UK bodybuilding before steroids was not as popular as it is now, because in fact in the early 20th century, when people had more difficult living conditions.
Under these conditions, no one thought about pumping muscles, had to work to survive. At that time, big muscles were either strength athletes, who also performed in a circus and wrestled in parallel, or villagers who had a tendency to gain muscle mass. Smiths were also particularly distinguished.
In the 20s of the last century, bodybuilding competitions were started, which were usually part of the competition program, where athletes also lifted weights.
This sport started to develop in UK actively after the war. In 1947, the tournament Mr. Universe was held. Steroids were already synthesized in laboratories at the time, but had not yet been used en masse.
In principle, the athletes’ bodies were quite aesthetically pleasing at the time. But that wasn’t the limit, you could swing even harder if you used a scientific approach in training.
So when did the steroids come into being?
No one can tell you the exact date. But in 1954, at the UK World Championships in weightlifting, the results of athletes increased dramatically. Americans say that steroids were first synthesized in the USSR, and Soviet athletes repeat everything exactly the opposite.
But the fact remains that anabolic steroids have been tightly integrated into sports since the second half of the 50s and still remain there despite the strong antidoping struggle.
So how did steroids change UK bodybuilding?
Actually, they did change for the better. You can throw rocks at me, but they did. Since the early 60’s, when anabolics were already used full-coil bodybuilding has jumped very hard in terms of spectacularity and popularity. The first commercial tournaments have been held. Many bodybuilders got on TV screens. Arnold Schwarzenegger is an example of that here.
There is, of course, a downside to all this. We all know what the side effects of these drugs are. But if you look at it in terms of spectacularity, they’ve definitely helped the bodybuilders a lot.
And how are things with modern UK bodybuilding?
Everything is very sad. Everything fell to the level of “circus freaks” where there are huge uncles weighing 130 kg with a large blowing mass, huge bellies and even in the string. I told about it in detail in my article. The link will be lower.
Why do bodybuilders in chemistry look so nasty?
The reason why modern bodybuilding is so disgusting in high doses of chemo, including steroids. But there’s actually a lot of other drugs. In fact, bodybuilders can take up to 10 different drugs during training.