Mighty Stu, cmon big dog. Are you really saying 250 at 10 percent is not achievable after years of AAS use and proper training and diet?
Again, you guys keep using folks in contest condition. You, of all people know this Stu…
when you walk on that stage, you are dry as the Sahara, and so shredded you have ab vascularity.
Dexter Jackson is a manlet at 5’6”. And I’m not telling you anything you don’t know when I say that 4 days after the show, assuming he doesn’t have any photo shoots or guest posing to stay in shape for, he’s easily 230+
I agree with you. It is extremely rare, but is the upper limit of what is achievable by most people, with years of extreme dedication and AAS use. And anyone who exceeds it is a genetic outlier I mentioned earlier, the top 1%, which none of us can aspire to.
You guys talking about 250 at 10% are leaving out a HUGE piece of the equation… HEIGHT. Same stats at 6’7” would be a dude who looked pretty good, dude at 6’ would be a monster.
We should co create a bodybuilding federation wherein only those with the worst genetics could join.
To qualify you need to have calves inserting at least it five inches above the ankle, biceps that when flexed one can fit four fingers between the crease of the forearm and start of the bicep muscle, waist wider than shoulders etc.
It’ll be called the WGBF (worst genetics bodybuilding foundation).
That sounds about right from what I’ve seen/experienced.
I’ve never worn ‘gear’ outside of a deadlift suit (I compete in strongman, not really PL), so it’s harder for me to speak to that, but I can look up the numbers in the record books to compare geared and raw lifts for that.
As far as AAS, I think 20% is a good baseline expectation to work from.
That is pretty much how Nuckols reached his conclusion, using Fat Free Mass Index as a metric. The excerpt below, from toward the end of the article, provides a good summary. The entire article is worth reading. The top line quote doesn’t do it justice.
How much of an advantage do drugs provide for hypertrophy?
Without drugs, the typical trained male winds up with an FFMI around 22.3, for a gain of 3.4 FFMI points. That’s about 9-13kg (~20-30lbs) of muscle, depending on height, gained over a training career.
With a reasonable degree of drug usage, the typical trained person winds up with an FFMI around 25.5, for a gain of 6.6 FFMI points. That’s about 20-24kg (~45-55lbs) of muscle, depending on height, gained over a training career.
In other words, there’re a roughly two-fold difference. That doesn’t mean that a user winds up with twice as much muscle; it means that users will typically wind up around twice as far from their starting point than nonusers.
With extreme usage, the gap gets dramatically larger. The top IFBB pros have FFMIs around 40, which is 21.1 points better than the average person. Of course, not everyone who does that amount of drugs will compete in the Mr. Olympia, but the top IFBB pros are about 6x further from the average person than the typical drug-free lifter is.
Naturally, the magnitude of that advantage that drugs provide will be larger or smaller based on the amount of drugs someone takes, their genetics, and how well they respond to drugs.