I’m not a bodybuilder. However, two of my family’s closest friends were competitive Natural Olympia bodybuilders.

Bodybuilding is not healthy for you, long-term, even without abusing steroids (which was the practice my friends did in pursuing this art form - yes, it is an art form).

The way they explained it was that in the ‘off-season’, focus was put toward gaining and maintaining mass, which put tremendous stress on ligaments and tendons. Inevitably, knee and hip surgery, or even back surgery was in their future, even if they were careful (and they were).

During the competition season, focus shifts to losing dangerous amounts of body fat. Competition requirements for men are different than women’s condition reqs, largely because of natural body fat distribution. It still gets dangerously low, to the point where metabolism, cognition, memory, reflex, coordination, sleep, mood, all of that starts taking a hit. Not to mention, to get the kind of striation the person on the left is showing requires deliberate dehydration.

In the off-season? He could probably lift a car if he had to (and spend weeks babying his rotator cuff because those tendons aren’t meant to handle that kind of pull force). On-season? You could knock him over with a stiff breeze.

My friends eventually retired when they were in their 30s, because they both wanted to be able to have biological children. They’re doing great, they have two very cute daughters.