I must have gotten the picture time line confused but i could have sworn there was one of him at about 190 when he was out of shape and still competing. Everyone used to talk about the amazing transformations he would make. Anyway i can use Arnold as an example. I could perfectly understand why someone wouldn't want to walk around bloated year round. When you see someone hold on to so much water it makes you question if their kidney function is ok. I have seen guys walking around with yellow tinted eyes. It isn't healthy. You can diet yourself into kidney failure if you aren't careful and on the flip side of that you can eat yourself into having clogged arteries and heart problems.
The whole 'being bloated and massive beyond belief' look in the offseason started with Dorian Yates. Doz was big boned and he was a terrific responder to juice like K Lo. So he'd balloon up to 310 - 320 lb in the offseason during his competitive years. And he was so dominant, not to mention the way he looked at over 300 lb was so freaky that people talked about it everywhere. That started a trend among his competitors to put on tons of weight in the offseason, although there were also notable exceptions like Shawn, Kevin and Milos.
But the magazines picked up on the fact that the bodybuilding fans loved seeing guys like Dorian, Paul Dillett, Nasser, Fux, Francois and Ronnie going over 300 lb cause it was a very freaky look that hadn't been achieved by bodybuilders prior to the 90s. That's why even guys like Tom Prince did the same and ended up paying the price. The majority of the fans like bodybuilders to look freaky and there's no denying that a guy who is 5'11" or under who weighs over 300 lb at sub 12% bodyfat looks out of this world.
The downside to that is a lot of the new guys rely on things like insulin and tons of calories to boost their bodyweight up, rather than focus on training heavy and packing on the size that way. That's why there's a big difference between the guys from the 90s and the guys nowadays, who weigh the same or more, but have relatively lesser cuts, separation and maturity. Dorian and Ronnie set the standard for muscularity and we need to wait and see if someone comes along who can up the ante some more.
