The Obsessed Bodybuilder
Training Should Complement Your Life, Not Be Your Life
The get-jacked gym culture, pursued for its own sake, is often misguided and prioritizes an aesthetic over true athleticism, health, and a balanced life. It seems many have lost sight of what fitness truly means, trading functional strength and cardiovascular health for an obsessive chase of arbitrary numbers and an overly muscular physique. The issue with bodybuilding is that it becomes an excuse to not do anything else. Losers will get into shape and then instead of unfucking the rest of their life, they simply triple down on getting more fit. For most guys, once they have achieved under 15% body fat and have some decent muscle, then that checkbox is filled, and they just need to maintain.
The Gym as a Refuge
The gym has become an outlet for young men with no purpose in life other than performing braindead physical repetitions. Tons of dudes with elite physiques working at mind-numbing jobs, too chronically tired to do anything else after spending their weekend nights at the gym and obsessively counting calories. The structure of society and opportunity have undergone significant changes over the last few decades, leaving many men in the modern world feeling lost at sea. Young men are told they are toxic and that traditional masculinity is bad. We are told that we’re privileged and racist for using any trace of pattern recognition. The progressive movements don't appeal to men who are less susceptible to the constant liberal conditioning. According to the book Of Boys and Men by Richard V. Reeves, boys and men are struggling with profound economic and social changes, and many men are losing their way in the workplace, school, and family. A significant portion of young men are feeling a deep sense of aimlessness and a lack of traditional avenues for finding self-worth.
Some of these guys adrift end up seeking refuge and purpose in the "get super jacked" trap. They turn to the gym in search of a clear, measurable sense of progress and purpose in a world that has largely stripped them of both. The gym is one of the few places where traditional masculinity can be expressed and celebrated, mostly without judgment. Guys can see the results of their efforts and feel like they are, at some level, attaining their potential. You lift weights, you get stronger. You put in the work, you see the results. A vice that beats the alternative of drugs or suicide, but is often just a place to escape the realities of the real world, a deserted island, just them and the iron.
Asymmetrical Lifestyle Gym Rats
The pursuit of purpose in the gym is often misguided, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what brings real-world success and validation. Women don’t care about the specifics of muscles or money. Just have some. After a certain point, if you aren't making your physical training part of your career, it becomes a waste of time due to diminishing returns. A bodybuilder's physique isn't even attractive to the vast majority of women. Research from the journal Evolution and Human Behavior found that while women prefer muscular men, they rated those with moderate muscularity as most attractive. Ratings of attractiveness dropped significantly for men with an excessively muscular, bodybuilder-type physique. If you’re doing it for validation, you are seeking male attention and probably gay or a pro bodybuilder. Pro bodybuilders don't care what women think. This is why they are "pro," they are free of the desire for female validation or attention.
At a glance, you can tell when someone is physically developed but asymmetrically underdeveloped in life. I think that the gym is pointless when you stop progressing in real-world applicable knowledge. For some guys, consistently going to the gym completely changes their lives. They gain discipline, accountability, face fear and doubt, and learn about nutrition and health. All valuable skills transferable to other areas of life, but the asymmetrical lifestyle gym rats take it too far and make the gym their entire personality. This is common with nerds who have no other hobbies and get engrossed in lifting. Without a steady increase in muscle size or strength, their lifestyle feels invalidated. But perhaps even this is better than the myriad of other traps guys fall into, such as gaming, gambling, gangs, geeking out on drugs, etc.
The Physique Trap
From a practical perspective, such an intense fixation on "getting jacked" to look like the current popular fitness influencers often stems from deeper issues. Potentially stemming from a lack of other hobbies or a misguided desire for validation, often amplified by spending too much time on social media. Is striving for an extreme physique even broadly appealing? True health and practical athleticism often garner more respect than an unattainable, often impractical, physique. The discipline is commendable, but when it becomes an all-consuming obsession that overshadows all other aspects of life, it just seems a bit deranged. I think that around half of bodybuilding is just insecurity. It could be why shorter guys tend to be far more focused on it.
