Disappointment in bodybuilding and an honest choice in the gym
Disappointment in bodybuilding often begins when the gym mirror stops telling the whole story. You see the work, the sweat and the nutrition, but you also see that some progress doesn’t come from smart training alone. This article takes an honest look at the question of where natural effort ends and where a game begins that not everyone wants to admit to.
Why does disappointment in bodybuilding happen at all?
Janar put it bluntly: bodybuilding, and in fact the whole world of strength sports, had been a big disappointment. Not because training is pointless. Quite the opposite. The disappointment came from the fact that a large share of visible success seemed to depend on substances, money, willingness to take risks and the skill of slipping past testing.
It’s an uncomfortable topic. In the gym we want to believe in a simple rule: work harder, eat better, sleep more and you’ll get bigger. For a beginner, that sounds great. Janar admitted that at first there was only a vague inkling. Maybe it seemed that all those magazine guys were big thanks to protein powder and creatine. Then comes a more sobering moment: Ruhl is not what he is because of Mass 2.
That doesn’t mean genetics doesn’t matter. It does. Markus Ruhl may be enormous, but if a couple of men in the top lineup at Mr. Olympia have a frame, proportions and overall look that fit better, mass alone won’t make Ruhl a Mr. Olympia. That’s genetics. At the same time, Janar argued that in substance-assisted bodybuilding genetics gets talked about too much, especially outside the very top. When training and nutrition are in order and someone is neither lazy nor stupid, according to Janar as much as 95% of competition results may be decided by how much risk that person is willing to take.
In natural training the picture is different. There, genetics can be the ultimate deciding factor. Some people grow faster, recover better and stay in shape more easily. Others have to work much harder for the same result. Frankly, that can be harsh at times, but at least the game is easier to understand.
Disappointment and the gray area of doping control
Bodybuilding isn’t the only sport where banned substances are discussed in whispers. Janar brought up strongmen as a comparison. When a bodybuilder gets pointed at, a man at a fairground throwing a 180 kg stone ball onto a 120 cm platform often simply gets applause. The crowd sees strength, not the background.
At the world-class level, the gap becomes even sharper. Janar asked what would happen if the substances were taken away from Savickas. The verdict was harsh: a 215 kg log wouldn’t move like before, and clean, it would be good if 180 200 kg even made it up to the chest. The same idea came back in a more general form: if substances were removed from sport, the weights in many events would drop by at least 30–40 kg.
Joker arrived at the same point from a different angle. For Joker, the worst thing wasn’t only the use itself but the hypocrisy. Either have proper testing or have no testing at all. A half-baked system makes things even less fair, because athletes aren’t thinking only about their physique, but also about when to stop something, when to switch something on and how not to get caught.
Add to this the GH guys and the sponsored rich guys, who reportedly have access to pricier substances or ways of hiding use. For the average person, the picture stays murky. Who’s clean? Who isn’t? Who simply hasn’t slipped up? So what is really going on?
A simple truth: the existence of testing doesn’t automatically mean fairness. If the system can be outplayed with planning, money and connections, competition gets harder even for those who want to do it honestly.
What does bodybuilding teach us about natural limits?
Joker’s photo series was meant to show different levels. Everyone in the photos had at least 10 years of training experience. In the first photo is Ronnie Coleman: the peak of professional bodybuilding, the limit of human ability, which even many athletes on a full cycle never reach. Everything has to be in place there: training, food, rest, doses, motivation and much more.
The second photo showed Lukas Osladil, a good friend of Joker’s and a top amateur bodybuilder. Osladil made no secret of using performance-enhancing substances, and quite a lot of them. The message was blunt: dude, you don’t have enough money to get the same result. It sounds brutal, but that kind of honesty cuts through a lot of pretty talk.
The third photo showed the author of this article. Janar made no secret of having looked to steroids for a boost and having benefited from them. In Joker’s view, the photo showed well that when nutrition, training and everything else are in place, even more moderate use can deliver a very good result. The fourth photo showed Joker, who stressed never having tried or used a single steroid, whether anabolic, androgenic or hormonal.
