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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2257 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 20, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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That is a wildly incorrect understanding of steroids. They don't work on their own, they make other things you are doing work better, and make it possible to work harder. The Natty or Not debate matters at the extremes, which is to say the interesting parts.

How exactly is it incorrect? There are studies that show that muscle gain on juice without resistance training beats resistance training without juice.

That study is confounded by the effects of water retention in muscles of steroid users. It's also just looking at a ten week period, you're not going to keep gaining muscle sitting on the couch.

Also, the no steroids exercise group managed to not increase their triceps size at all which doesn't really make sense.

This is an overcorrection. Steroids help build muscle at all levels of training. You definitely don't need to be elite for it to matter.

But no one really cares about the non-elite. I don't care if a guy used test to deadlift 405 when he would have achieved the same thing Natty in a few more months.

The idea that roids will cause you to gain significant muscle sitting on the couch is false.

I mean, you personally might not care whether a given person can or can't deadlift 405, or the timeframe he achieves that in - it might matter to him.

My point is that no one deadlifting 405, natty or dirty, influences the discourse.

Speaking as a pathetic failure that deadlifts around 405 myself, we're not just influencing the discourse - we are the discourse. When Sulek or Doucette or whoever gets millions of views (and the money that comes with it), that's not from millions of bodybuilders, and the 'natty or not' debate is not really about the big guy - it's about the envy and anxiety and inferiority of Average Lifter, who wants to know if there's more to being huge and attractive and successful and confident than daily cardio.

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