The Things Your Mom Never Told You About Being Big
by Jason Meuller
So, you wanna be a bodybuilder, huh? Stand up on stage next to the big boys, get all the ladies, never have that sand kicked in your face again, I hear ya. There's one little problem though. Walking around with all that extra steroid-induced muscle isn't all peaches and cream, baby. Sometimes it can be a downright pain in the ass (literally). Sit back and pay attention, school is now in session.
Breathing is a Bitch
If you've ever had the chance to hang out with a professional bodybuilder, one thing becomes immediately clear. Most of these guys suck wind like you wouldn't believe. Simple tasks, like say, checking the mail, are enough to make a lot of these guys gasp and wheeze for oxygen. I myself have experienced this on many occasions. I own a three-story condo with plenty of stairs. Stairs. The bane to my existence. Do you know how many times I've considered installing one of those chairs that helps old people up the stairs? It's especially lovely after a brutal leg workout, it's 11 at night, and I've got to get some sleep. Do I climb three flights of stairs so I can get to my bedroom or crash out on the couch?
The human heart was not designed to pump blood through miles of additional vascular networks that are created by steroid-induced hypertrophy. Quite frankly, many of these athletes are taxing their hearts to very dangerous levels. The combination of extreme size, steroid-related hypertension, and lack of cardiovascular conditioning makes for danger.
Sweat Like a Gerbil at a Gay Pride Rally
Okay, I admit that's probably in poor taste, but it's damn funny. Who likes to sweat? Hey, if you're planning on being one of the big boys, you're going to learn to love it! You think you sweat profusely now? Wait until you're about 280 pounds of muscle and see what happens.
My favorite example for this is Nasser El Sombaty. Don't get me wrong, I love Nasser, he's got an unbelievable physique and is one of the few pros that can carry on an intelligent conversation. Talking to most of these guys will put you to sleep faster than a litre of GHB. Joking aside, Nasser serves as a perfect case study for excessive sweating. Having seen and talked to him many times at various shows and guest appearances, I can honestly tell you that even doing something as mundane as sitting and signing autographs causes Nasser to pour sweat. Other athletes share similar fates. At last year's Olympia Greg Kovacs was constantly towelling off as sweat poured down his face. At the press conference it was miserable to watch the athletes, all wearing some form of dress attire, pour sweat under hot lights and the strain of many weeks of dieting.
Again, the human body was not designed to carry around the 50 - 100 pounds of steroid-induced muscle these athletes wear. The incredible caloric intake, hypertension, and artificially heightened metabolisms of these athletes serve to overload the natural cooling system of the body. Excessive and profuse sweating results.
Pain is Your Constant Companion
Big deal, right? You've spent hours in the gym, you know what it's like to recover from the most brutal workouts. Well my friend, have I got a treat for you. Training naturally and training on gear are whole different animals altogether. While I have the utmost respect for natural trainers, I can honestly say that 9 out of 10 steroid users are going to train harder and more aggressively than their natural counterparts (and yes, I can see the deluge of hate mail from naturals coming already).
Lord knows I've seen my fair share of mammoth bodybuilders dog it in the gym. I've also witnessed natural bodybuilders train with an intensity that's inspiring. However, a smart natural bodybuilder will almost always train his body at a level below what he's capable of. Why? Because natural bodybuilders must always deal with the limiting factor of cortisol, which is elevated in response to training. Anabolic steroids allow bodybuilders to break past this barrier and by their very nature produce a level of aggressiveness that most natural trainers cannot reach.
Anabolic steroids allow you to lift longer, lift heavier, and with more intensity. While I must admit that some bodybuilders tend to use steroids as a crutch and fail to take advantage of this, most athletes will train harder while "on." Obviously, the harder you train, the more pain you'll experience as you recover from each session. Additionally, it's not uncommon for long-term steroid users to suffer from severe joint pain. The constant stress of accommodating weights that overload connective tissues can lead to a variety of problems. Why do you think so many top bodybuilders are addicted to Nubain?
While we're on the subject of steroids, let's discuss another painful aspect of achieving massive size. When you start taking the 2 - 4+ grams per week of steroid required to achieve a professional caliber physique, you start realising something. Taking that many shots really sucks. Let's say you're an aspiring bodybuilder, you've got some decent size, and now it's time to really up the ante in your quest to pursue greatness. A typical cycle of injectables for someone like this might consist of 2000 mg of test a week, 600 mg of deca, and 75 mg of trenbolone acetate every day. At the very minimum, you're going to be injecting 18cc of oil into your body every week. This assumes you're using a testosterone preparation that is 250 mg/ml and that you were lucky enough to locate deca at 200 mg/ml. More realistically, you're going to be using a lower strength of testosterone, say 200 mg/ml and a much lower strength of deca, probably around 50 mg/ml. You're now injecting 30 cc of oil per week! Question. Where is all of this oil going to go? Before, you weren't taking that much juice and managed to put all your shots in the glutes. Now you're hitting your delts and quads and still trying to figure out where else you can stick yourself.
Something happens after years and years on steroid injections. You build up a great deal of scar tissue. This makes injections even more fun as the needle no longer glides swiftly and smoothly through tissue towards its final destination. There's something quite sickening and unpleasant about actually hearing and feeling the crunching and squeaking that results as a needle makes its way through heavy scar tissue. Better yet, this scar tissue allows for very little blood circulation. It's not at all uncommon to have a bolus of oil sit in your ass for a week because you injected directly into scar tissue. Over time, this will eventually happen to your glutes, legs, and delts, really anywhere you inject repeatedly. This is not a result of improper or unsterile injection techniques, it's simply the result of years of steroid use.
