Competitive People are Strange Creatures

post-format: "html" post-tags: bodybuilding, psychology, patriarchy post-mood: rushed

Today I watched a podcast (I thought podcasts were supposed to be audio only? I guess not...) about steroid use in the bodybuilding community. One of the speakers, professional bodybuilder John Meadows (who reportedly recently died at the young age of 49...although someone is still updating his youtube channel), talked about deciding to take performance-enhancing drugs (peds) because his goal was to go pro, because he was so competitive.

Competitiveness is something I don't really understand, especially when it comes to sports. Winning a bodybuilding show, for example, just means having a better physique than the small number of people who have the physiological ability to put on a decent amount of muscle, diet down to a sufficiently low body fat percentage without suffering so much discomfort or medical problems that they quit, afford coaches, supplements, gym memberships, specific diets, etc.

There's a lot of luck that goes into winning in sports, that goes into competing at all. There are people in this world who have the genetic potential to beat pro bodybuilders, but they were born and raised in poverty and malnourished throughout their formative years and will never recover from that. There are people who have the genetic potential but simply aren't interested in bodybuilding or aren't willing to sacrifice their health to go pro (pro shows being impossible to win without peds).

This is why I'm particularly chaffed by stupid competition titles such as "World's Strongest Man." Only a tiny percentage of the world's population even has the opportunity to compete, so it's senseless to act as if the title is global. It should be called "Strongest Guy to Show Up" or something. "Strongest Guy to Willingly Become Obese." That would be great. Maybe it would make people think twice about participating in strongman.

I don't know what drives people to care whether they can run faster or throw further than other people, especially given that all the great training, diet, motivation, etc. cannot overcome genetic potential, over which we have no control. I'm guessing that athletes don't often think about it that way. I would understand if they just did it for money. But some sports don't pay well, and the medical risks are high.

Something that just recently occurred to me is that nearly every pro sport seems to carry an insanely high risk of injury. I've heard various kinds of professionals say it again and again, especially about lifting weights. It's chilling to hear people say "you'll eventually get injured lifting weights." Like there's no way to avoid injury. If I heard that about something else, I'd be thinking about giving it up. But I'm quite attached to bodybuilding and maintaining my strength. And I've been injured only once, and the injury was minor. Now that I've increased my lifting volume, however, I'm supposedly at higher risk of injury. This is off-topic.

Anyways, during the podcast one guy explained peds as supplements you get from a suspicious guy in a trench coat behind the gym. He joked that hopefully, the guy wouldn't turn out to be a flashers, and the other guys said, "awkward." That right there neatly shows the difference in life experience between men and women. If a woman meets a guy in a trench coat behind the gym and he flashers her, she's probably going to be worried about being sexually assaulted, not thinking that the situation is awkward.