In my opinion the greatest natural physiques that normal men could hope to achieve ceased to exist after the late 50's. I remember watching a certain 70s documentary as a young impressionable boy about bodybuilding legends in Venice Beach, I didn't realise until I was older and started really educating myself about the iron game that these guys were all on steroids . Up until this point I'd foolishly believed that if I just trained, longer, harder , and exactly like they did then I'd look like them. It's kind of like that moment when you find out as a kid that Father Xmas does not exist and it was a lie all along.
Lifting weights was supposed to be a health benefit, eating healthy, training hard, progressing, thats the reason why I still haul my carcass into my freezing garage to try and get stronger and fitter than before, and I'm sure you all do the same.
But the current climate of strength and fitness sports seem to revolve around who can abuse the most body altering drugs whilst lying to everyone around you that you are natural and did it all yourself. Natural trainees do not usually have 20 inch arms with 5 percent body fat, those people are either in the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent or are on something. That's not me, and I doubt that it's you otherwise you wouldn't even be on here reading these articles.
Have you ever noticed that the old-time bodybuilder's and strength trainers still looked great in their 50s 60s and 70s ? Whilst nowadays 3 years after retiring modern bodybuilder's look like a guy who's never lifted in his life? We've all seen it happen, even to people around us . The reason ? Real strength training builds real muscles and real physiques for real people . That's a fact that's been known since Milos Of Croton lifted a calf everyday until it became progressively heavier. I'm pretty sure he didn't have access to testosterone other than his own either.
Being strong and healthy is a benefit that most people take for granted until it's taken away from them, to abuse that by cheating is just cheating yourself in the long run . The greatest physiques ever built were built naturally using just hard work and determination.
Last year I went to the biggest fitness expo in Europe, the look nowadays seems to be big arms, no back, no legs, big shoulders. It's horrifying if im honest, the majority of these guys would be lucky if they weighed more than 170lb and could bench more than 120lb if I had to guess. Sometimes progress is a bad thing, and the only light at the end of this very dark tunnel is people like Mr Whelan and his friends writing and keeping the real business of strength and fitness alive.
