Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log

+1, insanely impressive

Thanks, fellas.

Legs
Hip thrust: 2ppsx15,12,10
Leg press: 4ppsx21, 16, 13
Calf raise: 4ppsx20x3
Hamstring curls+leg extensions: 3 sets and 5 sets to failure but shorter than usual rests.
63 minutes

Calf raises were surprisingly cardio exhausting and I'm gonna skip them henceforth. I can get this workout down 50-55 minutes. I don't need to train calves if I'm walking 12k+ steps/day

Steps: 22k

After lifting went for a "medical pedicure" idk what to call it. Basically shaved all my calluses off. Hurts like hell the next day but I think it'll help heal so I can get back to it. I might take off steps today and just get 10k and do some cycling.

Plan update: I wanna see exactly how far I can push with conditioning. Diet will end last week of June and then I'll do another diet break/reset and eat prepped clean meals when I'm in Thailand around 300p/500c/40f cheat meals 2x/wk for 5-6 weeks then get right back into another fat loss phase. I had an epiphany that the people who are the leanest on stage are actually not the ones who dieted the hardest, on average. It's actually the people who dieted the "softest" but started the leanest. I suspect in the photo above my bodyfat could be as high as 11%, just my fat storage patterns are such that my lower body disproportionately stores more fat and even though my upper looks like other people's 8%, my lower looks like other people's 15%. I'd also just generally like to be leaner in the offseason for health/aesthetics. I have more than enough size to be winning any amateur classic physique show including pro qualifiers, I just need the conditioning and the easiest way to get that is to be leaner in the offseason.

Macros adjusted to 300/300/20. It feels a bit crazy to be dieting on 300g carbs but if I'm lower than that I just seem to suffer a big performance loss. My daily activity/NEAT is several fold higher than most people even when I'm not actively trying to push step count up where it typically sits around 12k, so when other people talk about dieting on 140g carbs and 1hr/cardio, that doesn't necessarily apply to me as they're dieting on 5k steps very often.

I did bloodwork in Thailand back in October at my fattest and heaviest and then recently this month. Despite being on harsher AAS, my bloodwork while cutting was significantly healthier. 30mg tren ace/day and 50mg anavar/day and my liver enzymes were *almost* in normal range even just 10 hours after a leg workout. By contrast in October they were significantly out of range. Here's my take on what's been happening: My upper body relative leanness has fooled me into taking my bulks way too far. The fatter you are, the more calories you need to add muscle and overeating is generally really bad for your liver. As it turns out from my bloodwork, low AAS+too much overeating is worse than high AAS+hypocaloric diet. Low AAS+small surplus should be the healthiest of all. I need to stay leaner and do relatively shorter bulks where I cut things off at a fairly low bodyfat. Blood glucose was also 105 in October vs 83 now. I wasn't using insulin in October and probably need to do basal 20iu low dose lantus offseason with just a tad of humalog pre and post even when keeping bodyfat low. I also only started taking Metformin regularly in March. My hypothesis is that by maintaining a leaner offseason I'll end up with probably actually better gains from better liver health, better insulin sensitivity, better digestion, and the better nutrient partitioning that accompanies all of that.

Remember my reference point is not natties on this forum. It's not even enhanced gym bros who don't compete or novice competitors, it's now advanced competitors who are 0-3 years away from earning pro cards in men's physique or classic. And in China where people are generally much more conditioned than America, I need to be even leaner on stage. Whiteknuckling through extreme diets isn't for me, I'd rather just have more discipline and controlled weight gain offseason than do some crazy ass DNP, 2hrs cardio, 150g carbs kind of bullshit and be able to diet on 300-400g carbs the whole way through because I started the diet at legit 13% bodyfat.

Lastly, I think its time to ease up on upper body training generally. In particular, I'm going to start taking shorter rests especially on machine presses. I think the 5-7 minute rests with balls out sets to failure in the 12+ range is just too much joint and tendon strain and by reducing rest intervals to 2-3 minutes I'll limit how much stress I can put on the connective tissue/CNS. Pull I've been gradually reducing intensity via exercise selection and ordering; basically go hard on pullups but then take the same approach of limiting rest in order to limit stress on other exercises. Doing long rests sets close to failure on things like barbell rows is a no go, but I think I can keep barbell rowing in if I do it later in the workout and intentionally limit rests. I want to continue training 6x/wk rather than 5 or 3on 1 off but I think this is going to require no more than 60 minute sessions, not 75 minute sessions. Reduce volume/intensity/rests accordingly.

