Yes, he was into bodybuilding in the 80s and juiced every morning.As of 1984, Springsteen had been a well-known star for almost a decade. However, as Larry Rodgers interpreted it, "it was not until he hit the gym to get buffed up and showed off his rear end in Annie Leibovitz’s famous cover photo for Born in the U.S.A. that he became an American pop icon",touching off a wave of Bossmania (as author Chris Smith described it ).
For the album, Springsteen reintroduced himself as a muscular and sexually-charged rocker after his adoption of constant wearing of tight blue jeans, white t-shirts and bandannas, and also intensive physical training that included years of running, weightlifting, and bodybuilding. According to Bryan K. Garman, in his book A Race of Singers – Whitman's Working-Class Hero From Guthrie to Springsteen, this new image helped Springsteen to popularize his persona on a new scale, but also brought him a decisive attachment to political and sociocultural issues, in the times when Ronald Reagan was reviving a patriotic pride by reaffirming the values of prosperity, expansion, and world domination of the United States "within a decidedly masculine framework."
As Reagan's combination of masculinity and nationalism shaped a popular culture that "remasculinized" the country's image, Americans found themselves reading and watching about the Vietnam War, trying to come to terms with the lost war and the soldiers who fought it. At the time, the huge popularity of
Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo" films demonstrated both the public's fascination with the Vietnam veteran and the symbiotic relationship that existed between the Reagan presidency and much of the popular culture of its era. According to the author, Springsteen found himself enmeshed in the ideologies and symbols that Rambo and Reagan represented. 
