Monday, April 8, 2013

Something strange I've noticed.

I started working out some time back in the mid to late nineties. Back then, being big was cool but working out really didn't seem to be. There wasn't much talk about working out. Some of us did it, most people didn't. Booze and pot were cool. Lifting weights was just something you did while you were in jail. On the outside it just cut into your social life and made you an outcast. Especially if you wanted to be good at it.

Now it's 2013 and everybody works out. Working out has become trendy and cool and if you don't do it there might as well be something wrong with you. The weird thing is, being big has become decidedly uncool. It's very strange. Everybody seems to be chasing that almost big look. Everybody's posting their workouts and announcing that they're either on their way to the gym or just getting home from it but nobody actually wants to look like they work out. Skinny is the new huge. It makes very little sense to me.


                                               

2 comments:

  1. No clue Glen. Most posts asking about training and nutrition (by 'goal setters') are along the line of 'I want to tone but not get too bulky.' Apparently muscle makes you slow and weak. News to me.

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  2. In the early nineties, every male underwear model looked like those underwear models Brad Pitt makes fun of in Fight Club. Now every male underwear model looks like Brad Pitt.

    Getting genuinely huge has probably always had something gay about it and only recently did people aspire to some sort of half-hearted compromise, partly driven by the fleeting nature of women's interest causing them to go for some sort of half-hearted compromise, glutes are good but traps are scary, or whatever.

    Stuff like Men's Health is full of people like that whereas exercise magazines proper will probably split people between not wanting to look like a pro-bodybuilder and being afraid that if they train that way they will fail to look like a pro-bodybuilder.

    Maybe all that's wrong, I don't really know why people changed. Probably though in the end people aim for a mediocre physique and train the way they do in an effort to avoid anything tangible, so you can't tell them that their neck is puny or that they are weak all-round, because that's not the way being "toned" or being "fit" works.

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