This guy knows his stuff. AJ sims... I've posted a few of his sample protocols over the years in this forum. The initial protocol doesn't matter because the real service is adjusting and modifying based on people's individual variance and response, but it does give a good general overview of his overall approach. There's a little bit of what I like to call "hardcore signalling" in this video, as in any bodybuilding podcast, but also some great information. His rates aren't cheap, I believe it's around 5k usd/yr. If I try another coach (probably not), this guy or Milos Sarcev will be the ones.

He used to work with high level Olympia IFBB pros but gradually got away from this. He didn't name any names, but basically a lot of the top pros are kind of divas and difficult/entitled personalities. Now he's working more with amateur bodybuilders, lower level pros, WWE performer/athletes, and general lifestyle people. Basically nobody got their bodybuilding athletes as conditioned as this guy, and from consuming a lot of his instagram/youtube content and sample protocols, from what I can tell the reason is that he sacrifices muscle building progress in the offseason to keep guys leaner so that when they do diet, they can keep food higher and have less brutal diets and end up just more shredded. Being the biggest at the amateur and even low pro ranks in men's physique and classic physique is so seldom how you win; you win by having good genetics for your shape/insertions/aesthetics and being the leanest and most conditioned. Size starts to matter more when you're far into the pro ranks and I have no desire to ever get to that level anyway. I like being lean much more than looking big in a shirt to mog the 15 year old kids and 45kg 5'1 chinese women I spend most of my waking hours with (at work) harder. I'm definitely going to add more muscle, but I'd be perfectly satisfied if I never grew more muscle tissue and just walked around super lean and in good cardiovascular shape year-round and maybe jumped into a competition with a 12-16 week prep once a year.

re leanness, I am totally aligned. I'm not a bodybuilder and never will be but I've dropped 8-9kg this year by being very strict (for me) around diet and particularly alcohol. I've lost a little strength and no doubt some muscle but I just feel so much happier with myself and my physique now, having abs etc.

and at the end of the day, wearing a smaller sized t shirt and deadlifting 5 at 150 instead of 170 is no worse for my life and performance at all. I'm disappointed in myself that I've allowed myself to walk around at 88-90 instead of 82-84 for most of the past decade.

but the reason I'm here...I've found myself on a 'bodybuilding for over 50s' facebook page and it seems using Cialis as a pre workout is quite the thing and maybe some guys are using it every day. It looks like quite a few of the enhanced guys on there swear by it along with the rest of the stuff they're taking

Is that just a formulation that works for oldies or do you take it too? I've never had to take Viagra or Cialis so maybe it isn't quite inevitable, but I'd be terrified of getting an erection at the gym

I take 5mg cialis in the morning ever single day for general health. I notice it's fairly good for pumps in the gym. I used to have low BP but as soon as I started using growth hormone mine started getting a little high and cialis helps with that. I further added 40mg telmisartan. To answer your question directly, "yes you should take it". I think 10mg/day is well tolerated but 2.5 or 5mg daily is fine as well.

Not to get too autism about it, but a lot of that performance loss is just temporary from being glycogen depleted and leverages being less favorable. You take literally a few days/weeks to fill out and rehydrate without putting on any bodyfat and boom suddenly the performance comes back better than before you started the cut. This is especially true for pressing motions. Obviously it depends on enhanced/natty and stage of training, but somebody at your level can absolutely still be net-storing lean mass even in a deficit, but lifts might not reflect this right away.

I was forced into a day off yesterday due to my feet recovering from that medical pedicure. Got in "only" 8k steps and didn't work out. But just going from morning to evening there was huge improvement in my heel pain and even one day later this morning I'm back to normal. It feels much better than it did before I did the medi pedi and I went out and walked 8k steps before breakfast no problem. I gotta cycle 35 minutes each way to the gym to meet the fellas tonight so I might cap steps around 15-17k instead of 20k today.

Had a great day today. My winstrol dose of 100mg/day was too high and it killed my appetite and caused some slight stomach discomfort, but it might have been from adding in the condemned labz product. I dropped the winstrol yesterday but I'm keeping the condemned labz dmha product in because I'm 90% sure the winstrol was the culprit. I somehow got in 15k steps without even noticing really.

