You Can’t Build REAL Muscle as a Natural Lifter!

If you are a natural lifter you need to hear this. When it comes to building sizeable muscle and significant amounts of muscle mass you have likely been told that you would no longer be able to stay natty. Today, we discuss the natural limit and whether or not its possible to look great without indu

I would guess that the recreational  lifter, now listen to this closely, the percentage of use has gone from about 5%  to around 50% conservatively in the gym. Jeff: All right, so let’s get right into this. If  you’re a natural, you’re essentially screwed. Jesse: Exactly. Jeff: Building impressive muscle is not something in your future.

Jesse: Geez. Jeff: At least that’s what some would say, because  we made a video not long ago where we talked about building muscle over 40, naturally, is it really  essentially something you could do or not do? Jesse: Yeah. Well, there was 7,500 comments on  that video, and I read almost every single one of them, and it fell into two main camps. Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Jesse: There were the guys that said,  that’s bullshit, you can absolutely build muscle over 40 and— Jeff: Because they did it. Jesse: Yeah, they got the  track record to prove it. Jeff: Right. Jesse: And then you had the other camp, which was saying, sure,  you can build muscle over 40 naturally, but you can’t build impressive muscle over 40. Jeff: So impressive being this big qualifier.

So, first of all, what is impressive muscle to you. Jesse: As in impressive to yourself? Jeff: Right. Are you comparing you to you or  are you comparing yourself to someone else? And I think that we live in a day and age right  now where unfortunately you’re likely comparing yourself to somebody else.

So, what I want to do  is I want to revisit this topic and kind of hammer home something incredibly important, if you allow  me to. And it starts by looking back. If you’d let me do that, Jesse a few years. Jesse: Back in time? Jeff: A little.

A few years when I was just in  high school, starting out where a lot of guys are starting at 16, 17 years old to start training. I went to a gym called USA Gym in Milford, Connecticut. For anybody from — locally that  understands where that is. And when I first walked in the door there, there was essentially  — it was intimidating for sure, I was a really small kind of tiny kid. There were two main  people there, okay?

There were bodybuilders— Jesse: Mm-hmm. Jeff: —who were competing, these guys all competed, not like professionally  but locally, but bodybuilders and then there was the recreational lifter. Jesse: Right. Jeff: Okay, now, if you were lucky enough to train  in a gym where there might actually be athletes, they might be training in the gym too. Or if there  were even actors or so that were in that area, they might be training at that gym.

And I would  say that the pro bodybuilders or the bodybuilders in that gym were largely using steroids. They  were very big — knowing what I know now, they were very big, developed people that  you know couldn’t really achieve those things naturally. Some of the athletes maybe, some of  the actors maybe, because I think is kind of part of that world. We’ll talk about that in one quick  second. The recreational lifting use of steroids, when I first started training, and this is  going to put me back in like 1991 or so.

Jesse: So, when I was born. Jeff: Oh, man made me feel old. But around 1991, I would say it was about 5%. Jesse: Geez. Jeff: You were just there to lift.

Like you wanted  to get bigger, but you weren’t obsessed with, like, the level of gains that the bodybuilders had  because you identify that they were probably using steroids and you weren’t really interested. Okay. Now fast forward to today, we’ve still got actors, we still got athletes, we’ve still got pro  bodybuilders or guys competing locally and I think that the use amongst those groups is probably  not very changed, very much changed at all. Okay. But then we’ve got this other group that’s  been introduced, and we call them — we have our influencers and there’s a lot of people trying  to become an influencer through social media, because it’s becoming an avenue for people to  earn a living.

Um, unfortunately, there’s a large segment of influencers that I think we  all could agree are like, shitfluencers . Jesse: I love that term shitfluencer. Jeff: Not very good at their job, right? Jesse: Right. Jeff: And probably shouldn’t be making content.

And a lot of  those guys are using steroids, testosterone, whatever it might be to enhance themselves. Okay? Now what’s happened to the recreational lifter? The recreational lifter still goes. I would guess  that the recreational lifter, now listen to this closely, the percentage of use has gone from about  5% to around 50% conservatively in the gym.

Why is that? Because it’s being fed from the top down  and the bottom up. Meaning from the guys that are older than them recreationally, that are feeding  the top down, almost normalizing it. And from the guys beneath them, or the young guys who are kind  of rushing to go right to steroid use or the use of PEDs in some form to assist them to get a much  faster start in terms of their lifting career. Jesse: Yeah.

Jeff: It’s being fed from both ends, and a lot of it has to do with that shitinfluencer  influence that’s actually causing this to become much more common. And I have a big problem  with that. Regarding the actors and athletes, I’ve had an opportunity to work with professional  athletes in professional sports directly. I was in major League Baseball in 2006. My first  season, I was thrown right into the mix, right after the kind of PD era in  baseball was kind of blown the lid off.

Jesse: Yeah, I remember that. Jeff: So, they were basically, you know, the guys like Barry Bonds and Mark  McGwire and Sammy Sosa. That was all happening right before I went there. Well, there were  already procedures in place to try to limit that, including more frequent drug testing, uh, harsher  penalties, and then even the institution of NSF requirement for supplement use. So, you couldn’t  take a supplement in MLB, or you shouldn’t take a supplement in MLB if it wasn’t an approved, an  NSF approved supplement.

And that was the only arrangement they had at the time, they’ve actually  expanded that to more certification, you know, divisions at this point. But that was limiting  the use. But it wasn’t like it wasn’t happening, okay. It was still happening then, but it was  up to the athlete to decide whether or not that was something that they wanted to risk. Because no  matter what you do in life, guys, things that have a positive are going to have a negative as well.

And the negative for someone that got caught using steroids in professional sports was A. Maybe some  public embarrassment; B. You’d be letting your team down when you were suspended for 80 games;  and your zero — you have zero production when that happens, right, so you can’t contribute to  your team’s wins. So, there’s a risk and there’s also the risk of increased injury. Jesse: Yeah.

Jeff: And I can tell you as a physical therapist,  the guys that might have been suspected of still using, despite the heightened regulations, were  oftentimes the guys that were hurt the most, too. Right? So that was that. As far as  actors who we’ve had a chance to work with. Jesse: Yup.

Jeff: These guys are literally being paid to basically to do make believe  things right. To like play a role or add 40 pounds for this role or lose a lot of weight for  this role. And it’s very hard for me to understand what their motivation might be other than getting  a role or not getting a role. And I don’t even, I don’t know, I, I, I have a different perspective  on where we’re supposed to sit in terms of the judgment of those guys and whether or not they  should disclose or not disclose. I mean, in, in, in, — what they’re doing.

Jesse