MAN, I REALLY MISS 1990's BODYBUILDING

[andreisdaman]

Remember the 90's?  Bodybuilding was so awesome back then.  The personalities were larger than life and I couldn't wait to get the next issue of FLEX and IRONMAN magazines. Muscletech actually had us believing that if we used their products we'd get as big and ripped as the pros.....The bodybuilders would talk big smack about each other and actually trained together......miss uncle Joe and Ben as well

I have to admit I also miss going down to the supplement store and buying those fake sups we all saw in he mags....such an innocent and simple time back then.....

Miss the old contests as well....especially the grand prix contests that used to run for a few weeks at the end of the year....

MEMORIES................ ............

[Zillotch]

tard

[Disgusted]

tard

Take a nap.

[Zillotch]

romanticizing the fact that u were a gullible delusionite is retarded

[Coach is Back!]

Remember the 90's?  Bodybuilding was so awesome back then.  The personalities were larger than life and I couldn't wait to get the next issue of FLEX and IRONMAN magazines. Muscletech actually had us believing that if we used their products we'd get as big and ripped as the pros.....The bodybuilders would talk big smack about each other and actually trained together......miss uncle Joe and Ben as well

I have to admit I also miss going down to the supplement store and buying those fake sups we all saw in he mags....such an innocent and simple time back then.....

Miss the old contests as well....especially the grand prix contests that used to run for a few weeks at the end of the year....

MEMORIES................ ............

Drunk post reported

[MCWAY]

Remember the 90's?  Bodybuilding was so awesome back then.  The personalities were larger than life and I couldn't wait to get the next issue of FLEX and IRONMAN magazines. Muscletech actually had us believing that if we used their products we'd get as big and ripped as the pros.....The bodybuilders would talk big smack about each other and actually trained together......miss uncle Joe and Ben as well

I have to admit I also miss going down to the supplement store and buying those fake sups we all saw in he mags....such an innocent and simple time back then.....

Miss the old contests as well....especially the grand prix contests that used to run for a few weeks at the end of the year....

MEMORIES................ ............

I miss the WBF. Back then, it was cool because you didn't have to wait a month to hopefully catch a bodybuilding show at 3 am (i.e. American Muscle on ESPN).

The 1991 show was the first to pay six figures for a professional bodybuilding contest.

For a while, the only magazines I bought were MuscleMag International and WBF Bodybuilding Lifestyles. After the WBF went kaput, I ended up reading Muscular Development (MD). I liked that one too, even when the identity crisis started in the mid 90s: Muscular Development-Fitness-Health, All-Natural Muscular Development, etc. It seems that's happening again with MD some 20 years later.

The magazines all had supplement companies behind them.

Flex & Muscle & Fitness - Weider Nutrition
Muscular Development - Twinlab
MuscleMag International - Muscletech
Muscle Media (2000) - EAS
IronMan - Muscle Link
WBF Bodybuilding Lifestyles - ICOPRO

As for Muscletech, speak for yourself. Maybe it had YOU believing you'd be as big and ripped as the pros (especially since most of the pros were big and ripped before MuscleTech existed. And its initial poster boy weighed 240 as a teen before he even started bodybuilding). I tried Muscletech's original three supplements (Acetabolan, Creatine 6000-ES, and Hydroxycut). Back then, they cost a fortune. But, of course, as newer supplements arrived, the old ones became cheap.

I still have some of the tapes I got with some supplement purchases. The Mass Fuel tape came with the Twinlab Lee Haney's Mass Fuel kit I bought on clearance. It's hard to believe that tape is nearly 30 years old. Then there's "Up Close and Personal with the Mega Mass Champions". Guess how I ended up with that tape.

I got my first gym membership for Christmas in 1991 at Bally Total Fitness (back when it had the blue and white logo and was also known as the Scandinavian club). I kept that membership for 20 years, until Bally went belly up.

Even before then, my high school science project in 1990 was gaining weight. The test subject was MYSELF. I gained 21 lbs in 3 months (142 to 163). Though technically, my interest in bodybuilding officially started in 1989 with the cement weight set I got from my old middle school, the 1990s were my "golden years", of sorts.

