[quote]Iron Dwarf wrote:
[quote]DeltaOne wrote:
Proud_Virgin, please explain what the hell do you mean with “muscle quality”. Please.
I wasn’t aware that the body made “second hand” muscle.[/quote]
Damn, Delta! You’re looking awesome![/quote]
Thanks ID, I appreciate it 
[quote]Proud_Virgin wrote:
Sorry I’m kind of in a rush–gotta check my T-Nation though!–but I’ll write out a more thorough post about this tomorrow. But the picture of Arnold I posted a few pages back is a good example…do you see how hard & dense he looks? the striations in his chest? Competitors today generally look smooth, even when they are lean & dry on stage. See Andreas Munzer for a really extreme example of quality muscle.
And yeah you look THICK. Way to keep improving[/quote]
Thank you! I must apologize for the tone in my post above.I get a bit irritated when people talk about “muscle quality”. There’s no such thing. If one individual is on drugs, no matter what kind of dosage or stack, the organism will still produce muscle the same way it always did, of the same “quality”. The only variable here is that drugs will allow the organism to metabolize proteins and amino acids faster and more efficiently, and generate muscle tissue at a faster rate, with less margin for catabolism.
I once had a physiology teacher; with a doctorate and years of research and knowledge under his belt tell me that anabolic and androgenic hormones, would not only change how the muscle looked but muscle generated under the use of those substances would be of lesser quality. I proved this guy wrong after a long time of us bickering back and forth, because he wouldn’t show evidence to support this claim even though I kept dropping piles of studies on his desk.
Back to the subject.
The reason why you have the impression today’s competition looks inferior than Golden Age standards can be quite a few.
There’s improvements in the drug department. Back then there wasn’t as many “exotic” compounds as there is today. Hormones were legal so there weren’t any UGL’s around trying to come up with new esters and changing the structure of test molecules to produce new compounds. GH and Insulin were unknown back then ( all GH from before 1985 was recycled from dead bodies and would cause a disease that can be described as mad cow disease ); as far as I can tell there was some kind of social stigma on insulin use by diabetics ).
Fast forward a few decades and you got GH which acts on bone and soft tissue and skin as well as muscle. You got exotic compounds such as Masteron, Nandrolone NPP, Trembolone, Anadrol, and a shitload of other stuff I can’t even name that thickens the skin and stimulates sebaceous glands, making striations less likely to appear. Insulin which causes water retention and organ growth. Several different kinds of peptides, each with a different use and a long list of long-term side effects as well.
Then you can also take into account that back then strong diuretics were always used pre-contest to achieve that “hard and solid” mode". This is something that competitors have stopped doing ( think of Paul Dillet freezing on stage ) because more and more guys started getting kidney problems and other shit due to this.
There’s also the fact judges back then were looking for mass + aesthetics. There was a great emphasis nailing down conditioning come show time ( Frank Zane ). This has little place in a era where mass counts for everything.
And many many other factors. I forgot half the shit I was gonna post because I’m sleepy. But I think I explained my points. Sorry for the wall of text.
