How bodybuilding affects health, what diseases professional bodybuilders suffer from

AUGUST 6, 2019

Bodybuilding stands out among sports. For people who are professionally involved in it, it becomes an ideology, a way of life. Millions of people around the world are involved in bodybuilding and promote it as a philosophy of life. Let's take a closer look at how bodybuilding affects the body, what benefits and harm it brings.

Bodybuilding concept

Bodybuilding comes from the English words “body” and “building”, literally deciphered as building the body. It also has the name “bodybuilding,” derived from the phrase “physical culture.” The main goal of the process is to build muscle mass and build an ideal body.

As a sport, bodybuilding originated a long time ago, it was born out of humanity’s desire for perfect physical shape. Creating an aesthetically developed body, ideal muscle relief - this is what bodybuilders strive for. The goal of professional bodybuilders is to win competitions. The jury determines the winner based on aesthetics, quality physical development and muscle volume.

The founder of modern bodybuilding is considered to be the strongest man of the 20th century - Evgeniy Sandov. The principles underlying his training program were used by Ivan Poddubny.

The increase in muscle mass is achieved through regular performance of a set of physical exercises performed with weights. Particular attention is paid to the hips, abdomen, arms, and shoulder girdle.

Professional bodybuilding forces you to seriously reconsider your daily routine and lifestyle:

Training should become a lifestyle. Athletes need constant aerobic exercise (exercise on exercise bikes, running, swimming), and strength training. Together, this creates muscle hypertrophy, gets rid of fat deposits, and allows the pattern of the veins to clearly appear.
A transition to a high-energy diet is necessary. The diet must contain foods rich in protein and carbohydrates.
It is often necessary to take proteins and gainers.
To get rid of excess fluids, some athletes begin to take diuretics, hormones, and steroids.

Bodybuilding and health. Is this combination possible?

There is still debate about what effect bodybuilding on the health of the body. Many people say that bodybuilding has only a positive effect on the body and does not cause any harm. Others argue that it is better to only charge. Bodybuilding, along with other sports, improves human health. But this is only when absolutely all the rules are followed. Violating them will not lead to anything good. At best, you will have to forget about bodybuilding forever.

Types of bodybuilding

Bodybuilding differs between amateur and professional. Bodybuilding is also divided into several subtypes:

Natural. Was popular in the 90s. It involves building an ideal body without the use of steroids or doping drugs. Anabolic processes occur naturally. The goal of natural bodybuilding is to improve physical fitness, improve health, and have a harmoniously developed body.
Classical. Differs in the presence of height and weight categories. In classical bodybuilding, harmonious body proportions, relief and dryness are valued, rather than muscle hypertrophy.
Beach. Participants are prohibited from performing in swimming trunks; shorts are allowed. Participants do not use makeup or oil. Beach bodybuilding is a strength direction aimed at the harmonious development of the body without pumping muscles.
Female. Over time, it lost its popularity as competitions among women led to girls gaining muscle mass to the detriment of the traditional proportions of the female body. This caused pronounced symptoms of masculinization among the participants - deepening of the voice, masculine facial features and figures.

Too many muscles

In sports you cannot be too fast, too strong, too resilient, too dexterous - an athlete spends his entire life to develop these abilities better than anyone else in the world.

Bodybuilders followed the same path, but the competition on the topic “Who can build the most muscles on themselves” did not make them a role model for millions, but only for a handful of the most ardent adherents of the jock sect.

An ordinary person, looking at the bodies of top modern bodybuilders (who look especially scary at any time of the year, except for the week of competitions), thinks “man, what have you done to yourself?! I hope you at least get paid for this."

Dennis Wolf in training

If you conduct a survey of the most ordinary girls, whether they like such a body, the answer will be approximately the same: “What have you done to yourself?! I hope you at least get paid for this."

Don't get us wrong: there is nothing terrible about pharmacological support. Many people drink alcohol, take drugs, smoke cigarettes, and simply decay morally and physically in every possible way. We're talking about breaking the equation between being overly muscular and being healthy. If you are training to become more beautiful, fitter, healthier and stronger, then there is no place in your life for flirting with your endocrine system. You cannot apply to yourself the rules of life and training plans of athletes who “course” tightly.

And once again: if someone wants to look like Cutler, then the flag is in your hands, but most likely you want publicity and recognition, which means you will have students and followers, so you must talk not only about the advantages of various types of reception pharma, but also about the disadvantages. And please speak louder about the disadvantages.

