophy and disuse… I might actually gain 20lbs in part due to muscle memory alone
Whereas for you (someone used to using AAS who has elite status lifts) it wouldn’t do a thing
My deadlift would probably catapault from say maybe a max of 120-140kg now all the way back to 215-220kg max like it used to be (granted i’m never doing heavy barbell powerlifting ever again).
It depends on where you are at… what condition you are in.
Even at my peak, there’s no way it would have taken me a gram for months to gain 5lbs… more like 300mg/wk…
