Ronnie Coleman once famously remarked, “Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder – but don’t nobody want to lift no heavy weight”. Jay Cutler once admitted that during his first two years of bodybuilding, he added over 80 pounds to his frame. He claims the secret to his gains was drinking whey protein shakes once or twice per night, when none of his peers were doing the same. Top IFBB Professional Bodybuilder Phil Heath won his first state level bodybuilding show with less than a year of bodybuilding training in the gym. And, as most state or national level competitive bodybuilders will tell you, the gains they made after joining the ranks of the ‘anabolically assisted’ were far greater than anything they gained through hard work and discipline, and that they were able to cheat far more and make much greater gains when using steroids.

The bottom line is that there are some realities in bodybuilding that aren’t talked about in the magazines for a few reasons. The primary reason you don’t see this brutal honesty is that magazines exist with one primary purpose in mind: to sell bodybuilding supplements. If the magazines were completely honest with readers, and let them know hard work, lots of food, and anabolic steroids were responsible for the physiques seen on national and pro stages, they’d sell a lot less magazines. Readers might realize that the latest powder or oil really didn’t put Dexter Jackson in first place at the Olympia. Rather, it was some combination of hard work, voluminous food, genetics and steroids.

It’s all about hard work

Day in, day out. Month after month after year after year. The guys on top are the ones that show up at the gym 5 days a week because they want to. They aren’t the ones who manage to schedule 4 mini-workouts each week when their job allows it. They schedule their jobs, their families, their schooling and their hobbies around hitting the gym because they love out-working everybody on the gym floor, day in and day out.

It’s all about heavy food consumption

The top guys don’t skimp by on lean chicken breasts and boiled potatoes all day long. They eat a lot of food, and they do it for periods of months and years. If you can’t learn to love to eat huge meals every day containing a great deal of protein, you aren’t going to grow like you want to grow.

It’s all about genetics

You either have it or you don’t. Even if you use every drug under the sun and eat and train heavy for a decade, the most you can hope to attain with poor genetics is a huge blocky mess of a physique which holds a heck of a lot of muscle. You’re not going to have Flex-Wheeler shape no matter how much you work at it. Looking like Dave Palumbo at his peak (an example of great bodybuilding practice applied to very poor genetics) is what you can ultimately hope to achieve.

It’s all about steroid use

Most professional bodybuilders have been running testosterone cycles for 5 to 15 years. They will run 2 to 4 major cycles per year, with a few small breaks in between. They typically start using steroids in their teens, with a few notable exceptions that excel in the genes department. They have the constitution to tolerate massive steroid stacks over time without developing severe side effects.

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