Anabolic steroids and the media
In the age of Facebook and Instagram motivation, people are often shunned if they’re to talk about limitations. The so called “Nay Sayers” who are often seen exclaiming “This is impossible.” are presented as losers and bitter haters who just want to bring everyone down. This has resulted in the formation of a “positive” crowd living in the clouds. We have transformed into delusional dreamers creating alternate realities where everything is possible. The truth, however, is that there are limitations wherever you look. One common misconception about muscular people is that they work INSANELY hard or just have supreme genetics. The latter can be true, genetics to play a large role in one ability to build muscle but only to a certain extent… On the other hand, the false fallacy that all these Hollywood superstars insane work ethic is the reason they’re so built is entirely false muscle gain is not linear and you will always end up at your genetic potential. Dwayne Johnson for example can often be seen in his ‘Iron paradise’ at 11pm training until 1am and waking up at 5am is CERTAINLLY not the reason he weighs 118kg lean, as we know from the introductory paragraph, sleep is the primary factor of which induces the release of HGH and aids recovery, however when you’re the rock you already intake HGH from injection and have the testosterone levels 5x higher than most men. Another example is Mark Wahlberg who wakes up at 2am every morning to train, yet again less sleep and once again being counterproductive to muscle growth. As we can notice here there’s a trend, these actors have insane routines which almost no one with even a slightly busy schedule will be able to maintain and even if they did they would make little progress as they would be sleep deprived most of the time (which these actors are). This will make most men feel inadequate compared to these Hollywood “gods” and cause the dedicated to turn to steroids when in fact everyone can build their physique to a much improved level by just training for 45mins to 1 hr..0. 30 4-6 times a week consecutively and following a moderately good diet.
“Influencers”
Another issue with media is on the side of social media, the rise of Instagram “Influencers”. These influencers (both male and female) always seem to be followed by everyone on Instagram just getting into the gym or wanting to get into the gym and they can always be seen endorsing a host of different fitness orientated companies (from supplements to clothing). These so-called influencers soon gain large followings due to their impressive physiques (gained by use of steroids) and the followers soon begin to buy their supplements and clothing to look just like them, completely oblivious to the fact that they will never come anywhere close to this physique naturally. At first most people will make significant progress known as “beginner gains” by getting adequate protein by taking the influencers own/ sponsored brand protein whey and training consistently following exercises that they have bought from the influencers program or from watching their gym videos. However, after a year or maybe even two of training the followers progress will come to a grinding halt. Their progress will slow down rapidly as they come out of the beginner gains stage and they will be left looking no where near as good as the influencers they follow (even if some of the influencers have only been training for a similar amount of time). This often causes body dysmorphia in many people (especially younger persons) where the person feels uncomfortable with their body despite making progress, they feel that they may not have been training hard enough, they feel they look small and they feel inadequate, all because they do not look like this person. Most of these people then take to the internet to find out why they’re still “small” and why they don’t look like this person and are always given two answers. One: The influencer just has incredibly supreme genetics and look the way they do because of this (Not often true). Two: The influencer made these incredible gains in such a short period of time because they’re on steroids. Sadly, this second answer is often true, people don’t put on 20kg of muscle in two years naturally end of no matter how many of their sponsored BCAAS (scientifically proven useless if eating enough protein) they claim to have drunk. The people who come to this second conclusion that the influencer of which they follow is in fact on steroids either decide to accept they will never look like that and carry on as they were or decide to also start taking them to carry on chasing that goal. This second option, In my opinion is fine, if you truly wish to look this way and accept that you are going to have to take steroids to do so they you should not be judged for doing so, however you need to be doing so for yourself, not to impress others to gain a few Instagram likes.
We also see lots of glorification of steroids on the more mainstream media however this glorification often ends up doing the contrary and demonizing steroids. This sounds confusing, however we often see these medias sources constantly praising these Hollywood actors for their “grueling routines” and “insane body transformations” and we see almost all of these actors claiming to be “natural” such as Dwayne “the rock” Johnson and Terry crews. For these actors it is THEIR JOB to look a certain way for a movie role and if that movie role requires them to be a walking behemoth of a man they will definitely use steroids to do so, a good example of this is Tom hardy when he transformed into bane where he weighed over 90kg and put on 13kilograms in less than a h2year something which is most definitely impossible naturally. This creates an issue of people being body dysmorphic as they think that they should look like this but they’re just not training hard enough when in reality even if they could find the time to train like this they would make little progress as they would not be able to recover fast enough due to them having natural levels of testosterone. However the main issue is that people think that everyone has to be this dedicated to achieve this physique and that those who are on steroids are “cheaters” and just take steroids and gain muscle with little effort (not true) when in reality these actors are also on steroids and the impossibly hard routines are just a cover up as to the true reason they’re this size.
