True. But the vacuum pose is somewhat of a “forgotten” pose, and is very effective at enhancing the illusion of wide shoulders and a very small waist. In the pics that Mak posted, Sergio, Haney, and Arnie are all doing vacuum poses, none of the modern BB’ers are.
.
this hits the nail on the head. NONE of the older pics can be used AT ALL for comparison because they are all performing the vacuum pose, which creates an illusion of a super thin waist, compared to the photos of modern bodybuilders who aren’t performing said pose.[/quote]
True. But the primary difference is that the mass monsters of today have abused HGH, resulting in that look. A properly exercised abdomen does not look like that even when relaxed.
one reason why the waists of todays mass monster bodybuilders are so large is because they out weigh arnold and the sergios of the 70’s and 80’s by at least 50 pounds or more so obviously their obliques and abs are going to be larger!
[quote]Rat Poison wrote:
one reason why the waists of todays mass monster bodybuilders are so large is because they out weigh arnold and the sergios of the 70’s and 80’s by at least 50 pounds or more so obviously their obliques and abs are going to be larger![/quote]
I don;t know why people think you are going to carry that much extra size but not gain any more size in the muscles around your waist. Unless you want these guys to crack in half, it is expected that if some guy is actually nearly 300lbs in contest shape, they are going to have to be thicker in the midsection so they can fucking WALK.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Rat Poison wrote:
one reason why the waists of todays mass monster bodybuilders are so large is because they out weigh arnold and the sergios of the 70’s and 80’s by at least 50 pounds or more so obviously their obliques and abs are going to be larger!
I don;t know why people think you are going to carry that much extra size but not gain any more size in the muscles around your waist. Unless you want these guys to crack in half, it is expected that if some guy is actually nearly 300lbs in contest shape, they are going to have to be thicker in the midsection so they can fucking WALK.[/quote]
But their bellies protrude, I think all should be proportional.
[quote]juanjromero wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Rat Poison wrote:
one reason why the waists of todays mass monster bodybuilders are so large is because they out weigh arnold and the sergios of the 70’s and 80’s by at least 50 pounds or more so obviously their obliques and abs are going to be larger!
I don;t know why people think you are going to carry that much extra size but not gain any more size in the muscles around your waist. Unless you want these guys to crack in half, it is expected that if some guy is actually nearly 300lbs in contest shape, they are going to have to be thicker in the midsection so they can fucking WALK.
But their bellies protrude, I think all should be proportional. [/quote]
Please. Coleman doesn’t even compete anymore and WHEN was the last time Rhul has won any contest?
This is what gets to me. Most of you couldn’t name even 5 people CURRENTLY competing AND WINNING, yet you have the nerve to focus on the largest bodybuilders from 5 years ago as if that is the all encompassing image in all of professional bodybuilding.
As others have pointed out, they are doing vacuum poses in the pics from earlier bodybuilders. They aren’t doing them in the more recent pics. That makes a HUGE fucking difference when comparing two different photos of two different people in two completely different eras.
Go look up Melvin Anthony, Ben White, Wolf or Heath and then we can talk. Until then, most of you are just coming across uninformed.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Rat Poison wrote:
one reason why the waists of todays mass monster bodybuilders are so large is because they out weigh arnold and the sergios of the 70’s and 80’s by at least 50 pounds or more so obviously their obliques and abs are going to be larger!
I don;t know why people think you are going to carry that much extra size but not gain any more size in the muscles around your waist. Unless you want these guys to crack in half, it is expected that if some guy is actually nearly 300lbs in contest shape, they are going to have to be thicker in the midsection so they can fucking WALK.[/quote]
I am sure that all the general muscle size they gain would inevitably thicken torso muscles. Certainly a Ruhl upper body over an Arnold waist would actually look disproportionate
A look at the lineup of recent Mr O’s show quite a few pros dont really suffer disproportionate midsections as such, but as so called ‘mass monsters’ have become fashionable in the last 15+ years so a few nasty looking midsections show up time to time. It’s that look of being pregant yet with abs that really looks bizarre, but I suspect not many like that are going to place high and I think onlookers tend to exagerate how common it is.
Nor were pros of the past immune, even watching the great Ed Corney pose shows the occasional lapse and protruding belly, though he could pull it in tight. Plenty of less famous pros of the past were a little wide too. Picking out the tiniest waists - Zane had an almost instantanous vacuum pose - would frighten small children with that, and Makkawy, well i’m not sure he actually had a waist in more than 2 dimensions! Of course neither were massive (though makkawy’s arms were (relatively) incredible.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
juanjromero wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Rat Poison wrote:
one reason why the waists of todays mass monster bodybuilders are so large is because they out weigh arnold and the sergios of the 70’s and 80’s by at least 50 pounds or more so obviously their obliques and abs are going to be larger!
I don;t know why people think you are going to carry that much extra size but not gain any more size in the muscles around your waist. Unless you want these guys to crack in half, it is expected that if some guy is actually nearly 300lbs in contest shape, they are going to have to be thicker in the midsection so they can fucking WALK.
But their bellies protrude, I think all should be proportional.
Please. Coleman doesn’t even compete anymore and WHEN was the last time Rhul has won any contest?
This is what gets to me. Most of you couldn’t name even 5 people CURRENTLY competing AND WINNING, yet you have the nerve to focus on the largest bodybuilders from 5 years ago as if that is the all encompassing image in all of professional bodybuilding.
As others have pointed out, they are doing vacuum poses in the pics from earlier bodybuilders. They aren’t doing them in the more recent pics. That makes a HUGE fucking difference when comparing two different photos of two different people in two completely different eras.