[Royalty]

Remember the 90's?  Bodybuilding was so awesome back then.  The personalities were larger than life and I couldn't wait to get the next issue of FLEX and IRONMAN magazines. Muscletech actually had us believing that if we used their products we'd get as big and ripped as the pros.....The bodybuilders would talk big smack about each other and actually trained together......miss uncle Joe and Ben as well

I have to admit I also miss going down to the supplement store and buying those fake sups we all saw in he mags....such an innocent and simple time back then.....

Miss the old contests as well....especially the grand prix contests that used to run for a few weeks at the end of the year....

MEMORIES................ ............

Even though there were a lot of lies and false hope being promoted, those old mags were inspirational. It was like being little, and believing in Santa at Christmas.

[Trev]

Remember the 90's?  Bodybuilding was so awesome back then.  The personalities were larger than life and I couldn't wait to get the next issue of FLEX and IRONMAN magazines. Muscletech actually had us believing that if we used their products we'd get as big and ripped as the pros.....The bodybuilders would talk big smack about each other and actually trained together......miss uncle Joe and Ben as well

I have to admit I also miss going down to the supplement store and buying those fake sups we all saw in he mags....such an innocent and simple time back then.....

Miss the old contests as well....especially the grand prix contests that used to run for a few weeks at the end of the year....

MEMORIES................ ............

Ditto, the late '80's / '90's guys had so much more personality and still appreciated what bodybuilding is all about. I attended seminars (and posing) from Vince Taylor, Kevin Levrone, Bob Paris, Mike Quinn, Victor Richards and Rich Gaspari. The knowledge these guys had about nutrition was amazing. When you saw them off season you believed them when they said they only took the drugs pre-show as they looked healthy. Saw Lee Haney guest pose too and he was incredible.
The annual Grand Prix's were superb. I attended rom 1988 until 1997 and they were fantastic. Some great battles too ....

Sadly professional/competitive bodybuilding has died. Its just all drugs and about size now. Ben and Joe will be turning in their graves. Arnold was in discussions with Serge Nubret about returning IFBB bodybuilding to its true form in 2009 but sadly Serge died after pushing himself too hard in preparation for guest posing at The Arnold Classic. It will never return now.....

[jon cole]

I started training in 1994, in an obscur little club in north of France. The club was in a old house, so basically the upper body room was in was used to be the living room, the squat rack and leg press in the dining room etc etc. Most of machine were hand made. The wall were still covered with the genuine tapestry, with page from Flex, Fbi just snatched from the magazine and put on the wall with a thumbtack. People at the club were dressed with otomix and gorilla wear. Sometime somebody got a vhs copied from another vhs about bodybuilding, quality was shitty but believe me the waiting file to get the vhs was long. I spent wonderful time in this place. Every month i harassed the bookseller for the last flex/muscle fitness, who were read from cover to cover several time. So yes i miss the 90s. No instagram, no slin, no clone 300lbs bodybuilder, no empty people at gym, everybody was different, good or bad, but everybody was somebody.

[On_Swole]

I miss the WBF. Back then, it was cool because you didn't have to wait a month to hopefully catch a bodybuilding show at 3 am (i.e. American Muscle on ESPN).

The 1991 show was the first to pay six figures for a professional bodybuilding contest.

Incorrect. The 1990 Mr Olympia in Chicago had a first place prize of $100,00.

[Tennisballz]

Remember the 90's?  Bodybuilding was so awesome back then.  The personalities were larger than life and I couldn't wait to get the next issue of FLEX and IRONMAN magazines. Muscletech actually had us believing that if we used their products we'd get as big and ripped as the pros.....The bodybuilders would talk big smack about each other and actually trained together......miss uncle Joe and Ben as well

I have to admit I also miss going down to the supplement store and buying those fake sups we all saw in he mags....such an innocent and simple time back then.....

Miss the old contests as well....especially the grand prix contests that used to run for a few weeks at the end of the year....

MEMORIES................ ............

I agree, it was a much funner time to be into bodybuilding.  Social media has destroyed the world.  It's taken the fun out of a lot of things and created a world of zombies.  My favorite thing about the 90's was just hanging out in the gym for like 4 hours with my buddies.  I worked out at balleys.  We knew all the local competitors and all the trainers.  I never competed, but wish I had at least once.  It's probably still a cool community, but people seem so much more isolated now.

[Fortress]

The amount of bread I wasted on fucking supplements. What a joke.