I'm logging at night instead of the morning so I don't want to write too much, but I want to make a note here for later when I can make a more well structured post about dietary periodization in bodybuilding, myths, outdated traditions, and things that people in the modern era are just now finally starting to understand that perhaps we didn't understand before. One theme I'm noticing is "people like to do things that are hard mistaking difficulty for effectiveness and making goals that can be reached easily much harder than they need to be"

Pull
T-bar chest supported row machine 1.75px15, 12, 10
Pulldowns with special attachment: 130x15, 8, 110x13, 10 all paused
Machine rows: 2ppsx12, 1.5ppsx15, 10
EZ curls: 20kgx25, 5 more sets failure no myo reppin

Posing

Steps 15k
cardio: skipped entirely, took a taxi to and from the gym instead of bicycling.

I ordered a weight vest +35kg. I should have done this a long time ago. Along the lines above, cardio I think is one instance where the most hardcore option is sometimes much LESS effective than the easier option. I hate doing cardio on a treadmill, I can tolerate stairs in cold weather but I can't during warm weather, and pure walking is plenty effective for creating a deficit but not effective for training the cardiovascular system in a way that carries over to weight room performance. Fast walking with +35kg should get me to right around 110-120 "sorta challenging but not that hard" while also being enjoyable and easy to comply with. As bodyfat got lower, temperature got hotter, stimulatory effects of clen and other fat burners waned, and glycogen got more depleted, complying with fasted stairs became almost impossible. Post training cardio slightly easier to comply with but there's only 2 peices of cardio equipment below the air conditioner and sometimes they're in use. usually the person using them isn't even turning on the AC and can't conceptualize that a large muscular trenned out dieting westerner might get VERY hot without air conditioning and I feel very rude trying to explain why I should have this spot and interrupting their cardio and asking them them to go somewhere else so I just say **** it and go home.

I'm hoping having a good weight vest I can get back in the habit of getting a decent HR up in a fasted state but still easy enough to throw on a podcast and zone out too.

Regarding rest times, I usually aim for 90-120 seconds and as much as 3 minutes or so for lower body compound movements like hack squats/split squats/RDLs. I feel like I'd be in the gym forever if I took 5-7 minutes between sets and don't think I could sanely do that unless I was supersetting exercises.

Milo Wolf had a recent video discussing the studies they've done on rest times. Fwiw, I think his takeaway was 1-2 minutes was ideal for hypertrophy depending on compound/isolation and upper vs. lower body.

This is a legit problem. When I used to even lift, it would take me about 70 min to do just do my squats. This is including warm-up (my mobility was never great so this took a long time). Things got much better when I cut back on the weight and did more of a hypertrophy style program (I'm using "program" really loosely here -- it was very unstructured).

A full SS session would take 2hrs minimum.

I hear you. I used to Oly lift and my sessions were 90 minutes at an absolute minimum. It's kind of impossible to do an Oly program or challenging 5x5 program, 531, etc. without taking huge rests between sets. I also had perpetually achy joints from running my body into the ground with heavy barbell movements.

Now I do PPL with all cables, DBs, and machines, and am usually done in 50-65 minutes. I could be more efficient with my exercises and probably get down to 45 minutes, but enjoy my time in the gym, so it's nbd.

+1

I was always weak enough at the lower body stuff that supersetting assistance work was possible, and as such my work capacity was in the "not terrible" range as opposed to Rippetoe level. As I've transitioned to purely EV lifting, I'm able to keep things even snappier, even given some of the movements are probably of questionable practicality outside of some nebulous concept of running prehab.

thanks and interesting stuff. might try it out

I seem to remember that you told me like a year ago, that PDE5 inhibitors gave you crazy headaches. What happened?

I remember those days; I was one of the ones that scoffed at the thought of using machines or cables. H&F has experienced a renaissance. I think we all got older and wiser. I used to think going HAM on barbells was the one true path, but looking back on it, I wish I got into hypertrophy training and ditched Oly/barbell lifting much much earlier.

Oly lifting was fun and all, but a bodybuilding program is generally easier on the joints and connective tissue, you look better, feel better, and are still strongish, or at least as strong as you need to be for normal everyday life.

I had side effects initially and it was rough, but I realized that if you move around a lot right after you take it you don't get the sides. Its when you are seated/laying down after dosing that the side effects occur. I have it AM fasted and I've been either walking or bicycling to work the past 3 years rather than motorcycling.

