Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. Source: News Limited
EMBEDDED in the body of every competitive bodybuilder you can see the signs of sacrifice. The grooves of their abdominals and their slab-like muscles tell a story of dedication and obsession, even of masochism.
Eight-time Mr Olympia Ronnie Coleman, who toured Australian recently, said bodybuilding takes "a tonne of sacrifice".
"If you want to be the best in the world you have to be willing to give up so much to be that person," he said.
So what are some of those sacrifices? What's the pain that leads to all that gain?
Ronnie Coleman: his beefcake brings all the bodybuilding enthusiasts to the yard. Picture: JJ Sassine. Source: News Limited
FOOD
IF you want to get big, say goodbye to three standard meals in a day, variety in your diet, dessert, eating in restaurants or anything with flavour. Say hello to massive portions and/or waking up in the middle of the night to feed.
Ronnie Coleman is a good example. A typical meal is two whole BBQ chickens and half a kilogram of potatoes.
"I eat chicken and rice, steak and baked potato. That's it,'' Coleman said. "I probably get in like five meals a day. Every now and then I get six."
Or have a look at Indian bodybuilder Mir Mohtesham Ali Khan, whose daily diet is reproduced on Wikipedia. It consists of 30 boiled eggs (without yolk), one kilo of chicken breasts, 12 oranges, 200 grams of green salad, one cup of sweet corn, 150 grams of oatmeal and two to four chapattis.
Closer to competition time, bodybuilders go even more hardcore, stripping back water intake in the days before events to get that "shredded" look.
It’s a gruel world: South Africa's Jooste Cornelius Hendry eats backstage at a bodybuilding competition in Austria earlier this month. AFP Photo/ Alexander Klein Source: AFP
TIME
BACK in the good ol' days - the 1970s - bodybuilders would spend up to five hours a day pumping iron in the gym, split into two, two-and-a-half-hour sessions. The prevailing wisdom these days is that an intense hourlong workout is more effective. Still, when you combine that with the hours spent preparing the six meals a day you've got to eat, and the minimum eight hours of sleep your body will need to recover from your workouts, it doesn't leave a lot of time for fripperies like working, or being in a relationship.
Online bodybuilding forums are full of time management articles, as well as a surprising number of case studies of couples who compete in bodybuilding (presumably because that's the best way they can stay in touch with each other).
Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1977 bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron. Picture: AP Photo/HBO/ George Butler Source: News Limited
MONEY
BODYBUILDING ranks right up there with playing the recorder and tabletop dancing when it comes to lucrative career choices. Oh sure, if you're at the peak of your game, you can expect some sponsorships, mainly in the forms of supplements and branded gymwear. But otherwise, the pickings are slim, and those supplements don't come cheap ($70 for a 200 ml tub of powder is not uncommon).
It has always been thus. Arnold Schwarzenegger's biographer Laurence Leamer writes about the ways in which bodybuilders earned a buck in California in the 1970s.
"Arnold saw bodybuilders living in their cars, hustling their bodies, selling steroids, doing whatever they had to do to get by," he writes in the book Fantastic: the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Arnold danced a sinuous waltz to stay away from various illegal activities that bodybuilders used to make money."
DISCOMFORT
BODYBUILDERS like to say "no pain, no gain", but nobody has really come up with a cute word that rhymes with "discomfort" to offset the little annoyances that their hobby involves. The supplement creatine, for example, can cause flatulence, stomach cramping and diarrhoea for many users. Other builders complain of thigh chafing, because their legs rub against each other when they walk.
A Tumblr devoted to bodybuilding problems lists a series of less-serious complaints. "I can't wear my favourite shirt anymore - because of my HUGE GAINS," crows one meme. "Woke up too late today - now my meal schedule is ruined," goes another. You get the idea.
The Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) takes a nap. You don’t see that in the movies. Picture: Instagram Source: Supplied
EXHAUSTION
Hugh Jackman may not be a competitive bodybuilder, but his physique must rate as one of Hollywood's most ripped.
But it comes at a cost, as he revealed recently. For his role in the film Prisoners, he followed a strict diet created by former Men's Fitness magazine editor-in-chief David Zinczenko - and it has left him exhausted.
"Water dehydration got me that ripped look," he said. "(But) I'm so low (on) energy I'm literally sleeping all the time because I'm on a zero-carbs, limited-calories diet."
Bronzed Aussies: competitors at the NABBA Australian Bodybuilding, Figure and Fitness Championships at West Point. Source: News Limited
LOOKING WEIRD
THE minuscule posing pouches or garish rhinestone bikins; the liberally applied fake tan; the sheer size: it is fair to say that the bodybuilding look is not one that is universally admired. The tan is used because it shows muscle definition better. But do they really need so much of it? Apparently.
HEALTH
THE health effects of bodybuilding go from the superficial to the extremely serious.
On the superficial side, there are stretch marks - a side-effect of rapid muscle growth, and a perverse source of pride among some bodybuilders.
More seriously, builders can be prone to a range of injuries including collapsed lungs, broken bones and hernias brought on by incorrect breathing techniques during their workouts.
But the elephant in the room in any discussion about competitive bodybuilding and health is the use of anabolic steroids.
Besides the muscle-building effects of these substances, users report a range of adverse health effects, including mood swings, acne, liver failure, cardiovascular failure, and in men, testicular shrinkage and gynocomastia (the swelling and development of breast tissue).
Women report similarly gender-bending effects from prolonged steroid use. British bodybuilder Candica Armstrong reports that she often gets mistaken for a man due to daily doses of the steroid Trenbolone.
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