But mostly in the eighties.

I remember meeting my still-a-friend friend in grade 10 and visiting his house for the first time.

On the kitchen counter he had a goofy little plastic can of Weider’s Muscle Builder protein. I was freaking out.

“Holy shit! I gotta get some of that! Where’d you get it, man?!”

I genuinely thought I’d become huge if I consumed one or two of them.

[Voice of Doom]

Even though there were a lot of lies and false hope being promoted, those old mags were inspirational. It was like being little, and believing in Santa at Christmas.

I dont understand the Santa correlation.   

[dan18]

Even though there were a lot of lies and false hope being promoted, those old mags were inspirational. It was like being little, and believing in Santa at Christmas.

Santa is real you fuckin asshole

[Dan-O]

The amount of bread I wasted on fucking supplements. What a joke.

But mostly in the eighties.

I remember meeting my still-a-friend friend in grade 10 and visiting his house for the first time.

On the kitchen counter he had a goofy little plastic can of Weider’s Muscle Builder protein. I was freaking out.

“Holy shit! I gotta get some of that! Where’d you get it, man?!”

I genuinely thought I’d become huge if I consumed one or two of them.

I bought the 25-lb bag of Joe Weider's Mega Mass 2000.  It looked like a large dog food bag.  Inside was a training video (VHS) featuring Achim Albrecht, if I recall correctly.  Joe's Mega Mass 2000 got me up to about 225 lbs. but it didn't make me look like Achim.

[andreisdaman]

romanticizing the fact that u were a gullible delusionite is retarded

You gotta admit it was better then...there was more idealism...less vitriol toward the sport and the bodybuilders

[andreisdaman]

I miss the WBF. Back then, it was cool because you didn't have to wait a month to hopefully catch a bodybuilding show at 3 am (i.e. American Muscle on ESPN).

The 1991 show was the first to pay six figures for a professional bodybuilding contest.

For a while, the only magazines I bought were MuscleMag International and WBF Bodybuilding Lifestyles. After the WBF went kaput, I ended up reading Muscular Development (MD). I liked that one too, even when the identity crisis started in the mid 90s: Muscular Development-Fitness-Health, All-Natural Muscular Development, etc. It seems that's happening again with MD some 20 years later.

The magazines all had supplement companies behind them.

Flex & Muscle & Fitness - Weider Nutrition
Muscular Development - Twinlab
MuscleMag International - Muscletech
Muscle Media (2000) - EAS
IronMan - Muscle Link
WBF Bodybuilding Lifestyles - ICOPRO

As for Muscletech, speak for yourself. Maybe it had YOU believing you'd be as big and ripped as the pros (especially since most of the pros were big and ripped before MuscleTech existed. And its initial poster boy weighed 240 as a teen before he even started bodybuilding). I tried Muscletech's original three supplements (Acetabolan, Creatine 6000-ES, and Hydroxycut). Back then, they cost a fortune. But, of course, as newer supplements arrived, the old ones became cheap.

I still have some of the tapes I got with some supplement purchases. The Mass Fuel tape came with the Twinlab Lee Haney's Mass Fuel kit I bought on clearance. It's hard to believe that tape is nearly 30 years old. Then there's "Up Close and Personal with the Mega Mass Champions". Guess how I ended up with that tape.

I got my first gym membership for Christmas in 1991 at Bally Total Fitness (back when it had the blue and white logo and was also known as the Scandinavian club). I kept that membership for 20 years, until Bally went belly up.

Even before then, my high school science project in 1990 was gaining weight. The test subject was MYSELF. I gained 21 lbs in 3 months (142 to 163). Though technically, my interest in bodybuilding officially started in 1989 with the cement weight set I got from my old middle school, the 1990s were my "golden years", of sorts.

Good post...I used Hydroycut and it definitely worked for me...I went from 248 to 218 lbs.....Even cell-tech worked for me..i got stronger and it helped me become hard...I used to love the old Muscle-Link shakes...I forget what they were called...the vanilla was amazing and the orange crème as well...