Got a lot more to say on the above posts; not n1h grunching but just kinda mentally tired today.

Legs: hamstring curls/leg extensions super sets 3 sets failure each moderate 1.5-2 minute rests
Toes elevated paused sldl: 100kgx10x2
SINGLE LEG FRONT FOOT ELEVATED SPLIT SQUATS: 20kgx15, 12, 10

I did sometehing very different on the front foot elevated split squats; I put a db in one hand and used my opposite hand to support myself and balance. boom, weird pubic bone pain vanished. Doing them with a db in each hand and having to balance was causing weird pain but doing 1 heavier dumbbell felt really good. I'm very happy to have this variation back in and think its even superior to leg press overall even if leg press is better for the tear drop. When I swap gyms in July when I move, there's a very good chance I just do FFESS as my main quad/glute compound.

I dragged myself into the gym and was feeling very bad stim crashing and had no hopes of hitting prescribed weights; the increased steps + addition of the arsynist product and resulting loss in sleep quality has me in a very bad spot recovery wise. I'm also sure it was not the winstrol and was the condemned labz arsynist product that was causing my stomach troubles, as both yesterday and today my evening appetite was strong but morning/afternoon appetite was non existent and I felt nausea. Dropping out the winstrol just in case and might restart it first week of June at just 50mg or 25mg/day sublingual before workout.

Steps got up to 18.5k so far today and it's 8pm so I may get in more, but I'll probably just give up at this point and get to bed around 10pm and enjoy tomorrow's big refeed. Cheat meal will be lunch time at the wedding and I'll try not to go overboard on that too much and try for a total of about 1500 carbs including the cheat and less than 100 fat including teh cheat.

White knuckling a little bit right now but it's the tail end of a diet phase and my lowest carb days I'm still never going below 250, so the white knuckling is more activity based rather than starvation based.

Nothing beats the feeling of walking around feeling really ****ing strong though

I’m very definitely on a BB path too and have cut out a lot of the heavy stuff and o lifts due to old man injuries but I felt invincible when I squatted heavy twice a week and nothing else has ever felt that way since

As I said the last time we had this discussion, I think lots of people don't get these side effects. I'm glad that you ultimately found a way to take them as you need. In general, they are extremely well tolerated drugs and I don't think it's because the prospect of getting your dick wet makes you forget about headaches (or whatever). I tried them once myself. Zero side effects. Then again it was only once. Don't even remember the dosage.

The one thing I do remember is that I felt like I could go forever. Have you ever even gotten close to the 4hr priapism scenario? I figure given that you are in great shape to begin with and your T is through the roof, putting a PDE5 inhibitor on top of that could lead to such a scenario. I assume it's not a problem, otherwise you wouldn't continue to take it, but I'm curious if it has come up at all.

I definitely get the appeal, especially for those not afflicted with the olds, but the psychological benefits of lifting maximal and near-maximal loads, at least for me, didn't outweigh the drawbacks of the wear and tear it caused to my body. When o-lifting, I had pretty consistent hip, knee, shoulder, and elbow aches and pains. I still have some occasional joint pain, which just comes with the territory when doing any kind of consistent resistance training (and especially now as I try to fight off the ravages of aging), but it's nowhere near what it was.

Oly lifts and the big 3 barbell movements are great for athletes and obviously WLing competitors. But it's suboptimal for dudes in their 20s, 30s, and beyond who just want to look good at the beach and want decent general fitness.

I am very lazy about getting lifting sessions these days. But my climbing sessions are silly long (minimum 2-3 hours). Back when I lifted barbells regularly, my sessions were typically around 90 minutes. Also, my rest time between climbs is way too low; if I could bring myself to rest more I would definitely climb harder.

It's cathartic and it does give you that feeling of overcoming something brutally challenging. It makes you mentally stronger and you'll be better at most sporting activities at least on the days you're not too sore. But a typical guy over age 25 or so is going to find just as much carry-over from lunges and hack squats when compared with deadlifts and high bar squats but with a fraction of the wear and tear and a lot more aesthetic gains. I don't regret my time in oly at all, but I regret how I trained. I remember fooling around with one program that I think in retrospect is very good; Joe Mills 20/20. It was a super simple program of just hitting 20 singles in each classic lift starting around 60% and ascending the weight every 5 reps until you culminate with around 5 singles at 80-90%. Finish the workout with a 3rm front squat and maybe some pullups or db pressing motion and gtfo of the gym go home. Prob about 2 hours 3x/wk training. I did it with C+2J and you could easily work in variants for weak points. This was a very good program that I of course only did for like 6 weeks before deciding I needed something more FPSy, but had I just stuck with this I would have had way better results than doing whatever ******ed Pendlay **** I settled on. Pendlay (RIP) had a terrible approach to programming overall and his athletes trained awful hard for results that were frankly not very good compared to other American coaches.

