“Steroids”!!

I hit the gym occasionally. I’m far from a huge, buff dude, but I do try to take care of myself. I have my “50 years” plan where I’m going to try to get in the best shape of my life for the age of 50, but I still have a few years for that. With the stay at home orders from the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been having pretty good success lately with making some gains. There has been little else to do but workout at home, and my wife was a personal trainer, so we have a pretty good home gym set up.

To try and keep motivated I follow a bunch of fitness themed Instagram pages and during some browsing I came across this post/photo:

Now, I don’t mind admitting that this is perhaps not the most flattering pic in the world, but the guy is definitely “jacked”; and at 73 years old that is a hell of a physique!

Of course the comments were filled with cries of “steroids”, and I have thoughts about that. My first thought is: “who friggin’ cares?!?!” As a man ages the testosterone levels in your body naturally decrease. So this guy is almost definitely on something. Steroids pretty much always have a detrimental health effect, but the guy is 73! Chances are something is gonna get him in the not too terribly distant future anyway. My opinion: if you are that age and so inclined, go for it!

My second thought is: “how do you think steroids work?!?!” I have come across so many posts of “big” guys where people have cried “steroids”. I think people just wanna believe that its drugs and not hard work that gets people looking like that. For those people I have some info: steroids aren’t a magic potion. You don’t take them and wake up the next day with muscles. They promote muscle growth. They (basically) take 5 years of grueling work and condense it down in to 3 years. To get a crazy muscled physique you still have to hit the gym very hard, very regularly for those years to get the results.

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The fine print: Steroids are bad for you, ok? This article is just meant for information purposes and is not an endorsement.

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Regardless if you are taking steroids or not, the building of muscle requires the lifting of heavy things and nothing short of that will make much of a difference. It takes years of hard work and dedication. Pointing of fingers and the shouting of “steroids” at everyone that is well muscled only reveals the ignorance of the shouter.

(This guy is ridiculous though. You can point and shout at this guy.)