What started this buff craze women craving buff, or heavier guys?

[Robert28]

I played football all my life all through college. I honestly got burnt out working out all those years, especially heavy hardcore stuff. So after my football days were over I took a year off. I knew I didn’t want to get fat but I also wasn’t interested in being a body builder or someone that runs 5k’s and 10k’s either. Basically my workout the last few years (I’m 37 now) consists of 3 day a week. I have no clue how much I bench, I just put on 185 and do it for reps. Some days I’ll stick on 225 and do 3-4 sets of as many as I can. Sometimes I just do all dumbbell stuff. I don’t even squat heavy (250-315) and I use a trap bar for deadlifts (250-285) for 7 reps in 3-4 sets depending how I feel. I have no interest in getting stronger than I am, I’m basically maintaining. As long as I can wear 34” waist pants I’m good. I also do battle ropes 2 times a week, love those things! F all those treadmill runners, battle ropes for the win! My workout isn’t all that hard but it also isn’t meant to be some balls to the wall thing either and I’m more than happy with the results.

I even take a whole week off every couple months, I do absolutely nothing. I give my body time to heal up and rest up and I’m back at it and don’t miss a beat. Diet is simple, I eat what I want but I don’t overdo bad stuff. I drink a ton of water, I don’t drink much alcohol at all.

 

[biggoal]

I started lifting weights in the 1970s. I did it for strength and fitness, though, not to look like Arnie or a CK model. Fitness for aesthetic always seemed a little "suspicious," to me. I could swim until i couldn't see the shore, and then swim back, could run 10 miles in boots, and lift twice my body weight easily. If you look good naked, but can't do anything, what's point?

I played football all my life all through college. I honestly got burnt out working out all those years, especially heavy hardcore stuff. So after my football days were over I took a year off. I knew I didn’t want to get fat but I also wasn’t interested in being a body builder or someone that runs 5k’s and 10k’s either. Basically my workout the last few years (I’m 37 now) consists of 3 day a week. I have no clue how much I bench, I just put on 185 and do it for reps. Some days I’ll stick on 225 and do 3-4 sets of as many as I can. Sometimes I just do all dumbbell stuff. I don’t even squat heavy (250-315) and I use a trap bar for deadlifts (250-285) for 7 reps in 3-4 sets depending how I feel. I have no interest in getting stronger than I am, I’m basically maintaining. As long as I can wear 34” waist pants I’m good. I also do battle ropes 2 times a week, love those things! F all those treadmill runners, battle ropes for the win! My workout isn’t all that hard but it also isn’t meant to be some balls to the wall thing either and I’m more than happy with the results.

I even take a whole week off every couple months, I do absolutely nothing. I give my body time to heal up and rest up and I’m back at it and don’t miss a beat. Diet is simple, I eat what I want but I don’t overdo bad stuff. I drink a ton of water, I don’t drink much alcohol at all.

You see a lot of pro sports players when they retire their weight shoots up. Look at Keith Tkachuk for example. They guy was never in "great shape" was even suspended after the lockout in 2005 for coming back fat, but after he retired he ballooned! He must have weighed about 350lbs at one point. I mean where you wonder about heart attacks and such.

It's like you described, getting burnt out I guess from conditioning. I guess they say F it and eat what they want when they retire.

 

[zekko]

A lot of it is just technology/drugs/science. Bodybuilding didn't really get rolling until the 60's and 70's. The huge bodybuilder look was not really something you'd probably see in the 50's/60's much simply because a lot of people didn't realize that they were capable of achieving it, and didn't have the drugs and science readily available yet to do it to such an extreme. The people that WOULD have liked to be that big probably just weren't exposed to bodybuilding yet.

Yeah, I was listening to an interview between Dave Bautista and Chris Jericho recently. They were talking about how it used to be hard to get information on lifting and fitness. They said there was basically just Arnold Schwarzenegger's book and a few bodybuilding magazines. That's not strictly true, but close enough. I learned enough to get started from a friend. A lot of guys probably learned some from the weight room in high school, football or wrestling or whatnot.

Guys here talk about how most men aren't in shape, but fitness is much more mainstream now than it used to be. Yet obesity is also much more rampart - but that's a different conversation.

