STRENGTH V TIME

So I understand that in the words of the infamous Louie Simmons "Big's not strong. Strong is strong" But god damn... I can't help but notice that nearly ALL of the strength athletes from back in the day have twice the amount of muscles than the athletes of today in general yet their numbers from back then wouldn't even win a National competition In todays competitions. For example:

Here we have Andy Bolton one of the greats of powerlifting (and this is not a dig at Andy he's an amazing athlete in his time but someone had to be used as an example). As you can see here Andy is built like a goddamn silverback gorilla and is about 300+ of solid muscle Andy's best squat was right around 1,100 lbs which sounds like a lot but to be honest in today's competitions it's really not.

There have been kids fresh out of college hitting this; hell I have a 21-year-old in my gym that can hit this that has at least 60lbs less muscle than Andy... so what gives?

BETTER GEAR

Well in some instances this can be true of course but for the most part not really. Aside from the newer band shirts which are in a category themselves powerlifting equipment really hasn't improved much over the past 30 years. Arguably the best shirt on the market still is the Inzer/Titan which has been around for 30+ years.

BETTER STEROIDS

Again, this is not even remotely true. In fact, quite the opposite. Back then you could get British pharmacy steroids when they were still prescribed before things like the Seoul Olympics steroid scandals involving Ben Johnson/Linford Christie etc. Now, almost all of the steroids available are either bathtub brew or imported from overseas.

BETTER KNOWLEDGE OF NUTRITION

Has science improved since those days? Of course! But has the quality of food increased? Not even close. If anything the qualities of foods have decreased extensively since then with GMOs, Fillers, preservatives, etc being added to anything and everything to increase profit.

"You can't compare single ply to multi ply or raw etc" the same things can be witnessed across every level of strength sports regardless of the category so that's not the case either.

So what is it? Has the training methodologies really increase THAT much? Conjugate training in my opinion is the best method of strength training and conjugate has been around since the 90's so what is the big difference that's making all the guys of today more efficient smaller stronger athletes?

Having over 30 years of competing in all federations around the globe and done 45+ meets any thoughts, ladies & gents.

Marcus Griffiths
Strength Coach
BPF Academy