The biggest hoax about bodybuilding magazines?

[Dugbet]

Kovacs about muscletech and musclemag

How I Met Muscletech's Paul Gardiner!

I get a lot of questions from people asking me how I met Paul Gardiner, the owner of Muscletech.

rxmuscle.com

 

[Luv2test]

MuscleTech never owned MuscleMag. MuscleMag was founded by Robert Kennedy in 1974. Paul Gardinder the founder of MuscleTech was a manager at a MuscleMag supplement store and while working there he developed his first MuscleTech product, HydroxyCut. Paul used his own before and after pics he took while dieting for a show, and put a (I believe free ad) in MuscleMag.

Product blew up, and MuscleTech starting spending millions of dollars on advertising (one year about $10 million on just two bodybuilding magazines), so while MuscleMag made tons of money from MuscleTech, it was never technically owned by MuscleTech.

Still learning. Thanks for the info!

 

[Fa Seeshus]

Biggest hoax was those super high volume specialization routines that supposedly gave each pro their all the gains for their genetically outstanding body part.

I remember countless articles about Kevin Levrone's elaborate tricep isolation routines. Then I went to his gym and saw that he actually ended up doing like one exercise after focusing primarily on major compound lifts for bigger muscle groups,

 

[Alzadosghost]

Last time I bought a bodybuilding magazine was a muscle mag in the mid 90s. I ordered gear out of the classifieds. The add said “ergogenic aids”. I called a guy in Holland long distance and made an order over the phone. Lol the guy had to switch phone lines twice as he said he was being listened to lol. Sent cash in the mail and it took two months to get my order. But it worked. Norma and sustanon amps.

 

[totalrecomp]

I remember seeing adds of something sold in amps and I wondered how it could be this great supplement no one was talking about that looked very much like steroids. Looking back it probably was.

Musco MXT or something like that I believe, lol.

 

[maldorf]

Till people stop looking for the easy, quick fix there is no real reason to change strategies. As the the ones, past, present and future will still sell products.

Its really not much different than the weight loss products out there.

 

[FrancisK]

Till people stop looking for the easy, quick fix there is no real reason to change strategies. As the the ones, past, present and future will still sell products.

Yea it's just business, if the magazines or youtube jackasses all just said "eat less, eat better and train consistently" they would be out of work in a week.....

 

[SlickNYC]

Last time I bought a bodybuilding magazine was a muscle mag in the mid 90s. I ordered gear out of the classifieds. The add said “ergogenic aids”. I called a guy in Holland long distance and made an order over the phone. Lol the guy had to switch phone lines twice as he said he was being listened to lol. Sent cash in the mail and it took two months to get my order. But it worked. Norma and sustanon amps.

Lol I knew someone else did this. I found 2 guys one was actually Portugal although I had said Spain last post. The other was the UK. I ordered organon deca amps I believe they were and I wanna say sustanon amps. The deca amps were 100mg amps and were 100% legit as was the sust. Grew like a weed.

 

[USMuscle9403]

I totally bought Hydroxycut when it had ephedrine in it. The multi page ads lol I tried to think, "well, they can't really lie, can they? They'd get sued, right?"

Mom said I was a little slow on the uptake. She was probably right

 

[TripppleP]

Musco MXT or something like that I believe, lol.

Yup, I was going to say that but didn't think anyone would remember. Good call man. What the hell was the stuff anyway. Someone had to order it as it was in every single magazine in the back.

 

[TripppleP]

I remember reading an add about "ultimate orange". It had an outrageous claim to add so much to your bench and squat. So I ordered it and drank a bunch of it one day and learned it was like speed (ephedra). I was fucked up and had to ride that out until my mom picked me up from the gym. Good god I'm glad I didn't have a heart attack.

Of course I later used ephedra all the time but in sane dosages.

 

[jeroendebleser]

It's impossible to single out one biggest hoax since everything in these mags was a hoax in one way or another.

From the supplements that didn't do anything and weren't really used by any of the pro's, to the fictional training routines, over the supposed pro-diets and filled with heavily filtered pictures mostly shot with fake weights.

I honestly can't remember anything truthful in those magazines.

Why o why did we buy them to begin with?

 

[Dionysusedge]

1st mag was the 94 Ironman with Shelley Beatie on the cover. I was 16.

Ironman was good, but when Muscle Media2000 came out - that was some good reading.

I bought everything EAS and still looked like shit. Got a free t-shirt though LOL.

Those days were great though, i was innocent and in love with something other than video games.

What really helped me was reading Big Beyond Belief in 95. That program shaped my training and I still use high frequency/low volume training to this day, some 26 years later.

My buddy met Leo at a contest at Knotts Berry Farm and Leo sold him on the program. He bought the book and the vhs tapes with Phil Hernon and the tape of Leo and Platz training together.. He passed them on to me. I watched those tapes religiously.

Those were good days.

 

[hawkmoon]

The supplements were a bit dubious to me, even as a teenager in the late 80s.
More upsetting to me was to find out that the workouts were also bogus. When I did a series with Shawn Ray for American Muscle he told me as such.

