Friday, September 14, 2007

Getting in Shape


So I decided to add the weights back into the chins, rope-climbing, pushups, and crunches. Picked up a little mass pumping the iron.

Whaddya think? Should I keep it up?

14 comments:

Mushtaq Ali said...

Hmmmmm.....

I think that picture qualifies as a pathology.

I am not sure I can handle it on top of Bobbe's Silat guys jumping off buildings and such.

(going off to wash my mind out with soap)

Chuck said...

Actually, it's a pretty good digital air-brushing...the skin tones are alittle different at the wrists and on the head...

Steve Perry said...

The scary thing is, I know guys who, if they could, would look like this.

Dan Gambiera said...

With all the steroids he'll need a search and rescue team with FLIR and bloodhounds to find his Little German Soldier let alone the dufflebag. Not that it'll matter. I'm guessing a heart attack within ten years.

Irene said...

I don't like me with too many muscles.

Steve Perry said...

I believe that men's bodybuilding peaked with Steve Reeves, in 1947. He not only looked, fit, he was. Anabolic steriods, diuretics to get cut for the day of the show, crash starvation diets, none of those help with health.

Don "The Ripper" Ross had veins like fire hoses and he fell over dead from a heart attack at forty-nine. Lived on steak and eggs.

Roids arrived en masse during the late sixties, you could see the change in the way the men -- and worse, the women -- looked, and it wasn't an improvement.

There are still small contingents of "natural" bodybuilders. In one organization, these are defined as somebody who hasn't taken steroids ever. In another group, you are considered "natural if you haven't indulged in the last five years.

These guys all look like shrimps next to the IFBB pros, who stack sufficient chemical to bring Hitler back from the dead, with enough left over to etch the Encyclopledia Brittanica onto steel plate.

The steriods don't make you huge per se. If you take them and lie n the couch, you won't look any different -- though you'll probably throw something through your TV set's screen -- roid rage is very common.

But the juice does allow you to do massive amounts of work to get that way, and it helps develop muscle mass if you do the training.

The idea is to look good. Back when I read the bodybuilding zines, twenty years or so ago, there were cases of world-class bodybuilders who looked as if they could bench press Greyhound buses dropping dead on-stage. Electrolyte imbalances, deyhydration. After a show, these guys -- the survivors -- could drink a glass of water and eat a cracker and they'd bloat up like puffer fish.

Pumping iron was once touted as a healthy lifestyle choice. But it only works if you do those other healthy lifestyle things, like diet, and staying away from T-t-t-t-testosteroni ...

Anonymous said...

All the figure needs now is a costume with a large S on the chest

Steve Perry said...

Used to be a T-shirt you could get out of the muscle 'zines, done in the style of a Wheaties box:

Steroids: Breakfast of Champions.

I shoulda got one ...

Irene --

But almost all men have the same number of muscles. You mean muscles that are too big ... ?

Just in case any reader didn't realize it, that picture is a goof. Nobody is that deformed. Some pretty good monsters out there, but this? no ...

Anonymous said...

It's a goof ... but it's a *funny* goof.

My first reaction was a quote from the movie "Heavy Metal":

"STERRRNNNN!!!"

~ JT Heyman

Dan Gambiera said...

Irene:

I didn't make him for you

Daniel Keys Moran said...

Do you want to keep it up?

I'm about 35 pounds overweight and I'm looking for a way to embarrass myself back into shape. If you have a goal you'd like to hit, I'm willing to embarrass myself online along with you ...

Steve Perry said...

Dan --

Pretty much getting/staying in shape for me is a lifelong process. I have an ideal fighting weight, but I know I can't get there and stay there -- I don't think one can maintain peak; besides which, I get there every week on my fast day.

Come Friday morning, I'm at 195 pounds, which is where I want to be. By the following Thursday, I'll be back up to 200 or 205.

Weight scale isn't the measure for me.

The fitness factor is a different thing. My goal when I got the rope was to be able to go up and touch the branch at the top, and I got that.

Now, the rope goal is to do it from a sitting position instead of standing, and to come back down in good form.

I'm gonna keep working on it. Except, of course, when I pull something, which happens more frequently now than it used to -- like last night, in the right elbow.

Set your goal and I'll goad you ...

Tiel Aisha Ansari said...

I know that image isn't genuine... but it's not too far off from some of the pictures of myostatin-deficient animals, like the ones at

http://www.who-sucks.com/people/monstrous-myostatin-misfortunes-a-collection-of-myostatin-deficiency-pictures

The whippet is particularly striking since they're usually such fine-built dogs. She looks a little bewildered in the photo-- like "Was this the body I was supposed to have? Are you sure?"

Dan Gambiera said...

Jim

Maybe not an "S" on the chest. More like green body paint and a pair of torn pants.