ARE BODYBUILDERS POSITIVE ROLE MODELS?

Today, gyms and lifting culture is strongly influenced by bodybuilding. While there are things to admire amount the dedication required to be a competitive bodybuilder don’t’ forget, the pinnacle of bodybuilding is to stand on stage covered in baby oil wearing a pair of tight underpants whilst flexing your muscles.

At the same time as this event is happening a group of men wearing suits sit in front of you and judge you by how buff you look. Not my idea of what lifting is about and not my idea of manliness, no thanks.

As ridiculous as this sounds it gets even worse. How I hear you ask whilst shaking your head in disbelief, surely the underpants and baby oil is enough? Well not only is the end result of all this training a male beauty pageant, it also renders the now enormous lifter barely capable of wiping his own backside.

The thighs, now so massive that they touch all the way to the knees are rendered almost completely useless as a mode of effective human locomotion. So massive in fact that they chaff together when walking causes a rash. The effort of climbing a flight of stairs leaves many of the larger lifter gasping for breath at the top as the strain on the heart from moving such load is palpable.

Such an enormous load also requires a ridiculous amount of calories to fuel. So much food in fact that a large portion of the lifters finances are dedicated to feeding the beast. Although not ideal, many lifters resort to highly processed, cheap, energy dense foods as a way of simultaneously consuming adequate calories and keeping the budget down.

This food, consumed in such high quantities creates a different problem. The bodily resources needed to digest the large amounts of food, eaten in multiple sitting throughout the day is enormous and side effects include digestive distress and ungodly amounts of rectal gas.

Wait a minute you say? Surely you’re explaining the symptoms of a morbidly obese person? While there are similarities there are some differences. Strength! The strength the lifter is now enjoying is limited only to benches and bars. The enormous size of the "specimen" now makes it difficult to maneuver in almost all but the largest spaces and the application of strength is often unsuccessful when trying to apply it to moving a sofa or chest of draws.

The physical cost doesn’t end there. The lifestyle is so strict that almost all foods that don’t fit in with the program are off limits. This makes eating out with friends or special occasions a bone of contention.

Oh I haven’t mentioned the the frequent consumption of the horrific chemical concoction that tastes somewhere between mouth-wash and stomach acid we call the “pre-workout” shake.

Speaking of chemicals, simply put, you can’t make it as an elite level bodybuilder without the full package. This means a short-sighted, "live for the now" concoction of anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, insulin and more!

Some lifters will argue till they’re blue in the face that these are all fine contrary to growing evidence from the scientific community linking early death from various causes to the use of these substances.

You be the judge, anabolic steroids are so powerful that they cause you to shut down your own natural production of testosterone and you need to take medication to re-start it unless you want to grow moobs (man boobs).

Growth hormone makes everything grow. This is why bodybuilders have “bubblegut,” the phenomenon of abdominal overgrow and stomach distention.

So the end product of the “elite” level bodybuilder is a strain on the heart, liver, kidneys and digestive system. A hormonal system wildly out of balance. Difficulty moving and an inconvenience to anyone who has to sit on an aeroplane next to them.

Ok I admit it, I'm being a little harsh. But my 25 plus years of experience in the health and fitness word have brought me into contact with people with the same mind set and ailments as I’ve just highlighted.

While there are obviously many more people out there who lift weighs sensibly, the main aim for many is lost and people continually gravitate towards the “hyper-normal” image of the bodybuilder as a role model and pinnacle of machismo. I would like to think that the above few paragraphs have demonstrated how ridiculous this is.

For me, lifting is about building a stronger body. A body that looks good in a pair of shorts and nothing else because that’s the end product of being athletic, lifting sensibly and controlling what you put into your body. It’s not the other way around.