What anyone who has done a show will tell you, is that after the fact they realize (if they’re not totally ignorant or just too ego-blinded) that they didn’t need to get as heavy as they did in the first place, because in hindsight it wasn’t all muscle, and they just needed to lose so much more fat during their prep.
This is why guys like @BrickHead, @robstein and myself always go on about what competitors of certain heights and weights really look like (not in online/social media-land), and what is just outright bullsh-t.
When I say that Arash is 5’10, and he’s a 2nd place Olympia finisher, and NYPro Winner, and easily one of the most impressive physiques in the sport is not very lean at 235, and then some online author writes in an article about how he’s an inch taller, and was lean at 280 lbs,… well, you need to know that he’s lying his ass off -lol.
I have a question for you. This has been bugging me all week, and I have to admit that I hate myself for even having the thoughts of “Is he natty?” This dude’s abs look ridiculous and I just can’t comprehend how one would develop like this without some sort of exogenous help… So, in your professional opinion, natty or not?
Shape, yes. This guy’s abdomen measurement is quite a bit bigger than his waist, but as you can see, he has low body fat. It looks more like the distended gut you can see on bodybuilders who heavily use PEDs.
Edit: He recently posted that his abs are a result of years of power lifting and Olympic lifting. Bracing under heavy loads has created the blocky look you see there.
It gets a bad rep from power-lifters and people who train for the wrong goal (gym goers who wanna build muscle as maximum as possible but trains like a power-lifters). It is people who benching 1-3 reps every time he works out chest and wonder how his chest can’t grow. Or failed bodybuilder like Jason Blaha who says a lot of shit about volume training and advocates 5x5 for building muscle as maximum as possible LOL.
Even Dorian Yates training style is still a lot of volume, especially for bigger muscle group like back he did many sets, and most importantly each working set was to failure, so that’s a lot.
I don’t think so. your edit about oly and power lifting makes sense to me, along with crossfit stuff. Same thing happens in strongman. It’s happened to me over the past couple years. My midsection has gotten thicker than it used to be, I believe from carrying heavy loads frequently for strongman, as well as heavy deadlifting and squatting. The blocky look seems to be common for strength athletes who get that lean. It’s why guys like Larry Wheels and Mark Bell could never be great bodybuilders. That thickness in the mid section is too much. Terry Hollands is a great example too, he recently dieted down for his first bodybuilding show, after being a top WSM competitor for years.
Is this from personal knowledge of the guy, are you saying it because of his appearance, or his performance? Or some combination of those?
His appearance is definitely something a guy with solid genetics can achieve naturally. No question on that. His main lifts are also pretty mundane. 515 back squat and 585 deadlift? I mean they’re solid, but not extraordinary. clean and jerk 315, snatch 285… also respectable but not earth shattering.
So all that being said, I tend to assume most top level athletes, including those in crossfit, have at least dabbled in PED use. There’s nothing about this guy, specifically, that screams that to me. But it’s certainly possible, maybe even likely. So to me, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s legit natty, wouldn’t surprise me if he’s assisted. Either is possible.
He had been suspended for a year for lying about his location and not cooperating with testers and I believe he was caught using HGH, claimed it was to help heal an injury. Where there is smoke there is fire.
Also, while agree that a genetically gifted individual can reach that size naturally, carrying that size at a low body fat and performing at a high level daily, to me seems less likely.
I’m with flip with this one, lots of heavy lifting and bracing has prob made his mid section thicker, add in a bit of pelvic tilt, a days full of eating and drinking and some gut inflamation and it could stick out like that and have abs. I know mine does if I stand poorly at the end of a full days eating!
But aren’t all of these guys on PEDs? I once heard that the distended gut thing was a result of injecting HGH through the belly button. The guy who told me was no stranger to PED use so I believed him.
His abs look like that every day.
I don’t really care one way or another. I’m in support of using PED’s if that’s what you want to do. For some reason, this one has just been bugging me. I think I just want to know if PEDs caused that type of ab/gut development. It’s intriguing. I can’t take my eyes off of it.
Gotcha. Yea I asked because I literally had no idea who this guy was, all I know about him came from a quick google search. Based on that, yea. PED’s, no question.
agreed as well. Less likely for sure. I mean, the better the athlete is at whatever he does, the more likely he is to be on PED’s in general. The biggest, fastest, strongest humans in the world are the most likely to be on PED’s. The slowest and weakest humans are the least likely. And everyone else falls someone on the spectrum, lol.
Yes they are. But successful bodybuilders are able to, mostly, avoid the blocky look. That’s the point. The best bodybuilders and the best strength athletes are on PED’s, but only the strength athletes are universally blocky. Hopefully that makes sense.
I think the pelvic tilt has more to do with this particular case than a distended gut. Just what I’m getting from looking at it. The distended gut in high level bodybuilders is definitely a thing, but it usually occurs later in their careers, takes awhile to develop, and presumably as a result of craaaaazy high doses, that would presumably be much higher than this dude. He’s 175 lbs.
My theory on the distended gut in bodybuilders is that there are 3 main possible reasons for it, and it could be some combination of them. 1 is the massive eating. 2 is the HGH. 3 is the insulin. It’s very possible that, say, the massive eating coupled with either the HGH or insulin abuse could lead to this. It’s pure speculation, but based on when we started seeing these guts in bodybuilding history, it seems likely to me.
Sorry for the late response. Lonnie’s post nailed the issue on its head.
This might not sound like a great answer, but when I did splits I simply copied what I saw most bodybuilders doing. As Stu said, there was an increase in volume when I did my prep with him, but as he knows, I did not always do the amount he wrote. If an exercise was done by a certain set, I ended it and moved onto the next one. Say for example, there were 4 sets of squats written, but I was clearly finished by set 3, the exercise was done. I did cut down on sets towards the end of the prep, when training was done exhausted.
I’ve said it over and over throughout the years. Really, all top bodybuilders pretty much follow the same scheme: 3 to 5 sets of 6-8 reps or 8-15 reps, depending on the exercise. I haven’t seen anyone very impressive do anything else. And also, as I said before, there are some who get caught up in the minutia of details in training, but most don’t even know and never knew who Israetel, Poliquin, PC, and CT are or what are fancy programs. I am not, repeat, NOT, ripping on these people, considering they have taught me some stuff and do have some useful information, but this lack of knowing who such people are shows how simple this has been!
If you have a lot of experience you will know your body and what it can handle.
When I was doing MD training, I found during the last few exercise i was shot mentally and was putting lack luster effort in the last few sets
I cut one set off per exercise during the day and the last sets of the last exercises were much more productive. Also I think muscle glycogen was so depleted at the end of the workout I was flat and fatigued.
So in hindsight intra carbs would of definitely helped. A bowl of oats can only go so far lol
And here’s a key point that I think people who think Volume = volume for volumes sake don’t truly grasp. It’s about doing productive sets. If you can’t do more, don’t. If you can if you rest longer and stay on top of your recovery game (a la Bill Pearl and so many 1950’s lifters) then go right ahead and reap the rewards.
Exactly. 4 more sets of hams when your shot isn’t going to benefit anything. Go home, rest, identify if the issue is programming, diet, recovery issues.
6 hard ass sets is more beneficial than 10 mediocre sets.
Now, maybe with more rest, carbs, ect next time you can do 8 hard ass sets.