Last but not least, let's not forget the newest fad to hit the bodybuilding scene, site injections. Now areas that were previously taboo as injection sites are being poked and prodded on a daily basis in an attempt to artificially swell the muscle with various fats and fatty acids. Now I know there are many of you who think the use of these substances is limited to a few bad apples in the sport of bodybuilding. We can easily spot these miscreants at shows, with a rear delt that is wildly overinflated or a bicep that looks like those water balloons you used to throw at your sister when you were a kid. I hate to break it to you, but site injections are used by damn near everybody now. Bodybuilding is a sport, much like many others, that will always fail to hear the voice of reason. As bodybuilders continue their quest for increased size, the risks and chances they take become greater and greater. You'll not find a bodybuilder in the upper levels of the sport who's going to stand up and martyr himself to correct the evils associated with competition. You don't want to site inject? Well Mr Olympia contestant, please take 16th place and shut your hole. Thanks for playing.
Ah, but I digress. Back to pain. If you've taken shots long enough, you know that occasionally, no matter how careful you are with your injection techniques, you're going to get a "bad" shot that hurts for quite some time. Site injections are all "bad" shots. You're injecting into areas that are not meant to accommodate large amounts of oil. Injecting 2 - 3 cc into your biceps for weeks at a time is painful as all hell. Injecting into your calves can make it difficult to walk. Suck it up kid, you're a bodybuilder now.
Time to Eat
Now that you've decided to play with the big boys, you've got your program all set. The workouts are written out, the drugs are in place, and you've got your 5 meals a day of chicken and rice ready to go. Watch out Mr Olympia, here I come! Cut to six months later. You're leaner. You're meaner. But you're not a helluva lot bigger. What happened? Lack of food is what happened.
I'm not going to go over this again in too much detail, as I've already done so in past issues of Anabolic Extreme. If you want to read an article that takes a realistic look at the kind of nutritional program it takes to compete at the upper levels of the sport, read "Extreme Eating for Mass" in the back issue section. Bottom line, chicken and rice don't cut it.
Overfeeding is the name of the game here. If you want to be brutally huge, you've got to eat brutally huge meals all day long. I'm talking about eating to the point where you are uncomfortable for most of your waking hours. I'm talking about eating to the point where just when you finish one meal, it seems like it's time for another. Obviously this doesn't work for natural athletes, they'll just get fat. But when you're injecting yourself with 3g of gear a week, along with 6 IUs of growth and 30 IUs of insulin a day, the normal rules of eating are thrown out the window. Here, have a couple Big Macs while you're waiting for that weight-gain shake to blend.
Christ, Was That You?
If you've spent any time at all around a good-sized bodybuilder, you're quickly going to realise that these guys have serious issues with gas. Unfortunately, the same dietary practices that allow us to pack on the muscle also cause the wildlife that inhabit intestinal tracts to produce inordinate amounts of methane. As a result, most bodybuilders spend a significant amount of time trying to fart in public without getting caught. Anytime you get a large group of bodybuilders together, you'd better have a good ventilation system. Any of you who've attended the expos at the Mr Olympia or Arnold's Classic will know what I mean. If it weren't for the massive difference in muscularity, you wouldn't know if you were at a bodybuilding show or an all day chili cook-off. You're constantly walking through man-sized fart bubbles of varying toxicity.
There's a certain pride associated with a good, sweaty, manly fart, the kind that can immediately clear a room. One of the important principles you'll need to master as your flatulence grows in direct correlation to your body weight is the subtle art of never being around to take the blame when the general public is hit with the goods. This requires some planning on your part, as you can't just rip one at the beginning of your drop-set on bench and hope no one is going to point the finger at you. You'll generally have plenty of warning as one of these monsters goes through its build up phase and know when its time to take appropriate action. You can employ several techniques here, but all involve moving to an area of the gym you won't soon need to occupy for any reason and releasing your noxious payload. This can be done discreetly in an unoccupied corner of the gym, although doing so wastes any of the fart's knockout potential.
The best course of action allows you to ease your burden and remain blame-free, while allowing others to share in your fragrant emanations. My philosophy is that if God didn't want others to smell our farts, he wouldn't have made them stink, right? Once you feel you're ready to release your cargo, saunter over to a crowded section of the gym. Maybe you're looking for that damn triceps handle, or maybe you're just making your way through the crowd to say hi to an old friend. Whatever your ruse may be, it's important that you release while on the move. Standing in one spot will make identifying you as the culprit a far easier task than if you release the gas piecemeal on your trek through the gym. Be sure you've thoroughly unloaded every bit of gas before you make your way back to your own workout area, as a really good fart has a tendency to follow you if given a chance. If done correctly, you'll escape detection and get to enjoy the fruits of your labours as you watch innocent gym members glare at each other as they quickly move to find fresh air.
Well, I'm wrapping this up folks. Quite frankly, I could probably write another 10 pages, but I'm breathing and sweating so bad I've got to take a break. Besides, my joints are killing me and it's time to eat. Hey, can someone crack a window and light a match in here for Christ's sake? If you liked this article, let me know, I'm sure I could crank out a few more instalments if I get enough positive feedback. Contact me at Jason@anabolicextreme.com.