Go look up Melvin Anthony, Ben White, Wolf or Heath and then we can talk. Until then, most of you are just coming across uninformed.[/quote]
Well-said. However, Coleman and the like have unfortunately become the poster children for modern bodybuilding. It’s an uninformed but not unforgiveable mistake.
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
BONEZ217 wrote:
The point is that Coleman and Rhul can’t even pull off the vacuum. That has to be part of the reason it isn’t seen anymore. They enhanced their taper by building gigantic delts, as opposed to sacrificing muscle size to keep a smaller waist. When todays bodybuilders are on stage they are actually sucking in their gut and they STILL look like that.
Sucking in their gut? Yeah. But most don’t practice the vacuum pose anymore. Rusty Jeffers is the only IFBB pro who still does a vacuum pose to the best of my knowledge. I do recall though that Coleman actually did practice the vacuum for a while to improve his appearance of a small waist while on stage. So you may be right in some cases.[/quote]
Just so everything is clear…
I was just referring to the pics of Ron. I’ve watched a few of his posing routines and if a snapshot was taken while he is walking around relaxed/unflexed his stomach would be even rounder than it looks in the above pictures. I didnt mean that he was attempting to do a vacuum pose. And in my opinion as long as the actual poses look a certain way it doesn’t really matter that much what his midsection looks like when hes not flexing for a specific pose.
(Not directly addressed to you Sentoguy)
As far as the effects of a big waist on proportion goes, I think that if you look at the sheer size of the modern guys’ upper bodies (span of the delts/lat width) and compare the number(s) to pervious generations, then look at the their respective waist sizes I don’t think they would be terribly unproportional. I mean seriously, Ron won his fair share of competitions, he couldn’t have been THAT unproportional. What the average person thinks looks good is a completely different story.
[quote]BONEZ217 wrote:
Just so everything is clear…
I was just referring to the pics of Ron. I’ve watched a few of his posing routines and if a snapshot was taken while he is walking around relaxed/unflexed his stomach would be even rounder than it looks in the above pictures. I didnt mean that he was attempting to do a vacuum pose. And in my opinion as long as the actual poses look a certain way it doesn’t really matter that much what his midsection looks like when hes not flexing for a specific pose.
[/quote]
Gotcha. I too agree that a vacuum isn’t necessary.
I was just pointing out that the golden era guys performed vacuum’s, which make their waists look wasp thin. It’s comparing apples to oranges. If you had both groups doing the same poses I don’t think you’d see all that much different (overall) in terms of proportion.
[quote]
(Not directly addressed to you Sentoguy)
As far as the effects of a big waist on proportion goes, I think that if you look at the sheer size of the modern guys’ upper bodies (span of the delts/lat width) and compare the number(s) to pervious generations, then look at the their respective waist sizes I don’t think they would be terribly unproportional. I mean seriously, Ron won his fair share of competitions, he couldn’t have been THAT unproportional. What the average person thinks looks good is a completely different story. [/quote]
Do you all not have eyes? Professor X is entirely right that you can’t lump all modern bodybuilders together. And that many modern bodybuilders don’t have guts. But the fact that Coleman won competitions does not mean that his abdomen wasn’t grossly distended in a way that had nothing to do with highly-developed ab muscles. It absolutely was. The judges simply didn’t care.
[quote]jsbrook wrote:
Do you all not have eyes? Professor X is entirely right that you can’t lump all modern bodybuilders together. And that many modern bodybuilders don’t have guts. But the fact that Coleman won competitions does not mean that his abdomen wasn’t grossly distended in a way that had nothing to do with highly-developed ab muscles. It absolutely was. The judges simply didn’t care.[/quote]
I agree JS. I think the judges were too in awe of Coleman’s superhuman amounts of muscle to get stuck on the fact that he didn’t have the smallest waist on stage.
I think that the first comparison pic (between Zane and Ruhl) is the best one of the three. And, to my eye it looks like Ruhl’s waist is just as small (proportionally) as Zane’s.
Like I said before too, genetics play a big role in this. Not every golden era guy had a waist like Brian Buchanan, just like some modern day guys like Will Harris and Dexter Jackson do have small waists.
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
Do you all not have eyes? Professor X is entirely right that you can’t lump all modern bodybuilders together. And that many modern bodybuilders don’t have guts. But the fact that Coleman won competitions does not mean that his abdomen wasn’t grossly distended in a way that had nothing to do with highly-developed ab muscles. It absolutely was. The judges simply didn’t care.
I agree JS. I think the judges were too in awe of Coleman’s superhuman amounts of muscle to get stuck on the fact that he didn’t have the smallest waist on stage.
I think that the first comparison pic (between Zane and Ruhl) is the best one of the three. And, to my eye it looks like Ruhl’s waist is just as small (proportionally) as Zane’s.
Like I said before too, genetics play a big role in this. Not every golden era guy had a waist like Brian Buchanan, just like some modern day guys like Will Harris and Dexter Jackson do have small waists.[/quote]
Agreed. Ruhl looked pretty good. Whether or not it was as small proportionately as Zane’s, he had a flat stomach and not a distorted bowling ball abdomen like some modern bodybuilders. Everyone’s going to be different. Like I said, you can only make your waist so small through proper abdominal training (vaccums and not overworking obliques). It only goes so far. Beyond that, body structure is what it is. But it’s pretty damn clear from looking whether someone has big ab muscles and highly developed obliques or whether they’ve abused HGH.