Why no more striations?

[Magnum]

Hi Magnum,


i have a question and i would appreciate if you can throw some light on it. So some of the guys in the 70s and 80s had better separation and deeper definition than the guys today yet they lacked the striated glutes. Why is this so? What has changed from then till now - drugs, estrogen control something else? thanks for your input.


I got asked this question and I decided to just post it with permission. This is only my opinion based on what I have seen thru out the years. I am sure others have their opinions too and would love to hear them. I have been asked this many times. In short I believe it is insulin usage that causes this. Seems that the body has certain fat receptors that are more sensitive to insulin when it comes to fat storage. The guys on stage are a lot leaner today then the 70's and 80's, but those guys were pretty striated all over and mainly in the chest and shoulder area.

If those same guys would have taken it a step further and some did they would have been ultra shredded even in the glute area, but that was not in vogue back then. Today guys are getting extremely lean and obviously so since a lot of them have striated glutes. These same guys are almost devoid of any real upper body striations. They have this balloon look. It seems to me and I have said this before that certain muscle groups have fat marblized with in the muscle it self causing a blurring of definition.

 

[gears]

I am not really qualified to answer this question but I will throw this out there... Nobody knew that they could achieve quad striations until Berry DeMey showed up with them on stage. And nobody knew that the uber hard look was possible before Andreaus Munzer came in looking like he was carved out of granite. What I'm saying is that bodybuilding is dynamic. All of the advances in peptides and nutrition added to the abundance of GH and the pervasiveness of insulin use have made for a much, much bigger bodybuilder. Hell, nowadays, there are guys who have no intentions of ever stepping on a stage who are taking much more gear than the pros did 25 years ago.

 

[Iabadman]

Jim .......I 'd say it 's the gh and insulin as well as all the site injects used imo ........gh causes alot of water retination.[especially in the 8 iu plus range that most pros use ]. It seems to drive a lot of water into the cells as does insulin........yes ,most stop 1-2 weeks out .......and use methods to drop the water ......but i don't think it is that easy.....and cutting after long use may stress the body as well and could cause more retention.......Also.........look at the delts of nearly every top pro or amature today......and arms for that matter.........Can you tell me that you don't see the oil or site injects? .......delts look nothing like those of the 80s and 70s.....the quality in the arms and shoulders was way different ......but the size today dwarfs the guys of the past....You could really see things change in Flex throughout the 90s .....93 perfection....striations every where .......99 much bigger and rounder ....freaky .....but no quality,just big round lumps .....happened to nasser as well......leverone..... even Coleman later on to an extent.......Today you can see in Victor .....Kia ....cutler ....dexter....wolf ..even health abit ..........I just don't think most people can build that great arm and shoulder mass while having insane condition without oil and site injects.......I think you will agree......like you said the condition is way better today ......guys were lean back then but even zane was soft in the butt.....it just the to be as massive as the guys are today it just takes alot more to achieve that ........remember 220 was huge back then on a 6 footer .......today that is novice...

 

[betito]

It depends on the judging also, I´m from spain and people here use a ton of stuff, but judges reward conditioning to the point of craziness... and people show up so schredded that it´s scary, that is a bitch for the bigger guys, some huge guys were unable to succeed till they showed up hyperschredded, so maybe that insulin that helped them achieve that size was making harder to achieve the condition they needed

 

[tazzie]

Benito- can you post a link to some of these shows? It would be refreshing to see the change vs. here in the US where overall mass seems to be more important and that severe level of conditioning, not so much.. I have noticed that European bodybuilders do achieve a level of conditioning that is insane

 

[nukeM]

More aged muscle back then,less chemicals employed.As now you see guys make faster gains from various compounds.It takes a good number of years to develope the fine detail & striations you speak of.Thats only a byproduct of time,& perhaps we were seeing the few who were more genetically gifted back then.Look how many guys you see coming into & up in BB'ing now.Back then it wasnt as many.

 

[Iabadman]

Jim pm me your number if you get a chance .....I 'd like to catch up.......thanks

 

[FRKNHUGE]

global warming, its to blame for everything lol
frk

 

[chris250]

scar tissue build up ?

from snythol and site inj.

 

[Gunsmith]

I've talk with some of the older BB's in my area and they think it has to do with the "loading" that guy use , all the fellas aroundhere didn't seem to do the huge depletion and load the last couple days before the shows.

honestly , I have no clue. But I personaly like the build of the guy back then before they started to getting freaky huge , I think Yates started that era

 

[betito]

Benito- can you post a link to some of these shows? It would be refreshing to see the change vs. here in the US where overall mass seems to be more important and that severe level of conditioning, not so much.. I have noticed that European bodybuilders do achieve a level of conditioning that is insane

Rafael Arana 45+ years
**broken link removed**

David Pascual
David Pascual

 

[maldorf]

I took gross anantomy at a med school and have done a good number of autopsies and never noticed a huge difference between the muscle in different areas of the body. It did seem though that in the men, the lower limb and glutes had a different appearance once all of the skin was pulled off. The lower limb/glutes kinda had the appearance that the bands of muscle were wider. the bands of muscle in the upper body seemed thiner, like they were closer together. The fibers in the lower body were very easy to tease apart. I could easily seperate them by pulling with my fingers, unless that area was covered with fascia.

 

[BG]

Just not dieting as hard. Going for size over cuts