That LSUS program with the 2 jerk focused days, 1 clean focused day, 1 snatch focused day, and one classical lifts+front squat focused day and the linear periodization with a lot of exercise variety was also a very good way to train that I never did. As written it was a bit too much volume, but something like Jerk->push press->hbbs->some sort of upper body pressing not really tracking weights-> go home for the jerk days. Snatch day do snatch variant (hang, blocks, deficit, complex, whatever), snatch pull, snatch deadlift not too heavy, pullups, curls go home. Same for clean and make sure the clean DLs are no more than 110-120% of clean. Then do the classical lifts day as written with the written in periodization. Awesome way to train for a guy weak in the jerk. Abrahamovic on this board did this program.

Broz, Pendlay, and Rip had dumb ways of training whether natty or enhanced and listening to them limited my success a lot. Programming actually matters a ton in oly/pl and a lot of the voices back then were unintentionally spreading bad information about the best way to train.

We should be forgiving to ourselves. Internet fitness has come a long way since 2008-2011 when H+F had its most activity. The big problem back then with recommending SS->TM or SS->5/3/1 to the crew who wanted to look good naked was that the opposing voices at the time were very low IQ poor communicators. To give credit where its due, Rip is a very good communicator, very charismatic, and very intelligent. Everyone on this board was associated with professional or part time income poker at some point, and people who get into this invariably are higher IQ and more aspie than average. When Hany Rambod or whatever starts talking about training for normal people, we are naturally going to dismiss his ideas because he speaks like an absolute ****** and we see all of the other aspie nerd types also gravitating toward the Rippetoe school so we follow suit rationally.

Who were the voices promoting things like Push Pull Legs (high frequency hypertrophy programs in general) and more machines/dbs/cables/longevity back then? All I can remember was Kevin Levrone, and his variation of ppl still included a lot of stupid bro **** like sets of 6-8 on curls and 4-6 on flat barbell bench presses (coming from a guy who tore his pec twice). Flex Wheeler was also advocating this style of training, but he was pretty quiet on the internet in that era. Nobody was really advocating upper lower or full body hypertrophy splits that weren't based on barbells. And to make matters worse, barbell training is very ****ing effective for first 9 months. The big problem was that all of the intermediate programs we were being sold were still centered around weight progressions on barbell lifts, which just becomes far less feasible week to week or session to session for normal people in their 20s and 30s past that initial novice phase. We made up all sorts of lore about how you could prolong the novice phase by just adding in more calories and our intermediate programming still shunned machines/dbs/cables claiming they only worked for roiders. I remember one blog who did a huge amount of damage was 70sbig, glorifying overeating and claiming you were some sort of failure if you couldn't follow the novice SS progression to 4 plate low bar squats. Meanwhile the 70s guys they claimed to worship were doing nothing like an SS program and were doing a very traditional style American powerbuilding progression which was typically 2 bench days, 1 squat day, 1 deadlift day per week with tons of exercise variety and lots of hypetrophy work. I don't think this is necessarily a great way to train for normies, but even for pure strength athletes this is just far better than Rippetoe's approach. Nobody trains like Rip advocates at all; his own powerlifting results for enhanced single ply were a joke and some of the highest level powerlifters in the game do the "2 bench days, 1 squat with light dl day, 1 dl with light squat day" type of split. Pete Rubish and Shane Hunt come to mind. And Shane hunt does 2 hours of steady state cardio in the form of weighted vest rucks on his off days; this would have been sacrilege to Rip.

And why the heck did we worship the standing OHP so much? This lift is kinda garbage for everyone but strongman. It might have some application for oly, but almost 0 for pl and just way too much un-necessary systematic stress for normies or bodybuilding.

The proponents of bro splits were and still are, complete ******s with terrible communication skills. It was natural for high IQ aspie former poker players to dismiss everything they say and attribute the results solely to PEDs. And it was especially easy for people who had never actually taken PEDs.

