Quote from: Lee11 on January 07, 2012, 10:08:02 AM
I know quite a few women in bodybuilding and figure competition who train/compete naturally. It is totally possible. A friend of mine trains with this girl who is totally drug free and she is frequently amazed by her strength and endurance.....
Yes, of course it's possible to compete/train naturally. That much goes without saying. I'm not claiming that you can't build muscle as a bodybuilder without testosterone, there are a million examples to the contrary. However, when it comes to gaining functional strength and putting on dense mass powerlifting or strongman achieves more largely because of the sheer volume required during training. Bodybuilders tend to go with 3-4x8-12 ratio, which means that typically bodybuilders do not exceed more than 70-80% of their maximum. It also promotes hypertrophy, but does not specifically promote gains in power/strength. Powerlifting models require anywhere between 4-10 sets of 1-8 repetitions (though 1-5 is more standard), and thus the lifter exceeds between 80% and up to 90% of their maximum. The goal of bodybuilding is not strength-oriented, but is aesthetically driven. Training as a bodybuilder typically supports that aesthetic goal. If you look at professional athletes or athletes in general, you won't see many of them training like a body builder, they'll train for their sport. Lacking a sport, one would think a person would want to become overall fit rather than train largely for the aesthetics. Why not get ripped
and increase athleticism?
The problem is also that bodybuilding programmes tend to focus on isolation exercises rather than compound exercises, and rightfully so as the sport is concerned. You win as a body builder based on muscle symmetry, not on how much you can squat. Athletes, including powerlifters and strongmen, focus on compound exercises since they not only promote strength but the body functioning as a unit. Professional BBs off-season tend to do so as well, but to follow a "true" programme concerned with muscle symmetry, isolation exercises tend to be the focus.
Many people new to lifting who focus on bodybuilding programmes end up with greater muscle imbalances than they started off with, because they focus on isolation exercises (bicep curls and tricep extensions over deadlifts or proper bench form. Hamstring curls and quad extensions over heavy squats and so on) and often ignore compound exercises (the biggest thing they tend to avoid is the squat, which is much more difficult than the leg press or isolation exercises...hence why many avoid it). The end result is, if they attempt to take up a sport, or find themselves needing to perform an activity in everyday life which requires proper muscle firing...well you end up with someone who can't even squat down to the ground without falling on their arse. A lot of fitness mags out there geared at getting the lazy office-going couch potato off his arse and into the gym are very much to blame for a lot of this, in that they promote bodybuilding programmes and target people who don't know the reasons at all behind why they're performing the exercises they're being told to do. All they see is "washboard abs" as something they want, so they don't question it.
That's part of the issue I see with promoting bodybuilding programmes in the mainstream fitness industry. The squat racks lie empty while "resolutioners" (not to be mistaken with competing body builders who actually know what they're doing) spend countless hours curling in front of the mirror...or worse: curling in the squat rack.
Basically the point is, not even professional bodybuilders use bodybuilding programmes 100% of the time. You use a body building programme for a specific, aesthetic purpose. However, if you hope to gain functional strength, power and overall athleticism, learning about powerlifting models is going to give you much more success, because a powerlifter doesn't need to simply look good. Within the sport power is as important as cardio, which is why you tend to see a lot more powerlifters or strongmen crossing over into other sports than you do bodybuilders. Look at strongmen like Mariusz Pudzianowski, for example.
