Well, I’ve fallen into the youtube fitness rabbit hole and watched too many “natty or not” videos. I think Dr. Mike has noted that basically any actor in a superhero movie is on gear.
I think TRT is the often used term for exogenous testosterone, but in many cases it’s probably not “replacement” unless a person has actually low testosterone. My understanding is that many ex-bodybuilders are on TRT for life because they’ve damaged their hormonal system.
How many times do I need to repeat “Try reading from or talking to trans people about their transition experiences instead of getting all your input from transphobes?” to make it happen?
Yeah, there is this too.
With just TRT, there is no way.
But a lot of people (like simp) think that you can just shoot up with steroids and do nothing and make a bunch of gains. That’s just not true. You still need to lift. Maybe not as much and maybe not as hard, but you can’t just sit on the couch all day and expect to gain muscle no matter what gear you are on.
I doubt you’ll get a response, because while Simp doesn’t generally admit he was wrong, he also doesn’t double down. He just quietly slinks away.
Edit: I guess I was wrong, he is doubling down. LOL.
The pattern actually seems to be coming back every year or two forgetting we’d had this conversation before.
It’s probably only used that way by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Like you.
It’s really simple. If you’re not treating low T. It’s not replacement. If you look at table 3 in the study you cited, you can see that’s not the case. T was in the normal range at baseline.
I think simp and a lot of people are right about that and that study is showing it and I’ve heard these science-body-builder dudes talk about it and they seem to know what they’re talking about. Just doing a lot of steroids and not lifting at all will build more muscle - at least for newbs - than lifting without steroids.
The study doesn’t convincingly show that because of the flaws that I pointed out earlier.
They didn’t follow them closely and see what kind of activity the non-exercisers did. It’s not clearly that they actually were sedentary. It sounds like it was on the honor system.
Even according to their own data, the exercisers on placebo had more gains in bench and squat than the non-exercisers on the massive amounts of T
The other weird thing, I didn’t mention to simp, and this may be because it’s an old study, is that the best way to measure muscle mass is by DEXA scan. But didn’t do that they measured some MRI. When you compare the poorer measuring technique with #2 above, there is plenty of reason to question the conclusion.
The other thing that is quite suspect is that these were all guys who had experience with weightlifting and somehow with 10 weeks of “being sedentary” and on placebo, they had no significant reduction in their bench and squat. Seems very sus.
Shrug. I dug a bit and am not going to dig more, but I think what I’ve seen was just about muscle size and not strength and I dunno DEXA vs MRI (never heard of DEXA). And the people I saw seemed pretty smart and well informed and, if anything, I think their prejudice would be to say you gotta lift. (Jeff Nippard and/or Mike Israetel)
DEXA is the widely considered to be the best way to measure body comp these days.
I’ve seen Nippard talk about this and he cites that exact study. That might be one of the first times I encountered it. Yet another problem is that it’s only 10 wks. That’s nothing. Nippard would also be the first to tell you that you should absolutely lift (and steroids will certainly help with progress).
Also if we’re getting nitty, those things are different. For example, in theory if you do a very high rep training regimen at lower weight and you build up your glycogen stores in your muscles they might be bigger, but not necessarily stronger (probably would be a little bit, tho). Though I think DEXA scan would count that as bigger.
The second half of this video is a good discussion of the study and other, later studies on the subject of testosterone usage. I’m not sure what you are arguing. The massive effects of exogenous testosterone are universally recognized.
I don’t really see how it’s relevant to trans issues. This is just baseline muscle science.
I’m arguing that there really isn’t good evidence that you are going to gain more on steroids (especially only TRT) indefinitely while being completely sedentary vs training and being no no steroids (assuming youngish dudes without low T).
Everyone knows steroids will increase muscle mass. And if you lift you will gain a lot. That wasn’t your original claim.
I mentioned the “untrained” control group because it’s a dramatic result that is indicative of the major effect of hormones on muscle mass (and, generally, strength), not as a stand-alone point. Obviously, any use of steroids should/would be accompanied by training, and the difference between use in “enhanced” training vs “natural” training is even more dramatic.
That’s the video I saw. Dude seems pretty smart and to know what he’s on about. Not saying he’d definitively agree or disagree with Melk here - I’m not that interested in getting into the details on that.
Did you see that a steroidy body builder dude assaulted Jeff Nippard recently? I guess because he didn’t like something Nippard said in a video.
Sure if you change everything you say, it doesn’t sound nearly as crazy. Let’s play back the tape:
The article wasn’t 5x/week, it wasn’t (as micro pointed out) TRT, and it was for a very short period of time, and even then the exercise group + placebo group had larger gains in bench and squat than the steroid plus (maybe) sedentary group.
If you want to now claim that all you were trying to say is that testosterone massively aids muscle growth, have at it. No one would disagree with that. But that is not what you said initially.
Yes, I saw the whole thing about that, it caused quite a stir. As many have noted, I would attribute it as the product of “roid rage”, which is a serious thing Dr. Mike has recently discussed at length (and why he said he’s quitting roids) and that I’ve seen examples of when I played football. (A guy on my team who went on the play at UCLA freaked out about something with his girlfriend and was arrested.)
I’ve spent a lot of time reading into (and doing) fitness lately and I’ve decided I have zero interest in testosterone or any other hormonal supplement, as the downsides are generally major for someone with normal testosterone. That said, “TRT” (as most people call it to avoid saying they are on “roids”) appears to be a popular thing among wealthy patients (like Robert Kennedy) who use “concierge” doctors, like Peter Attia (not saying he prescribes it, but he is the type of “concierge” doctor where many patients would request it.)
To say more about the Nippard/Mike Van Wyke thing (because I found it kind of interesting), Nippard is the most followed “science-based” fitness influencer, along with Dr. Mike, and all the “science” guys seem pretty close and they kind of all play off one another in ongoing discussions. Van Wyke is a more “old school” bro and “roids” influencer, who has like 300k vs 6 million Youtube followers for Nippard. He’s like 6’6" and roided up and was like a former bodyguard for Drake, and he probably gets pissed of that this “weak” 5’5" bro who he goes to the same gym as (well, used to go, he was banned) is 10x more famous. I think that just pissed off his roid-mind, so he tried to go Harambe on Nippard, with the obvious unfavorable result.
“Coincidently” Dr. Mike dropped this video the day after the assault.
Good god
Let the kids play fucking sports what is wrong with you
I remember a conversation a while back with my wife where we talked about something regarding dating safely and why women always have a friend on call when they go out with a new guy, etc.
Her response was that at some point in HS or College, every woman has the same experience. Where they are involved in something physical with a man whether its playful wrestling at a party, something in PE class, playing sports, and realizes that the man is just way stronger than her. In my wife’s case, she was a 2 sport athlete (lets call her 60th-70th percentile in relative strength and size) and the guy she wrestled with was a theater guy who played no sports and didn’t work out at all.
This fundamental imbalance affects so much of why women operate the way they do in the world. They make sure they aren’t left alone with strange men because they know that if it comes down to a physical struggle for their own safety, they are at a disadvantage because of how they were born.
So I understand where women are coming from when they are put into competition with people they have known as a different gender up until very recently, or who have a body type that looks different from every other girl they have known their entire lives.
Thank goodness there are principled folks out there willing to require genital inspection in order to keep a 14 year old who has been battling gender identity their whole life from going out there and brutally savaging the “real girls” on the JV Cross Country team.
The problem with this line of thinking is it sounds good until you think about it.
It’s a fake fear. Trans people simply don’t attack women.
Cis men do.
Trans people are 4 times more likely than cis people to be subjected to violence. They are the victim not the perpetrators.