I'm one of the only openly enhanced guys on here, though I'm sure there's been plenty of closet cases throughout the years. I can tell you all the knowledge on PED protocols, safety, and effectiveness has advanced more in the past 5 years than probably the previous 40+ years combined. Nobody was on medications like lantus, metformin, or telmisartan for prophylactic protection 4 years ago. Nobody was tracking step counts and realizing that you don't need to do super intense high fatigue cardio to lose fat back then. The dominant wisdom back then was to bulk as hard as possible and endure the discomfort because higher surplus=more muscle gains and then people would do absurd 16 week diets starting from way too fat and build up ridiculous amounts of fatigue and be unable to function as normal human beings with careers because their contest prep fat loss phases were all-consuming. The next evolution in enhanced BB is people finally realizing that larger surplus=/= more muscle gains past a certain point, no matter how many PEDs you're on, staying much leaner in the offseason and adding muscle just as fast but with a fraction of the fat, and sustainable easy to comply with dieting phases where you can get legit stage lean and still perform your daily functions as a boyfriend/husband/father and in your career.

I've been vocally critical about a lot of you falling into the scaremongering about PEDs, and I think some of you on this board are finally going to realize than 375 test and 800 mast per week with 5ius of gh and 15iu of lantus daily is far less risky than you've been lead to believe and is less damaging to your health than things you do without even thinking in your daily lifestyle with your food and alcohol. John Jewett and Broderick Chavez are doing a lot for PED knowledge in the modern era. Old school cycles of super high test (1500mg+), eq, and then optional nandrolone are just kinda dumb. Not as bad for you as gh15 "up the tren always" types of stuff, but extremely suboptimal and there's ways of getting the same or better results with better compound selection. It's still a decent option for the financially constrained, but Masteron Enanthate and Primobolan are emerging as new go-tos in the PED world and have so much human trial data on them and appear to be incredibly safe, effective, and well tolerated.

This whole idea of prescribed weight increases past the first few months of training is just silly and leads to these excessively long excessively fatiguing sessions that are positively counterproductive. Maybe it was just my 19 year old ****** brain, but I seem to remember believing that the increase in weight is what caused the adaption; now I understand that the adaptation causes you to be able to increase the weight. I legit thought that if you kept lifting the same weights and never increased or failed to increase at some prescribed interval, you'd do all this work but no adaptation would occur. I doubt Rip actually explained it that way and this is likely just a result of me being a stupid kid at the time, however. Either way, this emphasis on increasing weights at some interval is a bit silly and nowadays if I got the chance to coach a normal person, I'd be saying "lift at a subjective 6-8/10 intensity and add weight whenever the weights you're doing fall below that". The logbook isn't something you necessarily need to beat week to week, but more like just make sure the moving average is increasing over a 4-6 month time span (unless cutting hard, in which case just make sure it's not going down too much).

I'm surprised N1h is still such a stick in the mud bashing his head against the wall with ultra long barbell training sessions. I guarantee he has not once entered my log and has no idea what I look like and if he did he would assume it was solely the result of steroids and that he'd probably look better than me if he were on them and continued his normal training. "Kid has heart" and could be great, but somebody got to him early with really dumb Mike T **** and he's probably never going to get off it. Whether he wants to competitively powerlift or just be jacked, stay natty or get enhanced, its the wrong approach. He's the perfect type of guy to be spoonfed a training and nutrition program, but he's idiosyncratic and only responsive to information delivered in a very particular way that resonates with him.

Typed all that out and haven't even addressed the nutrition part. I'll give a TLDR of this: "Just hit your protein goals for the day and other than that eat whatever and just make sure you're in a surplus (or deficit) in accordance with your goals". This is some of the worst advice possible for anyone regardless of their stage of advancement or goals. Maybe a post on nutrition later...

We didn't know what to do back then. Not only were we younger and dumber with less first hand experience, but the information available to us was a tiny fraction of what we have available today. More importantly, the amount of really bad information was higher and was communicated in a way that would resonate with all of us. I'm "proud" of the internet fitness community for moving forward so much in terms of knowledge about training, supplementation, and diet. The people getting started today have way more signal and way less noise. I wish we'd had a Doctor Mike when we all started, but we didn't. I'm glad 2p2 didn't get into this ultra conservative mindset and updated with the times.

