I have a Facebook friend (former co-worker) who does female bodybuilding. When it’s competition time, she goes on as close to an all-protein diet as is possible (basically, she lives on egg whites - yes, cooked - and skinless chicken breast) and also uses spray-tan and gets professional makeup. She does not look like the same person!
(This was after losing more than 150 pounds, which makes me wonder if there’s some disordered eating in there, but she does look great even without all the dolling up. She does have some visible loose skin, but so do some women who have had full-term pregnancies.)
So the argument against bodybuilding being a sport is that the competitive event doesn’t have an athletic component. Makes sense.
But the comparison with beauty contests is flawed. The level of intensity required to achieve the massive muscles of champion bodybuilders has no equivalent in beauty contests. It’s called bodybuilding because the muscles are “built” by lifting heavy weight, and the judges know this.
Also, I think that some posters are underestimating how strong the top bodybuilders are.
Take a look at Ronnie Coleman, eight-time Mr. Olympia:
Deadlift: 800 lb (363 kg) x 2 reps
Squat: 800 lb (363 kg) x 2 reps
Bench press: 500 lb (227 kg) x 5 reps
Such ignorance. (Not you @Paxx). Body building has an athletic component that occurs at the time of competition. Body builders don’t go walking around looking like they do while posing in competition. Flexing an entire muscle group to show maximum definition is a physical activity many other athletes can’t perform. It is a specialized skill that requires training to learn how to do it. And it is a physical effort that takes place at the time of competition. If you want to remove that physical component then it is no different than gymnastics or figure skating which are judged otherwise based only on appearance. But at least bodybuilding and those sports would have something left, remove the physical component from most other sports and you have virtually nothing left.
Based on your posts, which I found very useful and informative, I’m happy to change the opinion I had when I first opened the thread, which was that bodybuilding is not a sport. I now consider that it certainly can be one, if there is an element of competition. Then again, my bar for what can count as a sport is possibly lower than the average person. The elements I consider essential are competition, and physical skill (not necessarily athletic, just physical). So in ‘my world’, golf, motor racing, pool, rhythmic gymnastics, darts, video gaming, and bodybuilding competitions can all count as sports. I would exclude games such as chess and bridge because there is no physical skill involved. But I don’t mind if people want to call them “mind sports”, to recognise the skill and competitive element involved.
Flawed it may be, a bodybuilding competition is more like a beauty contest than an athletic competition.
Within the context of bodybuilding competitions, it doesn’t matter how strong he might be because he’s not judged on his strength, he’s judged on how he looks. I respect the effort it takes to lift all those weights, take all those drugs, and wreck your health in order to achieve a competitive bodybuilders body, but it’s still just a beauty contest.
What does a body building competition have in common with a beauty contest that figure skating, gymnastics, synchronized swimming, and boxing do not? Or are they not sports either? What is it that beauty contests do not have in common with a body building competition and any of those sports?
Bodybuilding competitions are judged almost 100% on looks. Even if we could say that one bodybuilder poses better than another, they are judged simply on how aethetically pleasing the muscles are. The difference is that a boxing match isn’t judged based on how good one boxer’s looks compares to another. A boxing match is judged based on the actions of the fighters in the ring and includes effective aggression, defense, control, and landing blows. The same is true of figure skating, gymnatics, and synchronized swimming. Even if there’s an aesthetic component, they’re still being judged on an athletic activity.
You posted the judging criteria for body building competitions, did you read it? Only one category is based on aesthetics. The rest are based on the measurable results of physical activity performed in front of the judges. You indicated some knowledge of the judging criteria for boxing but apparently you don’t realize they are all subjective assessments of the activity. Save for knockdowns, knockouts, and penalties boxing judges can and do score rounds any way they want to. The criteria you mention have no actual meaning. Boxing is judged entirely on aesthetics but you seem to consider that a sport.
So you still have not noted any way that a body building competition has more in common with a beauty contest than those other sports.
I agree - in fact, the implication that “if bodybuilding isn’t a sport, then neither is boxing, many martial arts, skating, gymnastics etc” was one of the factors that persuaded me to come to the conclusion I did. Not that I’m a massive fan of any of those sports, but I recognise they all entail substantial physical skill, and the judges (well, the good ones) at least try to follow objective criteria. Yes there is a subjective element, but that is also true of referee/umpire calls in almost any sport (e.g. football, cricket, baseball) - and no-one thinks those are not sports.