Even the modern lifting environment has become kind of cringe. The old-school weightlifting gym was a barebones, utilitarian place for lifting heavy weights. Its form was in its functionality, a place for raw strength and basic, compound exercises. Contrast this with the current effeminate city gyms. Flashy Lululemon active wear clothing. AirPods in, listening to the "pump up, hype" playlist. Tasty vanilla protein shake. I yearn for a return to the heroic age, when a man's strength served a practical purpose. A body that was forged through the conquests that built his world. Meals earned with sweat and hard work. But let's not be too nostalgic. The modern world still has some benefits, like the view of women wearing leggings in the squat rack with their delicious asses. Not all progress is bad.
Living an Interesting Life
The entire function of being fit and healthy is to ultimately live an interesting life. No one really gives a shit about your squats, deadlift, bench press, or overhead press 1RM. Aesthetics should be the by-product of true health and functional living. Throughout your life, your body will do what you ask of it, within reason, of course. Consider it a kind of health preservation, not about pursuing immortality, but about being able to climb mountains at 70 and tie your own shoelaces at 80. Proper exercise and diet are to preserve freedom for your future self. Being healthy leads to a better quality of life. This makes you less stressed, which means you can pursue adventures, which again leads to a better quality of life. Being in good shape should allow you to explore, adventure, crusade, travel, and squeeze the zest out of life.
Most people don't actually care about our explorations, adventures, or conquests either, which is why we need to do them for our own self-satisfaction. We are trapped amongst the masses of boring, tedious people who can’t share in any fun. Being in good shape is like Sisyphus pushing the boulder; some people can tap into a motivation that sustains them. Some guys realize it's better to have fat pockets and look half decent than be in Olympic shape without getting paid for it. And some guys have no desire to even try and have given up on fitness entirely. A good balance is probably spending around 80% of your time working and training, so that 20% can be absolutely outstanding. Otherwise, life is just a perpetual drum of average.
Purpose Beyond the Pump
The focus on extreme muscle mass can lead to injuries and deleterious long-term health. As evidenced by the longevity of professional bodybuilders known for pushing their bodies to, and beyond, their limits. A guy I know, chasing numbers with a 500lb squat, broke his arm and had a pectoralis major tendon tear. Real fitness should enable you to live actively, whether it's running a seven-minute mile, playing a round of golf, or enjoying a game of tennis, rather than leaving you hobbled for days. It's better to just get into good shape, have good cardio, and maintain a healthy and aesthetic amount of muscle, all while enjoying life's simple pleasures.
I'd rather just be lean, athletic, and strong, with excellent cardio. Running some miles every week, doing activities like tennis and bouldering, and lifting weights three or four times a week. Watch what I eat without being obsessive, leaving plenty of room to enjoy meals out and drinks with friends on the weekends. Every serious gym guy knows that with long-term discipline, a well-designed, high-intensity 45-minute workout a few times a week is all you need to get reasonably jacked.
Don’t be afraid of getting jacked, but don't become so obsessed that it takes over your life. Getting fit is healthy. It helps you live longer and reduces the risk of all-cause mortality. Be health-conscious, but don't let that become your life either. There are so many health and fitness gurus who don't look like they even have time to enjoy their lives. Muscles are cool and all, but athleticism is goated.
Chasing Aesthetics
Your twenties are a time for getting fit and building an impressive physique. But more than that, it's also a time for building fraternal networks, cultivating your mind, and learning practical skills. There are enough hours in the day to go to the gym, read deeply, and learn a new language. To neglect these things is to waste your best years. Especially if you're a student, you can build the trifecta of a strong body, a sharp mind, and a loyal network. Your ambition is the only limit; it's simply a matter of will.
The problem with bodybuilding is that it takes time to get a good-looking body if you don't start young. By the time you've got it, you've aged and now you need to improve your body even further to compensate for the receding hairline and greys, then you age more, and now you need an even better body. This is the same tendency in ideology and academia as well. People create a theory based on a piece of truth, and they get carried away developing or following the theory. Eventually, they miss the forest for the trees and become incapable of accurately assessing reality.
Guys want the confidence and composure that comes with being in good shape, but they often spend hours monotonously moving weights around. Instead of learning useful skills, they spend hours in gyms to add a few more pounds to the bar or another rep. After a few years of building a fit and athletic body, obsessive weightlifting becomes a complete waste of time. Once you get the quick noob gains, progress slows for natural lifters. As a systematic review in the Journal of Sports Sciences found, the dose-response relationship between training and muscle growth has significant diminishing returns. As a result, a dedicated natural lifter may only gain a few pounds of muscle annually after their third year, making all that time and obsession for a negligible return feel like it could have been used more productively.
