Is this true?

1. Almost all bodybuilding supplements DON'T WORK and are a complete joke and only make a 5% difference ASSUMING your diet and training plan are in order.

2. Traditional bodybuilding programs would lead you to believe that "shocking" your muscles with "different angles," "feeling the burn," and "splitting up your body parts" is effective but they are dead wrong.

3. Imitating the instruction of champion bodybuilders is a costly mistake because their advice has no practical relevance for average people like you and me. They will not tell you that drugs and genetics are responsible for curing their problem of being a hardgainer. They claim it's supplements and "better training."

4. Every bodybuilding magazine is owned and operated by a supplement company, which is why these mags look like massive supplement catalogs. If you've reading up on what supplements works, don't bother because you're getting biased opinions.

5.Lastly, legendary physiques were not built on silky smooth machines and bogus exercise equipment like the Bowflex, Total Gym 100 or the Weider Max 5000.

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Would like to hear your thoughts on this?

Won't get any arguments from me.

me neither

It's not damning enough

a resounding Yes from mr Pb

4 is wrong. If a supplement company owned a mag it would only advertise it's own products.
They just cram them full of ads from anyone who will pay...so they are owned by greedy good for nothings, not supplement companies

Talking from experience and not many years of experience nothing comes close to compound weights with normal meals meat;chicken;fish;eggs;milk;oats etc.

Isolating every single muscle on machines and taking protein pownders will take forever and give in return very little hypertrophy, in comparison.

I take protein but i dont substitute it with a normal meal.

I eat a protein rich meal and also have the added protein from the powder.

I meant protein supplements like WPC WP.

I'm not a bodybuilder but can I give my opinion?

1. 100% true

The others I'm more skeptical about.

Some people are hardcore 'you MUST squat/bench/dead to get huge!' and anything less than the Rippetoes routine is going to fail. But in my year under the bar I've seen some really huge guys (and some really huge guys with chicken legs to the point I thought it was a cartoon) who do very little of the big compound work, mostly stuff like lat pulls, t bar row machines, leg extensions and a shoulder press machine.

Bodybuilding doesnt really have many parameters apart from high volume/moderate intensity, a couple of basic compounds and a focus on 'gorging the muscle'. The best bodybuilders are the ones that train instinctively - sure they keep the mandatory squats, bench and deadlifts (though with much high volume) but thats about it.

I think thats where a lot of the machines come in. Some isolation exercises are very specific to people - a tricep pushdown might be rubbish to one user but an awesome tricep builder for another. Also, jumping on a pec deck allows you to 'gorge' a muscle without ruining your CMS, something you cant do with an overhead press.

Again, I lift for strength and bodybuilding doesnt interest me all that much, but if I were going to do so I'd probably make a 4 day split with a day for the squat, bench, deadlift and press (legs/chest/back/shoulders+arms, essentially upper/lower) for maybe 4-5 sets of 10 and apart from those staples just do what I feel like session to session - so after squats I might do lunges for a couple of weeks, but then hit up the leg press.

I'll probably get hammered for this especially by the 'hardgainers' who need a more minimal approach but this seems to work for most bodybuilders.

5.Lastly, legendary physiques were not built on silky smooth machines and bogus exercise equipment like the Bowflex, Total Gym 100 or the Weider Max 5000.

Totally false
Are you trying to say that Chuck Norris does not have a legendary physique?
There is none more legendary !!!

We all know that all you need is a barbell, plates, a rack, chinning and dip bar- a hand full of exercises done brutally hard and infrequently.

If the muscle and fiction magazines adopted this- they would go out of business rather quickly.

Not really, Silverback. While there are beginner routines that work for any healthy adult, they could also offer routines and training advice for people who are obese, have kyphosis, scoliosis, muscle imbalances caused by tennis or rowing, who are recovering from knee reconstructions, are elderly, who want to be better at football, who want to be better at volleyball, diabetics, people who are healthy adults but intermediates, who want to focus on their calves, and so on and so forth.

Personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches don't simply give the person a cookie cutter routine and then count reps. They give information appropriate to each person's strengths, weaknesses and goals. That's information which could be in a strength and fitness magazine.

Of course, each article written must be paid for by the editors and takes time, whereas if the articles are written by the supplement producers, the supplement producers pay the editors to write the articles, and it takes the editors no time or trouble to deal with them. Add in a few recycled articles written a couple of years ago, fill in with adverts and there's your mag.

As we've seen with newspapers, proper professional writing is time-consuming and expensive. Bullsht with no experience, thought or research in it is quick and cheap.

If all these magazines did was to promote the same stuff over and over as in "get big and strong using what I'd mentioned plus saying all you need is good food and sleep, it would be a very boring magazine.

I think I'm reading you correctly? I don't think it would be a good idea to suggest cherry picked routines for rehab or sport use and place them in a magazine for the general public?

Silverback is right.

The basics never change. The methods of selling people shortcuts do.

There is no shortcut to any place worth going.

We have become a society of wanting results now with the least amount of effort.

Advertising and the media feeds off it.

NPR said:

Silverback is right.

The basics never change. The methods of selling people shortcuts do.

There is no shortcut to any place worth going.

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Spot-on
"There is no shortcut to any place worth going"

Silverback said:

We have become a society of wanting results now with the least amount of effort.

Advertising and the media feeds off it.

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Nothing wrong with wanting it, everything wrong with expecting it.

Supplements are everything.

apiewithhoboliftingaroma said:

Supplements are everything.

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explain more. I have found that using no supplements (besides WPI) ive made substantial gains with eating right and training hard.