The comparison wasn’t meant to humiliate anyone. Rather, it showed how big the gap is between different playing fields. Joker even called it a Charles Darwin-style photo series. With a touch of irony, but the point stayed: once the experiment has run long enough for everyone involved, you can draw some conclusions.
This is where the human side comes in. Not everyone wants to be Ronnie Coleman. Not everyone has to want to be Dennis James. For some people the goal is good shape, a strong body and an honest feeling when they look in the mirror. For others that isn’t enough, and they want a real bodybuilder’s size at any price. Goals, self-esteem and the playing field a person actually wants to play on all have a role here.
Joker put it bluntly: without steroids you can’t have two things at once, being big and dry. A man weighing 110kg with 40% body fat is not a big bodybuilder on stage. On the other hand, an athlete can have 4-5% body fat and be in great condition, yet in regular clothes look more like a chess player than a bodybuilder. As an example, he mentioned the Estonian bodybuilding team’s trip to the European Championships, where Ott ended up chatting with an interested stranger at the airport. If Dennis James had been standing there instead of the Estonian men, that E4 analysis probably wouldn’t have come about.
Disappointment doesn’t have to end in giving up
There is an important difference between disappointment and sobriety. Disappointment says: it’s all fake, so why bother? Sobriety says: I can see the rules of the game more clearly and I’ll choose my path more consciously. The second option is far more useful for an athlete.
Joker asked himself honestly: should I try to become like Ronnie Coleman? Laughable. Should I use a little of something, but then still not compete at international events? What for? What mattered to him was the chance to find out where the peak of his abilities lies as 100% natural.
That 100% isn’t just a slogan. Had he used even a single tablet of methandienone, he could no longer have said honestly, to himself or to anyone else, that the result was entirely 100% natural. For some people that line matters enormously. For others it doesn’t. But once the line has been crossed, it can’t be undone.
The temptations were there too. Joker said that three times he came very close to using steroids. He thanked three people who helped him get through the low periods: Fred Antson, Arnold Tokko and Mark. This is the most human part of the story. Not a moral lecture, but an honest admission that a strong principle may need other people beside it.
Janar’s conclusion was gloomier: in Estonia you can quietly do your own thing for fun and compete against your peers, but it’s a pity that willingness to work and good nutrition are not enough to reach Dennis James’s size. You can’t just casually reach the level of the Euro Elite Tour men either. It’s a painful thing to know, especially for someone who started out hoping that hard work decides everything.
How can a lifter move on from this honestly?
The first step is to get clear on your goal. Do you want to compete? Do you want to simply be stronger? Do you want to look better than you did last year? These are different targets and call for different decisions. If your goal is health, how you feel and decent shape, the professional bodybuilding standard doesn’t have to be your yardstick at all.
The second step is to look at your progress honestly. Training, food and rest still count. They don’t disappear just because elite sport is complicated. If your program is patchy, your sleep short and your eating random, there’s no point in immediately blaming genetics or the system. First, do the simple things consistently.
The third step is to choose your company. The people around you strongly influence what you consider normal. If everyone only talks about fast leaps forward, slow progress feels like failure. If you have a coach or a friend beside you who helps you out of a dark hole, one bad period can remain just a bad period, rather than a decision you regret later.
And the fourth step: don’t make photos of stage athletes the measure of your everyday self-worth. Mr. O finalists, the amateur World Championships and local competitions are all different levels. Within the same level the gaps can be small, but between levels the gap is huge. You don’t have to be so naive and out of touch that you believe every fairy tale.
FAQ
Does disappointment in bodybuilding mean training is pointless?
No. Training gives you strength, shape, discipline and a better sense of your body. Disappointment arises when you expect natural training to deliver the same picture that, at the professional level, a completely different game may be supporting.
Can you get in good shape without steroids?
You can. The question is what you call good shape. If your goal is a strong, dry and athletic body, the natural route is entirely realistic. If your goal is to be enormous and stage-dry at the same time, the picture becomes much more complicated.
What should you do if other people’s fast progress tempts you?
Talk to someone who won’t push you toward a quick decision. A coach, an experienced friend or an honest training partner can sometimes help more than a new program. A low period doesn’t have to define your whole path as an athlete.
Author Janar Rückenberg
Source: Turg.Fitness.ee
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