If a bodybuilder took a special pill that just made all of their muscles pop out and knew the poses without months of exercise, could they win the contest? They have the look down, so why not?
So a big, flabby-looking guy who’s also an amazing fighter couldn’t be a successful boxer?
He might become heavyweight champion. But it helps to win by having the ref stop the fight rather than go to the judges. Not that Ruiz didn’t win that fight on the scorecards as well, but it’s possible that judges can be influenced by the fighter’s appearance in awarding points.
The point is that anyone could be a boxing champion if the judges want him to be no matter how good or bad he/or she is at boxing. That is with the exception of knockouts or disqualifications. At least a good enough boxer can knock out his opponent. A gymnast or figure skater can’t do anything to gain victory if the judges don’t want them to. In that sense boxing is less of an athletic competition than those other sports. Every sport based on judging is subject to this problem. Boxing has the one advantage of knockouts taking matters out of the judges hands, but unfortunately has no meaningful standards for judging. The primary physical act boxing is judged on is supposed to be ‘punching’, but that is not defined in any meaningful way. It’s not the number of punches that matter or anything else really, boxing judges score rounds according to their opinion of which fighter won the round with no justification needed. At least other sports use judging criteria that can be defined objectively
The concepts of ‘definition’, and ‘proportion’ along with all but the one criteria of aesthetics could be measurable in bodybuilding competition, only to the one criteria of aesthetics is an exception. Boxing has no measurable criteria for judging. Boxing is more like a beauty contest than bodybuilding competitions. Yet at the same time people would say that boxing and other fighting competitions are the purest form of sport, the actual type of human competition that is based on true physical superiority. It’s a shame certain sports will always be dependent on judges who may not be satisfactorily objective.
Did you read it? Every single one of those is based on an aesthetic standard.
I thought about bringing that up, but it’s not germane to the discussion. What’s being judged in boxing and figure skating is the athletic performance of the particpants. Mike Tyson isn’t going to lose points because the gap in his teeth isn’t aesthetically pleasing to the judges.
I have. Bodybuilders are judged based on aesthetics rather than performance. i.e. It has more in common with a beauty contest than an athletic competition. (I promise you those Miss America contenstants work hard for their figures.)
I agree w/ Tripolar that bodybuilding is a sport, but his/her most recent posts are not terribly persuasive. Tho I tend to agree as to potential issues the more “judging” is involved in an activity, I think this line is a tenuous exaggeration.
How about a couple of other activities in the martial arts area? Fencing and many TKD competitions rely on “touches”, and penalize for excessive contact. As a full contact martial artist, I always thought that silly.
And how about karate kata? The Olympics awards medals in what is - IMO - essentially dancing.
Like I’ve said before, it is hard to believe anyone who has spent any time in a serious weightlifting gym would question whether bodybuilding is a sport.
Only in the same sense of every judged sport. Except for the shape category in bodybuilding being based on aesthetics the rest of the criteria are measurable values. The sport is based on judging instead of using tape measures, but muscularity, condition, size, proportion, symmetry, and balance could all be determined by a machine. The same thing can be said of gymnastics and figure skating which also have allowance for aesthetics along with measurable criteria. It can’t be said of boxing, there is numerical basis for the non-required criteria of punching, aggression, ring generalship, and defense. Remember those are simply opinions of how boxing judges should score rounds, not even a requirements. Every boxing round that is scored is done so based on the arbitrary opinion of a judge.
So you still have not found anything that makes bodybuilding competitions more similar to beauty contests than any other judged sport.
Olympic boxing has been made meaningless by continuing rule changes trying to make it a sport of counting touches instead of effective punching. And yet the result is the same, when the biased judges can’t control who wins a fight biased referees step in. All judged sports have this problem. Even baseball and other sports have this problem with calls made by officials that are not subject to replay and machine measurement.
I have. You disagree with my assessment and I can live with that. But I don’t think further conversation will lead to anything productive, or fun, so I’m just going to let it drop.