I'm totally open minded about PEDs and mentioned near the beginning of my blog that I'd just come off the end of a 9 month hgh cycle, which did definitely yield some good results...albeit I'm certain i was inefficient and totally ill informed in my usage. And I would definitely be open to trying other ones if I knew what I was doing and could access things safely

I can't speak for others on here but I accept and believe that the right dosage of test and maybe some other stuff (I have zero knowledge), maybe some hgh too is a net benefit to my life. But it's a super intimidating subject to get into to actually develop robust and well informed opinions on, when it's effectively illegal where you live and therefore you cant fall back on legacy/respected sources of information you think you can trust.

And most of the info seems to be driven by the bb community which is driven by more extreme trainers than the majority of us are with 'looks' and bodies more extreme than we probably want.

So...and this is just me talking about me, but I bet it reflects other opinions too....we just put it in the too hard basket and keep training for lesser rewards and accept our lot

So many guys, myself included, used weight training as some sort of outlet for catharsis when we're feeling bad internally and some sort of demonstration/signalling of our masculinity. This is not conducive to getting the best results out of weight training and ends up being sort of a form of self-harm. But it's understandable especially for young men, particularly those with some unresolved traumas. It takes a lot of insight, self awareness, and maturity to deal with those internal struggles such that you no longer feel the need for this outlet and to "prove" yourself. One of the guys in the Friday crew is still in this phase. He's 28 and a recent father so I'm sure that'll snap him out of it quickly, but it still makes me cringe partially because I was the exact same way. 2-3 hour workouts going way too hard and yelling and super high emotional arousal and aggression. He pretty much always criticizes me for "training like a pussy" when we train together even though I'm extremely far ahead of him in bodybuilding. He's with the Polish coach and blissfully unaware of what he doesn't know yet. I could tell him I've done the exact same thing he's doing now and it was positively counter productive both in life and in getting results, but I already know he won't listen. He'll learn the lesson for himself eventually, it'll just take time. He'll probably learn it quicker than me as long as he doesn't get divorced.

Nobody exemplifies this more than Jamie Lewis from Chaos and Pain. This was another blog from back in the day that did a huge amount of damage. I alluded to "hardcore signalling" where people in fitness say and write things not because they are effective, but because they act as a signal that the speaker is "hardcore". He personified this. I think he ended up in jail or something. I remember he also had some terrible blog post about why machines are bad and another about why you needed to standing OHP BWx5x5 to be a real man or something. His entire blog was an exercise in hardcore signalling masquerading as helpful advice. Even the name... so cringe. Training is orderly and fun, not chaotic and painful lol.

I was absolutely guilty. back in the day, gladiator soundtrack, mean mugging, not speaking to anyone, super focused and aggressive in the gym and using the barbell as a rage dummy and 2+ hour workouts. Nowadays I'm happy-go-lucky in the gymnasium, only get slightly pissed at people for being zerglings and crowding the equipment un-necessarily and prolonging my time in the gym such that it becomes harder for me to finish up and leave to get to bed before 9:30pm. But its not this "cathartic" thing anymore or this "look at me I'm so strong" thing at all and I've got a big smile on my face the entire time and will happily take 7 minutes out of my day to socialize if somebody comes up to me.

No death metal, anger, and ATG high bar squats until your HR reaches 195bpm. Now we're all about shirts with cute anime cats eating a fish, pedicures, shaving your body hair, and being as friendly as possible to people you meet in the gym (except trainers lol).

True, but this does seem to be changing over time. "Effectively illegal" I'd challenge though... when even top IFBB pros are admitting to using and telling what they use and nobody is in jail for anything but distribution of amounts in the millions of dollars, it might be written in the law as illegal but not illegal in practice. Tons of HRT clinics basically prescribing cycles around too for those that insist on following the letter of the law.

That said, I can sympathize on the density of the topic and the potential to **** yourself up if you consume the wrong information. Just like finding the right information about training in 2008 was an impossible task, finding the right PED information in 2024 is still exceptionally difficult. People like myself probably should try to monetize this and market services on consulting on how to most effectively and safely use PEDs for those who don't have hundreds of hours to sift through various podcasts, forum posts, and medical journals from 1987. But honestly? I feel like even I still have a lot to learn. As evidenced by recent results, I've definitely made some breakthroughs over the past 1.5 years or so.