 

[maldorf]

The supplements were a bit dubious to me, even as a teenager in the late 80s.
More upsetting to me was to find out that the workouts were also bogus. When I did a series with Shawn Ray for American Muscle he told me as such.

Can you elaborate more on what Shawn had to say? I think a lot of us would like to hear that story.

 

[headtrainer]

I used Cybergenics 2x and everything else that was pushed in the magazines. Different weight gainers. I too thought the pros looked like their photo shoots most of the year. I had a subscription to Muscle and Fitness. Most of the training I used from the magazine was 5 day splits, high volume.

I pain $180 dollars for the first cybergenics kits that came out. They claimed it worked even better than steroids. I was around 17 years at the time and the media had me afraid to take steroids. I really thought they would kill me. So I saved up my money and bought a Cybergenics kit. Little did I know that what the company sent me was much much worse than any steroid ever made. I received some kind of amphetamines. I had to stop taking the supplement due to it causing me to have the same terrifying nightmares every night. The nightmare would start over again on the same night as soon as I fell back to sleep after having been awakened from the first nightmare. It was like that movie Groundhog Day, but I was dreaming. I would have the same terrifying dream about 3-5 times per night. Remember that pig with the red eyes named Jody in the movie
Amityville Horror? Well, that demon
showed up in my window every night as soon as I fell asleep. It was like clock work! Eventually I got to were I could turn away when I saw those red eyes appear but I could still hear the snorting! Eventually I would look at those red eyes and I would wake up with my heart racing as I gasped for air! I toughed it out for 3 days because I do desperately wanted to get huge. But I decided to stop taking it and give it to one of my training partners to see how he responded to it. He took it that night and for the first time in his life he experienced sleep terrors. He began screaming to the top of his lungs and his parents ran in to his bedroom and woke him up. He wasn’t aware that he was doing anything. After that, our parents talked us into trashing it!

 

[maldorf]

I pain $180 dollars for the first cybergenics kits that came out. They claimed it worked even better than steroids. I was around 17 years at the time and the media had me afraid to take steroids. I really thought they would kill me. So I saved up my money and bought a Cybergenics kit. Little did I know that what the company sent me was much much worse than any steroid ever made. I received some kind of amphetamines. I had to stop taking the supplement due to it causing me to have the same terrifying nightmares every night. The nightmare would start over again on the same night as soon as I fell back to sleep after having been awakened from the first nightmare. It was like that movie Groundhog Day, but I was dreaming. I would have the same terrifying dream about 3-5 times per night. Remember that pig with the red eyes named Jody in the movie
Amityville Horror? Well, that demon
showed up in my window every night as soon as I fell asleep. It was like clock work! Eventually I got to were I could turn away when I saw those red eyes appear but I could still hear the snorting! Eventually I would look at those red eyes and I would wake up with my heart racing as I gasped for air! I toughed it out for 3 days because I do desperately wanted to get huge. But I decided to stop taking it and give it to one of my training partners to see how he responded to it. He took it that night and for the first time in his life he experienced sleep terrors. He began screaming to the top of his lungs and his parents ran in to his bedroom and woke him up. He wasn’t aware that he was doing anything. After that, our parents talked us into trashing it!

Somehow what you got wasnt Cybergenics, lol. I ordered what I thought was yohimbe tablets and it turned out to be Methy testosterone! That was back around 1987 or so.

 

[N.L....M.....]

One my favorites was the Anabolic Insider.

 

[FrancisK]

I pain $180 dollars for the first cybergenics kits that came out. They claimed it worked even better than steroids. I was around 17 years at the time and the media had me afraid to take steroids. I really thought they would kill me. So I saved up my money and bought a Cybergenics kit. Little did I know that what the company sent me was much much worse than any steroid ever made. I received some kind of amphetamines. I had to stop taking the supplement due to it causing me to have the same terrifying nightmares every night. The nightmare would start over again on the same night as soon as I fell back to sleep after having been awakened from the first nightmare. It was like that movie Groundhog Day, but I was dreaming. I would have the same terrifying dream about 3-5 times per night. Remember that pig with the red eyes named Jody in the movie
Amityville Horror? Well, that demon
showed up in my window every night as soon as I fell asleep. It was like clock work! Eventually I got to were I could turn away when I saw those red eyes appear but I could still hear the snorting! Eventually I would look at those red eyes and I would wake up with my heart racing as I gasped for air! I toughed it out for 3 days because I do desperately wanted to get huge. But I decided to stop taking it and give it to one of my training partners to see how he responded to it. He took it that night and for the first time in his life he experienced sleep terrors. He began screaming to the top of his lungs and his parents ran in to his bedroom and woke him up. He wasn’t aware that he was doing anything. After that, our parents talked us into trashing it!

Holy shit, you ever hear of anyone else having that reaction to it?

Kinda sounds like my chantix dreams, lots of demons trying to kill me and my family, but I eventually got to the point where I knew I was going to have the dream so I would interact and laugh at them.

 

[D2]

till today i still believe Franco Santoriello is drug fee and uses only Cybergenics