I just miss the excitement of looking forward to that next issue of Flex and Ironman.....also all the contests and the shit-talking in the magazines between guys like Kamali and Shawn

[TTfit]

Remember the 90's?  Bodybuilding was so awesome back then.  The personalities were larger than life and I couldn't wait to get the next issue of FLEX and IRONMAN magazines. Muscletech actually had us believing that if we used their products we'd get as big and ripped as the pros.....The bodybuilders would talk big smack about each other and actually trained together......miss uncle Joe and Ben as well

I have to admit I also miss going down to the supplement store and buying those fake sups we all saw in he mags....such an innocent and simple time back then.....

Miss the old contests as well....especially the grand prix contests that used to run for a few weeks at the end of the year....

MEMORIES................ ............

So much truth in this post.

Bodybuilding started going downhill with Ronnie. Dorian too. They are when it became all about size.

[andreisdaman]

Even though there were a lot of lies and false hope being promoted, those old mags were inspirational. It was like being little, and believing in Santa at Christmas.

Excellent analogy....good point

[andreisdaman]

Ditto, the late '80's / '90's guys had so much more personality and still appreciated what bodybuilding is all about. I attended seminars (and posing) from Vince Taylor, Kevin Levrone, Bob Paris, Mike Quinn, Victor Richards and Rich Gaspari. The knowledge these guys had about nutrition was amazing. When you saw them off season you believed them when they said they only took the drugs pre-show as they looked healthy. Saw Lee Haney guest pose too and he was incredible.
The annual Grand Prix's were superb. I attended rom 1988 until 1997 and they were fantastic. Some great battles too ....

Sadly professional/competitive bodybuilding has died. Its just all drugs and about size now. Ben and Joe will be turning in their graves. Arnold was in discussions with Serge Nubret about returning IFBB bodybuilding to its true form in 2009 but sadly Serge died after pushing himself too hard in preparation for guest posing at The Arnold Classic. It will never return now.....

Yes I agree with you....I used to run to the newsstand to get the mags to find out the winners of the Grand Prix contests...I used to get excited when it was time for the Ironman contest because I knew that was the start of bodybuilding season....

[andreisdaman]

I started training in 1994, in an obscur little club in north of France. The club was in a old house, so basically the upper body room was in was used to be the living room, the squat rack and leg press in the dining room etc etc. Most of machine were hand made. The wall were still covered with the genuine tapestry, with page from Flex, Fbi just snatched from the magazine and put on the wall with a thumbtack. People at the club were dressed with otomix and gorilla wear. Sometime somebody got a vhs copied from another vhs about bodybuilding, quality was shitty but believe me the waiting file to get the vhs was long. I spent wonderful time in this place. Every month i harassed the bookseller for the last flex/muscle fitness, who were read from cover to cover several time. So yes i miss the 90s. No instagram, no slin, no clone 300lbs bodybuilder, no empty people at gym, everybody was different, good or bad, but everybody was somebody.

and no cellphones...LOL..now EVERYBODY in the gym looks at their cellphones between sets

[NarcissisticDeity]

 

[Zillotch]

You gotta admit it was better then...

this reality is on a one way trip to hell....

[andreisdaman]

I agree, it was a much funner time to be into bodybuilding.  Social media has destroyed the world.  It's taken the fun out of a lot of things and created a world of zombies.  My favorite thing about the 90's was just hanging out in the gym for like 4 hours with my buddies.  I worked out at balleys.  We knew all the local competitors and all the trainers.  I never competed, but wish I had at least once.  It's probably still a cool community, but people seem so much more isolated now.

yes definitely....hanging out at the gym and talking about which BB'ers had the best arms, legs, chest, etc was great.....and then we'd all be so psyched and we'd try to get a teardrop thigh in one workout ...as if that was really possible

[andreisdaman]

The amount of bread I wasted on fucking supplements. What a joke.

But mostly in the eighties.

I remember meeting my still-a-friend friend in grade 10 and visiting his house for the first time.

On the kitchen counter he had a goofy little plastic can of Weider’s Muscle Builder protein. I was freaking out.

“Holy shit! I gotta get some of that! Where’d you get it, man?!”

I genuinely thought I’d become huge if I consumed one or two of them.

HA!  My brother bought "BIG"....the protein pills made by Joe Weider that promised you'd get big and muscular by consuming 18 pills per day..my brother was psyched and he started taking these pills (which were like horse pills) and he kept swallowing them and swallowing them until he couldn't take it any more and started to choke and then vomit....it was hilarious