The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding • Hacker News Board

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#181

Post by darkerside » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:03 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #90

rmah wrote: post #82

I usually don't read articles like this, but it was so well written that I was sort of sucked into it. What was most interesting to me was not the various controversies about body aesthetics or even health consequences. What stood out to me was the author's description in the early parts of the article of how much she seemed to crave the approval of strangers, especially men. It was thought provoking and I'm still pr…

You don’t need that validation, but it’s still very noticeable. The difference between being slightly overweight and ripped is shocking. The world is suddenly a different place where you show up at a large party and several hot women hit on you etc. Granted you need to be otherwise attractive, but it’s not just women men also treat you more positively. Women see a wider range of responses, yet it’s still generally a…

I'd say you probably don't even need to be attractive physically in terms of having a pretty face. If you've got a charming personality and you are reasonably in shape, you'll get plenty of attention. You're signaling that you have value and people act accordingly.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#182

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:07 AM UTC

treis wrote: post #175

WalterBright wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was 20 and started lifting regularly, I put on a lot of muscle very fast. But I plateaued in about 6 months and was never able to go past that. I didn't do any steriods, because a friend of mine went from "pillsbury doughboy" (his assessment) to very jacked in about 9 months. He used steroids, and was shocked to find he'd lost a couple inches in height. The doc told him it was the steroids, and even worse, he'…

>He used steroids, and was shocked to find he'd lost a couple inches in height. The doc told him it was the steroids, and even worse, he'd still lose the usual height when he aged (we all shrink as we age). The things people believe constantly amaze me. Steroids don't make people shrink.

"Smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol or caffeine excessively, extreme dieting and taking steroids and other medications can exacerbate height loss."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904194604576580...

Googling "do people get shorter as they age steroids" yields many more references to this.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#183

Post by daniel-cussen » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #104

ashtonkem wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The M134 weighs 85lbs without ammunition , and the actor has to hold it out in front of them in an awkward position. 85lbs isn't a lot to lift or carry close to your chest, but it's a lot to hold out in front of you. Add in the need to carry/consume a prodigious amount of ammunition plus the recoil generated by the blanks, and it's a lot to deal with.

It's fairly obvious the movie scene has the M134 in a sling, so that he's not holding the whole thing up with his hands. When he starts walking, he only has one hand on it, near the rear of the gun. Not disputing it's heavy and awkward. It's just not, to me, something you would cite as "only a really strong person could do it". You can find videos of pretty normal looking people firing it while it's held by a sling a…

The additional criteria is that he has to act a certain way and look a certain way while carrying it, on film camera. He needs the strength for it not to get in the way of the performance at all.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#184

Post by andreareina » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:13 AM UTC

leshow wrote: post #120

> What was left was mostly tilapia and cod, kale, low-sodium broth, and colorless, calorie-free shirataki noodles. Sasha’s rules around food and training, handed down to him from other coaches as bodybuilding doctrine, were inscrutable to me. I found myself living in a world where green bell peppers were OK and red peppers were not I just want to say that while this is representative of what some bodybuilders do. It'…

> it's not fair to judge bodybuilding based on that

It's bunk, but if it represents a large portion of the population then I'd say it is fair to judge bodybuilding based on that; community and culture are part of the sport.

(I don't know any bodybuilders even from my gym rat days so I don't make any claims as to what the common dieting methods actually are; the ones I knew that did strength sports were pretty much focused on calories and protein and let the rest fall where it may)

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#185

Post by Guthur » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:18 AM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #116

actuator wrote: post #71

Except for winning competitions, is there any natural advantage of bodybuilding for both men and women? For both, for advantage in most sports and attractiveness the typical calisthenics physique, sort of gymnast/football(soccer) one seems like the ideal one to me, yet a lot of people seem to be obsessed with getting overly buff.

> Except for winning competitions, is there any natural advantage of bodybuilding for both men and women? For the 'extreme' of what most competitors go through? Probably not. But resistance/strength training more generally is probably beneficial: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_training For women especially, as they age about one-third suffer from osteoporosis, and lifting (heavy!) weights forces body adapti…

I'd strongly second resistance training, it doesn't really take that much time either.

A simple program like Starting Strength will have you train for not much more than 60 minutes three days a week and you'll make significant strength gains up to 1.5x body weight easily.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#186

Post by perardi » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:20 AM UTC

DC1350 wrote: post #13

Off topic but do female body builders also use testosterone injections for muscle building?

I’m sure they do at the very very extreme of competitions, but even a tiny bit of testosterone has largely unwanted side effects for women. (I am hedging with “largely” there, as there’s a whole gender identity thing to wade into.)

More common:

Oral anavar. Frequently used. Easily available in 5mg pills, actively marketed as “lady Var”. Anavar is generally regarded as a “mild” steroid, and was actively and usefully prescribed for a time. However, I’ve known women who have done anavar, and there’s such a range of variability in how they respond. I know a woman who was taking the 5mg dosage and fairly quickly had her voice start to drop. (Caveat there: who knows if the underground steroids are properly dosed.)

Oral turanibol. Queue the East German national anthem, this was the drug of choice for the Lovely Ladies Behind the Iron Curtain. Though nobody actually told them it was a steroid. “Vitamins”, per the Soviets, vitamins that literally put hair on your chest. Same caveats as anavar, and I never actually see turanibol marketed for women now.