 

[gravityeyelids]

And a lot of women on their OLD profiles, especially the half way decent looking ones post on their profiles no gym and muscle pics, shirtless gym pics etc. YET many of them are posting the exact same thing. Showing off their muscles in the gym and taking selfies of it yet bash men for showing off their abs and such. I agree it's silly going over board with the meat head stuff, posting pics of it but then the women should not hold a double standard because they do it more. IMO I find women with muscles like that to be a major turn off.

It's not that women don't want to see shirtless guys with nice physiques in OLD profiles, but they want to see you DOING interesting things while being shirtless, as opposed to just standing in the mirror trying to look cool. If you have a good physique simply have a buddy with a decent camera take a few shots of you while doing something like having a pool party or at the beach with friends. Having more professional and higher quality pictures will elevate your status and make you seem larger than life. It's perfectly okay to show them you have a strong body, but i think it should be done in a way that seems "incidental" or just as a natural consequence of being in cool places with cool people doing interesting, social things (even if you don't).

A dude with a shot on a professional full frame camera with great lighting and shallow DOF will look more attractive than someone with the same/similar pic via a crummy cell phone cam. The idea is that you are high status enough for people to want to be taking pro level pictures of you (or at least half decent), and you're just presenting yourself in the best light. If you have a bunch of high end pictures of you hanging out with people in a suit, it will immediately make her wonder, even if they're just from when you attended a friends' wedding and that's literally the only time you've worn one in like 3 years.

 

[gravityeyelids]

Yeah, I was listening to an interview between Dave Bautista and Chris Jericho recently. They were talking about how it used to be hard to get information on lifting and fitness. They said there was basically just Arnold Schwarzenegger's book and a few bodybuilding magazines. That's not strictly true, but close enough. I learned enough to get started from a friend. A lot of guys probably learned some from the weight room in high school, football or wrestling or whatnot.

Guys here talk about how most men aren't in shape, but fitness is much more mainstream now than it used to be. Yet obesity is also much more rampart - but that's a different conversation.

I mean these days the amount of information that the internet afford is just ridiculous. Of course, the pendulum now swings the other direction because there is now SO MUCH noise and "information" out there, and everyone is trying to cash in on the fitness thing despite being completely unqualified, and so a vast majority of the cursory information on bodybuilding is absolute horse sh!t.

Yeah, like you said, my friend that got me into it just had that giant Arnie book on bodybuilding in high school. We had the internet of course, but it was still pretty slow and convoluted. I also got into it by my friend basically just dragging me into our high school gym after school a few days a week.

 

[biggoal]

It's not that women don't want to see shirtless guys with nice physiques in OLD profiles, but they want to see you DOING interesting things while being shirtless, as opposed to just standing in the mirror trying to look cool. If you have a good physique simply have a buddy with a decent camera take a few shots of you while doing something like having a pool party or at the beach with friends. Having more professional and higher quality pictures will elevate your status and make you seem larger than life. It's perfectly okay to show them you have a strong body, but i think it should be done in a way that seems "incidental" or just as a natural consequence of being in cool places with cool people doing interesting, social things (even if you don't).

A dude with a shot on a professional full frame camera with great lighting and shallow DOF will look more attractive than someone with the same/similar pic via a crummy cell phone cam. The idea is that you are high status enough for people to want to be taking pro level pictures of you (or at least half decent), and you're just presenting yourself in the best light. If you have a bunch of high end pictures of you hanging out with people in a suit, it will immediately make her wonder, even if they're just from when you attended a friends' wedding and that's literally the only time you've worn one in like 3 years.

Yet these same broads lol on their profile photos have mostly selfies of themselves and other crap cell pics. Girls can get away with that because guys will still flock to them even with junk pics from a 2015 cell phone.

The new cell phones are pretty good though. I have the Note 10 pro and the thing takes better pics than digital cameras. Also has beauty mode. For my main profile pic I used it for match.com and man, my profile views and reply rates have went up a bit since.

When you see a hot chick with photos that look too over the top you can tell it's doctored with the fancy stuff on phones. Like if they're 43 on their profile but the face looks 30 because all the lines are hidden.

 

[2Rocky]

Because when you can pick them up and do the nasty standing up they REALLY LIKE IT.