Muscle Sport Magazine

Distended Bellies the Talk of the 2013 Arnold Classic, Are HGH & Insulin To Blame?

It became the hot topic throughout the entire prejudging and evening show. There was no way to ignore it or make excuses about its obviousness. The vast majority of the competitors at the 2013 Arnold Classic carried with them on stage midsections that were…quite disturbing looking, to put it mildly. Even Schwarzenegger himself felt the need to address the issue the following day during his seminar session.

“I would say as a whole, I’m concerned about some of the problems that some of the bodybuilders have today,” Schwarzenegger said. “Even though with great development, more bodybuilders are having problems pulling their waists in and keeping their waists in. I think that a lot of guys did lose points yesterday at the prejudging because after two or three poses, they couldn’t keep their stomachs in. And they couldn’t do a vacuum (pose); even if they tried, they couldn’t do it. And some of them even let their stomachs hang out as if they were five, six months pregnant.”

If The Austrian Oak puts it right out there in a public forum as bluntly as that, then it is certainly hard to pretend that it will go away and better the next time out. It’s not as if this was the first contest where big guts were present, but it was more blatant and even the top six had their fair share of them.

Perhaps using a muscle stimulator would have made a difference in getting the bodybuilder’s abdominals tighter. 

Back during Schwarzenegger’s era, the vacuum pose was common, as were narrow and slim waistlines. But with today’s concentration on pure mass, it has become a contest of who can get bigger – regardless of aesthetics or symmetry. So with that, the use of human growth hormone and insulin has grown and they have been the main culprits in causing the distended bellies. The abdominal development is still present, but is cartoonish looking because of the prominence of the circumference.

As the bodybuilding calendar continues throughout the year, we will have a better indication if Schwarzenegger’s words got through to the competitors.

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ARNOLD CLASSIC TOP SIX

1 – Dexter Jackson

2 – Ben Pakulski

3 – Toney Freeman

4 – Johnny Jackson

5 – Hidetada Yamagishi

6 – Cedric McMillan

 

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  1. Pingback: Stomach Distension: Is Insulin To Blame? | Muscle Sport Magazine

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