Championship or pro level bodybuilders in general are (as a demographic group) not particularly long lived which is somewhat surprising in that you would think that many of them would be near the apex of human fitness, but cancer, heart ailments etc mow them down at the same, or greater, rates than the general much less fit population.
Regarding this there is a kinda-sorta theory out there among some bodybuilding nutritionists/physiologists that the human body is effectively like a candle and that it can only process X amount of thermogenic stress before it burns out and the body’s cell repair mechanisms begin to fail. The massive food consumption and muscle building processes necessary to build and maintain a very muscular body literally burns the body’s self repair mechanisms out well before they would normally fail and leaves them open to opportunistic diseases like cancer, cardiac problems etc.
Any way this hypothesis could be physiologically valid?
Bodybuilders seemed healthy to you? I don’t know. Other professional athletes, sure, but bodybuilders (the really massive ones) always seemed a bit off. The human body just isn’t designed to handle all that muscle mass.
How is the life expectancy of pro bodybuilders being calculated? If it’s simply ‘average age at death’ then allowance needs to be made for the fact that it’s a relatively recent phenomenon. There has not been enough time to build up a population of old pro bodybuilders. Those who have died are likely to be younger than the average life expectancy.
Steroids. It is basically a requirement at that level. I’ve known a couple of pros.
Competative bodybuilders go up and down in weight by at least 50 pounds in most cases once or twice a year depending on their competition schedule. They go from as heavy as they can get down to an unhealty lack of bodyfat right before competition. That puts a strain on everything.
Ding ding ding ! winner - on both counts. Whereas your theory is probably reasonable, the shorter lifespan is more likely attributable to these two factors Loach points out.
It is pretty much a given that along with all the vitamins, protein powders, supplements, etc., that at the (prize and endorsement winning) competition level, steriods are in use. Lots of them. With no care or concern about infertility, internal organ damage, etc., let alone other long term damage.
What is also ironic, is that as body builders strive to achieve the “ideal” muscular body, if you ask any of them, they will tell you that it is probably the most unhealthy sport around. The diet is VERY strict and specific - not as much concern for nutrition as for what helps the muscles look best. And the dramatic weight loss before competitions is HUGE. Many competitors pass out prior to getting on stage, and many say that it is only the excitement of the crowd that gets them through.
I think this may be a mistaken assumption - pro bb-ers don’t win competitions for being fit, they win for having the best body and that is their sole objective.
Added to this the cocktail of growth hormones and steroids and the dieting stresses and it’s surprising there aren’t more keeling over in the gym.
I also think there isn’t enough data because not enough time has passed to positively identify death trends in older builders.
I think it would be extremely difficult to prove the hypothesis simply because doping is so rife in the sport that it’d be difficult to ascertain if the bodies were “wearing out” because of the substance abuse or the physical abuse (or even a combination). To compare with the so-called “natural” bodybuilders wouldn’t help, because casual visual inspection makes it obvious they’re nowhere near as stacked as the pros…
I think this may be a mistaken assumption - pro bb-ers don’t win competitions for being fit, they win for having the best body and that is their sole objective.
Added to this the cocktail of growth hormones and steroids and the dieting stresses and it’s surprising there aren’t more keeling over in the gym.
I also think there isn’t enough data because not enough time has passed to positively identify death trends in older builders.
I think it would be extremely difficult to prove the hypothesis simply because doping is so rife in the sport that it’d be difficult to ascertain if the bodies were “wearing out” because of the substance abuse or the physical abuse (or even a combination). To compare with the so-called “natural” bodybuilders wouldn’t help, because casual visual inspection makes it obvious they’re nowhere near as stacked as the pros…
Could bodybuilders have the same problem as obese individuals have with their hearts? Thats what I always presumed. Hearts can only do so much work, and the bigger the person, the more work the heart has to do, regardless of whether that extra mass is fat or muscle.
lalanne was not a muscle-bound freak. he was always tressing healtful exercise, not free weights. I have known a few of these guys, and the dieting they do 9to reduce body fat) probably is unhealthy. because they strive for so little body fat, they are shivering-the fat supplies insulation. also-the way the weins bulge out-their hearts must be pumping like crazy.
I don’t think the OP’s idea is as wacky as some people are insinuating. There’s some evidence that lowering caloric expenditure can extend the lifespan. Here’s a Scientific American article to get started.
I have heard two theories, I do not know enough about it to say if they are supported by the data or not. One is that growth hormone can cause of thickening of the walls of the heart, which causes heart problems. The second is that the hormones cause tumors to grow more quickly than they do in people who don’t use steroids.
I used to work with a bodybuilder (he quit our company and moved away last year in order to pursue the sport full time). Can’t say it looked like the healthiest sport to me. His weight yo-yoed a lot–yes, muscle is better than fat, but he still increased his body mass a lot to get those huge muscles. When he wasn’t in competition, he looked much closer to the OP’s “apex of human fitness” than when he had all those unnaturally huge muscles.
He also ate many strange things. Usually it was dry, plain chicken breast, and only sometimes was he allowed barbecue sauce or something to make that palatable. Sometimes, he would eat rice or rice cakes. Sometimes, he was allowed peanut butter on his rice cakes… Sometimes he would be chugging on a water bottle containing some sort of supplement. Not too many fruits or vegetables, and I’m sure most of his vitamins came from those supplements. What he ate was very regimented. In fact, when he was deep in training, sometimes he didn’t even want you to talk to him while he was eating (at other times, though, we often talked and played cards, and he was a very friendly guy).
As others pointed out, they may or may not die early. There are some morbidity problems related to bodybuilding, though. Part of it is due to the massive amount of training involved and the focus of that training, part through the extreme diet requirements to reach very low body fat percentages.
They do bulking and cutting cycles, alternately gaining weight and then adjusting their nutrition to attempt to keep the muscle while losing fat gained in the bulking phase. The sheer mass of calories and the cyclic diet are a bit of a strain on the system. Most bodybuilder diets are deficient in fat, which has some negative effects on connective tissue recovery and vitamin uptake and retention. Combined with the volume of training and the loads they work with, joint and tendon complaints are common, and even natural bodybuilders pop vitamins and nutritional supplements constantly.
The focus of their training is hypertrophy. Period. That means getting bigger, not necessarily getting stronger or more fit. Sure, most bodybuilders are plenty strong, and some degree of functional strength is an inevitable result of any resistance training, but if bodybuilders could get bigger through a type of training that didn’t increase strength, while making muscles look good, they’d be doing it. In other words, the strength is a byproduct, not an object of their training.
Performance also is a very secondary concern. They don’t really care about how fast they can run or swim or whatever, they don’t care about the weight they lift as long as they’re getting bigger, they don’t care about how fast they can move that weight. Again, they keep track of weight and sets and rest periods just as someone would if they were trying to increase their strength, but the differences in mindset and overall objectives between a performance-oriented athlete and an appearance-oriented bodybuilder are huge. If lifting less weight made them bigger, that’s what they’d do.
It’s not like looking good and performing well are mutually exclusive. This guy is an Olympic lifter who can probably get more weight over his head than Schwartznegger could even back in his early powerlifting days. He’s strong as hell, and by any standard looks great. The aesthetics in this case are a byproduct of training to lift very heavy weights very fast. But I’ll bet that he wouldn’t win a bodybuilding competition.
