It’s funny how people are so skeptical and yet so gullible.
They’ll challenge everything from vaccines to the “mainstream news,” questioning if it’s on the level or perhaps there’s a hidden agenda at play.
And that’s fine. But along comes a naturally curvy influencer with a bunch of useless banded and bodyweight “booty builders” and everyone scrambles to copy her.
Nobody questions that maybe she’s gifted in the glutes and/or trained for years in explosive sports and real weight training.
Nope, it’s gotta be the banded frog pumps. Take my money!
Guys are no better.
They’ll dispute a jacked guy’s claims to be natural or even say they KNOW what he’s really taking… but never question the rest of what he’s saying.
Case in point: big, jacked lean gainers. Guys who are well over 200 pounds, lean, and very muscular—all while eating fewer than 2,000 calories a day and next to no carbs.
These guys often credit their genetics or a refeeding protocol (or perhaps some magic supplement they’re selling) for being so big while eating so little.
But the whole truth — and most will admit it when asked directly — is they’re not really building much muscle at all on their low cal plan.
They’re sculpting: getting leaner, harder, and developing awesome muscle maturity (hardness). “Working on the details,” as the magazines used to say. Which makes you LOOK bigger.
But the base of raw mass they’re working with was built MUCH differently: lots of calories combined with hard training FOR YEARS. Often without an ab or vein in sight, and even pharmaceutical assistance for good measure.
And while that big block of mass may not have screamed aesthetics at the time, it was the necessary foundation to build on AND it was necessary to, years later, make a low-calorie “lean gain” protocol remotely effective.
So, if you’re gonna be skeptical, do it right. Instead of asking “what’s your diet like?” ask stuff like, “how long has your diet been this way? have you ever bulked up?”
Be less concerned with someone’s current practices and more interested in what they’ve done to get to where they are today.
And while you’re at it, quit trying to sculpt a pebble.
Be a bodybuilder, not a banzai tree.
– Coach Bryan