Archive for November, 2009

Do you think pro­fes­sional ath­letes and pro­fes­sional strength train­ing coaches read body­build­ing mag­a­zines? If so, it is prob­a­bly only for humor and to see what kind of hype their ath­letes are being exposed to. Do you think high qual­ity, world– class ath­letes and coaches fol­low the advice found in these mag­a­zines? And if THEY don’t, WHY THE HECK WOULD YOU! Even though these mag­a­zines may have inspired mil­lions, they have done a bet­ter job at mis­lead­ing millions.

It’s unbe­liev­able how many young guys think they need cre­a­tine and a whole list of other sup­ple­ments; think they need to ‘split’ their work­outs into ‘body parts’ and are try­ing to build mus­cle in an over trained and under­nour­ished state…and then won­der, ‘Why can’t I gain weight?’ They have no idea that these pro­grams don’t work with­out drugs. These are DRUG rou­tines and drug rou­tines don’t work for nat­ural guys. Period.

The mod­ern main­stream body­build­ing mag­a­zines at the news­stands (and even main­stream male and female fit­ness mag­a­zines are guilty) are really just ‘mus­cle comic books’ writ­ten at a 6th grade level. They glo­rify drug-using ‘body­builders’ and por­tray them as the pic­ture of health. They clev­erly com­bine two or three rehashed arti­cles, a lot of pic­tures, gim­micks, sex and hype to sell this hype to millions.

And what do porn-like photo sec­tions have to do with a mus­cle– build­ing mag­a­zine? The pub­lish­ers of some of these mag­a­zines beat the hell out of this mar­ket­ing tac­tic, with par­tially nude women with their rears hang­ing out of thongs. It would be nice if men could pick up a body­build­ing mag­a­zine to learn some qual­ity infor­ma­tion and not end up get­ting an erection!

Sup­ple­ment com­pa­nies have always been a part of fit­ness pub­li­ca­tions (although it was not as bla­tant in the past) and now mar­keters are the writ­ers and the prod­uct is no longer a mag­a­zine but rather bot­tles of pills and pro­tein pow­ders etc. I would say almost 70% of the arti­cles in mag­a­zines have a mar­ket­ing pur­pose and it’s even hard to tell these days what is an ad and what is a legit­i­mate article.

Bot­tom line, there are too many rich sup­ple­ment com­pa­nies and too many frus­trated weightlifters who are not gain­ing the size and strength they deserve.