Nandrolone phenylpropionate (NPP). The short-acting version of deca, the very well-known steroid. This compound was actively developed for women, and truly successfully used in clinical scenarios, especially in regards to cancer-related wasting, and osteoporosis, before we had better drugs. Very low androgenic properties, but quite the literal pain the ass, as you have to inject every day.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#187

Post by astee » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:21 AM UTC

scythe wrote: post #138

actuator wrote: post #71

Except for winning competitions, is there any natural advantage of bodybuilding for both men and women? For both, for advantage in most sports and attractiveness the typical calisthenics physique, sort of gymnast/football(soccer) one seems like the ideal one to me, yet a lot of people seem to be obsessed with getting overly buff.

> is there any natural advantage of bodybuilding for both men and women? I'm especially curious about the long-term effects of training muscles for hypertrophy rather than functional endpoints (strength, power, endurance). It's always stuck out to me that workout guides just treat this as normal — "everyone" wants big muscles, so we should all do painful eccentric reps to stress them out and build up lots of not-so-u…

For naturals, there is significant overlap in the training style that produces maximum strength gains and maximum size gains. Larger muscles are stronger muscles. Studies have shown very similar size gains between groups performing high weight sets and more moderate "hypertrophy" style sets, though training with higher weight maximizes strength gains. One thing not revealed in short term studies, but which I have observed[1], is that training for strength early on eventually produces better gains in size, since when you do shift to "higher rep" training, you will be able to use more weight -> bigger muscles. Regardless, I don't think it's all that important to stress over these details, and progressively overloading (increasing weight/reps) the compound movements (squats/deadlifts/bench press/overhead press) over time is far more important than rep schemes and intensity.

For steroid users, the equation changes some, as they benefit more from very high volume, high rep training that pumps the muscles full of blood. Natural lifters cannot recover quickly enough from this sort of training.

[1]standard disclaimer about taking this with a grain of salt as I'm just some internet stranger, but I do have > 10 years experience with this

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#188

Post by kkielhofner » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:21 AM UTC

linspace wrote: post #115

kofejnik wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Steroid ladden/extreme body building one is probably not healthy. Steroids are not necessarily always bad, tho taking your body to the extremes of competitive bodybuilding probably is.

My reasoning is the following, and as someone who likes to do weight lifting I would love to be proved wrong: if steroids are not necessarily bad and we surely know they work wonders how is it possible that, in a world obsessed with looks and moving so much money in all kind of (absurd) products, they have not been legally commercialized somehow.

They absolutely have been legally commercialized. In the United States (and presumably elsewhere) you can easily find a doctor who will legally prescribe you a host of steroids, growth hormones, and various other "anti-aging medications".

My understanding is that many of them don't do bloodwork to test existing hormone levels and many that do use very liberal interpretations of what standard levels in men should be at a given age, etc.

Think of the "pill mills" that lead to the opiod crisis where as long as you had the cash someone would write a prescription. Note that I'm not insinuating similar levels of risk or harm, merely pointing out the flexibility of medical ethics for some doctors in these areas.

Use your favorite search engine and search "anti-aging clinic". They're in many US cities, available online, and a popular medical tourism destination.

EDIT: I also suspect these kinds of medical "interventions" are prevalent in Hollywood and elsewhere. For example, Hugh Jackman in Wolverine. This guy was born in 1968, which puts him at ~44 years old during filming. Look at his physique as a 44 year old man and tell me that was just from broccoli and chicken (especially considering his physique in roles leading up to Wolverine).

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that the chances that so many of these mid to late 40s Hollywood actors have a physique that would be excellent on a 20-25 year old isn't likely due to just freak genetics, diet, and hard work at the gym. Especially when the budgets of these films can easily exceed $100 million.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#189

Post by audiometry » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:23 AM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #172

audiometry wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't condemn steroid use btw. I oppose widespread lying about it by the users and the media. Yeah this is the thing that annoys me. Recently listening to Tim Ferriss interviewing an amazing female powerlifter. She deadlifts 4x body weight and other sorts of remarkable feats. So the entire 2 hour show discussed her insane training regimen and diet and other forms of wellness. Hearing how much she squats in a week…

It's annoying but there's one obvious reason they don't talk about it: Not only is it cheating in their sport, but it's even flat-out illegal. So of course they don't talk about it. Even though it's completely obvious from everything else they're talking about. Hell, just listen to her voice! The testosterone use is undeniable.

I don’t think she competes in a tested federation, so it’s not a problem.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#190

Post by treis » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:25 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #182

treis wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He used steroids, and was shocked to find he'd lost a couple inches in height. The doc told him it was the steroids, and even worse, he'd still lose the usual height when he aged (we all shrink as we age). The things people believe constantly amaze me. Steroids don't make people shrink.

"Smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol or caffeine excessively, extreme dieting and taking steroids and other medications can exacerbate height loss." https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904194604576580... Googling "do people get shorter as they age steroids" yields many more references to this.

I did google that and found nothing that said that steroids would cause a healthy 20 something man to lose a couple inches in height. Your quote is quite wishy washy and not really supporting evidence to your claim.