Agreed. I came out of Deadpool thinking that while RR shows quite a bit of skin, in most scenes he looks like a normal human being (well, his body I mean, I’m not talking about Deadpool’s mind). But there is one scene where he looks like his muscle’s edges could cut laser beams; in every other one, he looks yummy but not sharp enough to scare light. I assumed CGI touch-up, it’s not as if there wasn’t a computers budget!
The comments suggest Gerard Butler (who I am also in love with).
With all the attention the death of Ali is getting, it occurs to me that he’s a perfect example of what I was referring to. Look at the iconic photo of him standing over Liston. AFAIK he never touched a weight; he just did roadwork, hit the heavy and light bag, and sparred. He may also have done some bodyweight exercises, but he never lifted weights the way even junior high kids do today. A few months on a serious bodybuilding program would have turned him into a monster.
And if the reports can be believed, Herschel Walker also never touched a weight, and he WAS a monster.
Absolutely. When I worked out, I’d do 7 days a week because I loved it, but I’d focus on upper body/core one day and lower body the next. My big issues with it were the need to watch your diet like a hawk and the massive food intake. I spent more time preparing food than I did actually working out. (Constant body aches were only a minor annoyance.)
Steve Reeves may have been using Testosterone Proprionate, a drug which predates his bodybuilding career, and was reputedly mentioned in a bodybuilding magazine as early as 1938.
I was also one of those guys who was considered genetically gifted because of the “amazing” gains I made in my first 9 months of lifting. But eventually those gains leveled off until I hit a plateau, and then another, beyond which every pound of muscle I gained was accompanied by a pound of fat. And while I had no trouble regaining my former shape in a hurry, at my best I never looked as good as Steve Reeves.
Still I think it’s possible that Reeves was a (perhaps the last great) natural bodybuilder - I guess there’s no way to know.
Herschel was trained by the great powerlifter Terry Todd, who apparently had Herschel doing a custom program that did not include weights, but did include heavy resistance training. Whether or not Herschel is a genetic freak, Terry Todd inarguably knows a great deal about steroids and their effects on the body, and we can’t assume that Walker was clean based only on his lack of weight training.
I’ve never thought that actors were really big on health risks–at least, early on when they’re trying to make it big. Changing your weight as drastically as some do isn’t healthy either. And there’s a huge history of eating disorders.
Don’t know if they do, but nice to know it could be possible. I thought maybe there just wasn’t a way to make it look real.