A beautiful physique is often the end goal, but due to inherent ugliness or poor health, that goal is not attained by many, and then further growth becomes the compensatory mechanism. A gym rat might pursue physical perfection to compensate for perceived flaws. They strive for external dominance to compensate for an internal void. For most, the pursuit of a truly elite physique is gated by the genetic lottery. This is not to dismiss those for whom bodybuilding is a form of self-mastery through striving for excellence. Just the harsh truth that for the average person, the goal of achieving a professional-level physique is largely unattainable. At the highest levels, the differentiators are elements like a naturally favorable hormonal profile, ideal bone structure, muscle insertion points, etc. While a disciplined lifter can make significant gains, they will inevitably hit a ceiling far below the top tier if the genetics aren't there.
You don’t need to devote your life to weightlifting to look good. After you get a decent physique that's attractive to most women, maintaining it takes significantly less time than continuing to add more muscle. If you have visible abs and good genetics, you shouldn't be wasting all your free time in the gym. If you lack good genetics, neurotic bodybuilding is also a waste of time.
The historical legends and modern fitness influencers' physiques are facades built on performance-enhancing substances and steroids. There are probably some natural bodybuilders who have exceptional genetics, but I imagine they are rare. When you consider how much steroids pro bodybuilders are on, it makes their accomplishments seem less impressive. The goal of putting as much muscle on as humanly possible is a fruitless endeavor. So much of what we see from the fitness industry is insecure steroid abusers who end up dying young from their enlarged organs and cardiovascular complications. A study published in the journal Circulation followed over a thousand steroid users and found they had a threefold increased risk of heart attacks and nearly a ninefold higher risk of cardiomyopathy compared to non-users. Hearing about their single-minded obsession with getting as big as possible also must make them insufferable to be around.
We need to remember that social media is full of talkers and advice givers. For every jacked guy, thousands are fat and lazy. Most people talk a good game, but only a few have the discipline to get jacked, eat right, sleep well, limit alcohol, etc. The vocal minority in every community receives the airtime, and the fitness community is full of grifters pushing their products.
To make things worse, you have all these so-called "natural" fitness influencers who claim they have never touched a drug while doing their best to shill their new training programs and supplements that they claim will work miracles. So, when the gains are fake, the life is short, and the organs fail, what was it really all for?
Functional Fitness
Train athletically, and you can look better than the bodybuilder bros obsessed with posing and looking at themselves in the mirror. Prioritize training hypertrophy, and when you start to reach the point of slowed gains and plateaus, shift to lifting for maintenance and joint health. Bodybuilding style training is good for bone density and muscle mass. But, too often, it makes up 100% of a guy's workout routine. For cardio, add some physical activities and recreational sports like basketball, tennis, soccer, swimming, cycling, hiking, or any similar activity you enjoy. Cardio doesn't have to be boring. Martial arts and other combat sports are also great for cardio, explosive strength, and gaining confidence in your ability to defend yourself. It's easier to stick to something when the lifestyle becomes part of our identity.
Reducing the time spent eking out some extra gains in the gym opens up more options for a balanced approach to fitness and athleticism. I think a combination of HIIT, fight cardio, mobility work, footwork, power work, rotational core work, combined with strength work, would show the greatest results in the shortest time. Solely lifting weights is highly overrated from a functional perspective since it's based on specific planes and angles. There is significant carryover of strength between similar planes of motion governed by the principle of specificity. This means your body adapts most to the exact stresses placed on it. Based on this, we need to train through multiple planes of motion to ensure strength transfers to real-world movements.
If you start boxing, you may be stunned by how weak your punches are. Indeed, an untrained person with more muscle is still going to throw a stronger punch than an untrained person who’s weak. You still need to train to be good at punching. Strength is the foundation, but it's the technique that makes it effective. Force is delivered through a kinetic chain that begins with your feet. Explosive strength training is great for maximizing your ability to get up from the gamer chair and out of the gooncave.
Training should complement your life, not take up all your free time. Train to live, don't live to train. The gym isn't your only sanctuary, nor should it define your worth. Get strong, get lean, get some cardio in, and then get on with it. Your body is a vehicle for real-world conquest and experience, not a monument to vanity or an escape from responsibility. Use it to seize life's opportunities, not just to admire yourself in the mirror. At the end of the day, nobody truly cares how much you bench.