Harm of bodybuilding

Bodybuilding at a professional level brings a lot of harm to the body:

High risk of injury in the gym.
Increased load on joints, heart, spine. Over a long period of time, heart problems and wear of intervertebral discs are possible.
Exhaustion of the nervous system by exhausting loads. It manifests itself as drowsiness, weakness, lack of desire to continue training, pain in the heart, shortness of breath.

Professional bodybuilders often take steroids to enhance anabolic processes. They increase muscle mass many times faster, but long-term use of anabolic steroids promises the following problems:

Testicular atrophy in men, loss of potency.
Masculinization of the body in women.
The appearance of cellular biochemical disorder.
Constant headaches.
Impaired functioning of the liver, gastrointestinal tract, kidneys.
Acne appears on the body.
Development of depression.
Hair loss.

As you can see, with a moderate and reasonable approach, natural bodybuilding will certainly benefit the body and allow you to remain in good physical shape for a long time.

Achievements of the chemical industry

The achievements of the chemical industry (and all top bodybuilders and, if you didn’t know, almost all trainers in gyms have been using illegal drugs for a long time) make it possible to build muscle volumes the size of Greenland on their bodies. As a result, the size of top athletes exceeded reasonable limits, including psychological ones.

And for ordinary people, they gradually ceased to be an object of admiration and adoration, and on the contrary, they began to scare away those who know little about strength training from exercise equipment: “What if I become the same?”

We were personally present at the finals of the Mr. Olympia 2013 competition in Las Vegas and observed it ourselves: a hall full of musclemen, but with a lot of empty seats, weak prize money and a complete absence of sponsors from the mass market niche. Few people want to associate their brand with such bodies; basically, these are only “jock” brands. Everything together created the impression of a kind of parochialism, an event “for our own people.” It turned out that people, the mass audience, did not accept these bodies, did not consider them beautiful or standard, and did not look at them from the audience or on TV.

With bodybuilding, the strategy from other sports “the more the better” did not work. And it even worked the other way around: many began to get scared. For example, most girls who want to do health-improving strength training to become slimmer experience pressure from relatives and friends who are far from the topic of strength training: “What if you become like her?!”

Crossfit

CrossFit is a high-intensity training system whose goal is to develop human functionality, increase strength, agility and increase endurance.

In CrossFit, the speed of performing a set of exercises in the shortest possible period of time is important, which allows you to develop endurance. However, due to the high intensity, great complexity and regularity of training, the human body, unadapted to constant excessive physical activity, literally works for wear and tear. The main emphasis when performing elements is on speed and completion of the entire set of exercises “at any cost, at any cost,” which is why there is a high probability of injury in this sport.

According to studies conducted by American scientists, the overall injury rate in the study group of CrossFit athletes is 19.4%. The most common injuries are those of the shoulder, lower back and knee. Athletes most often injured their shoulders when performing gymnastic exercises, and the lower back during strength exercises. Benjamin Weisenthal, in his book “Injury Rates Among CrossFitters,” points out that most injuries were acute in nature, i.e. without previous injury or symptoms in the same area of the body previously.

A similar study was conducted in Britain, and 73.5% of respondents suffered injuries during CrossFit training, 7% of whom required surgery. Among those observed, injuries of the shoulder and spine predominated. As Samantha Schmidt notes in the article “CrossFit: Good or Bad?,” such a difference in the results of the two countries may depend on various factors, for example, the preparedness of the coaches, the equipment of the training rooms, the general condition of the athletes, as well as Observational errors cannot be ruled out, but nevertheless, even if we consider the result of only the American side, the figure of 19.4% is quite high.

In addition, high-intensity training can cause a serious disease, rhabdomyolysis, in which muscle tissue is destroyed and myoglobin, a component of muscle tissue that releases harmful nephrotoxic radicals, enters the bloodstream. This can ultimately lead to acute renal failure, liver dysfunction, disseminated intravascular coagulation, arrhythmia, and ultimately death. Greg Glassman, the creator of CrossFit, confirms these data and calls for more attention to training and your health. Doctors insist that before you start doing CrossFit, you must undergo a whole-body screening.

Weightlifting

Weightlifting is a strength sport in which the competition of athletes is based on lifting the barbell with the greatest weight.

Weightlifting is associated with large loads on the spine, and vertical load is especially dangerous for the load-bearing element of the skeleton. Often, exercise causes the formation of an intervertebral hernia. During training, the development of unilateral muscle hypertrophy is often noted. Other threats to weightlifters include displacement of the pelvic bones, which can occur during sudden heavy lifting, and vision problems as intraocular pressure increases during exercise.

As a result of regular training with heavy weights, athletes wear out the cartilage tissue of the joint, which causes severe pain; it is extremely difficult to cure such a disease. Special drugs - anabolic steroids - help to partially solve problems with cartilage tissue, but, as is known, they cause a large number of side effects.

According to research by Justin Keogh and Paul Winwood, the results of which are reflected in the article “The Epidemiology of Injuries Across the Weight-Training Sports,” strength sports, in particular weightlifting, can be classified as dangerous sports sports due to heavy loads, which are an integral part of training and competition, and injuries that athletes regularly receive, regardless of their level of professionalism and preparedness. The most commonly injured areas during weightlifting are the shoulder, lower back, knee, elbow and wrist. Additionally, there were very few significant differences in injury outcomes based on age, gender, competition standard, or body weight.

The results are also confirmed by American researchers who conducted a study of injuries of professional weightlifters at US Olympic sports centers. According to the results over a 6-year period, 873 injuries were recorded, 560 of which were of a sports nature – injuries to the lower back, knees, and shoulders (G. Calhoon, AC Fry “Injury rates and profiles of elite competitive weightlifters”).

Age-related changes

Let's start with the fact that old age begins to set in for a person at about 20 years of age. Already at the age of 12 years, the processes of hearing and vision deterioration begin. However, at this age, signs of aging will not yet be noticeable to the naked eye, but subtle biochemical tests still confirm the beginning of aging of the body.

At about 35-36 years old, we begin to notice external signs of aging - the first wrinkles appear on the face, as well as mild attacks of depression due to the beginning of a decline in physiological activity, which is also typical at this age.

After thirty, old age begins to gain momentum. The body begins to absorb oxygen 10% less than usual and each next decade will reduce this figure by another 10 percent.

In principle, you can ignore all this, give up and leave everything unchanged. But the many personal problems that are the result of age-related decline will not allow you to live peacefully with it. Sooner or later, the drama of Faust will touch each of us.

And while someone is looking for the magic grail, bodybuilding can already offer some way out of this situation. Tufts University conducted studies that showed that regular weight training has a pronounced anti-aging effect. This is explained by the fact that “iron” sports, especially in combination with a proper diet, tend to slow down the decline in metabolic rate in middle age.

By the way, according to the results of an experiment conducted at the same university (the essence of the experiment was to attract older people to physical exercise), the participants received a surge of vital activity, gained approximately 15% of muscle mass and increased their strength by 200%. Moreover, the age of these people was from 60 to 95 years.

Pressure

Bodybuilding can become a cure and a real salvation for those whose blood pressure fluctuates over time without any particular reason. This sport stabilizes and normalizes blood pressure. Since heavy training accelerates blood circulation, it simply “flushes” excess cholesterol from the blood vessels. Therefore, athletes are practically not afraid of the threat of blood pressure surges. A low heart rate combined with stable blood pressure is a normal health condition that bodybuilders will continue into old age.

Impact on bones

It is considered an axiom of gerantology that bones lose their strength with age and become more brittle. Bodybuilding can argue with this. Bodybuilders maintain healthy bones even in old age. Their thickness and strength remain at the same level as at 20 years old.

Bodybuilding will prevent you from developing a disease such as arthritis in old age. Every second elderly person has symptoms of arthritis - salt deposition in the joints and this is a very unpleasant disease that can make old age even more painful. During training, under the influence of heavy loads, blood very actively washes the joints, moreover, the joints themselves work as actively as possible, and arthritis is, as we know, a consequence of a sedentary lifestyle.

Strong and healthy psyche

The scourge of modern civilization is depression, which arises from a number of problems in our lives, and sooner or later this disease can affect everyone. However, everyone also has the power to protect themselves from it.

Bodybuilding will help get rid of depression, because during training, the brain begins to release special chemicals - antidepressants. Plus, bodybuilding classes themselves give us a lot of positive emotions, because with each new workout they bring us closer to the desired ideal.

Psychologists say that the way we look is more important to us than what society tries to impose on us. A well-developed body makes our appearance more impressive and relieves us of all kinds of complexes, gives us peace of mind and self-confidence, over time consolidating these qualities in our character.