Why Do Bodybuilders Have Distended Stomachs
You've no doubt heard "gym talk" picking out men with "growth hormone gut," or "slin-gut," and "roid belly", etc. "Steroids" like Growth Hormone (GH) and Insulin are often blamed for this gut distension.
Professional bodybuilding is a presentation of months of planning creating a perfect balance between lifting weights, supplements, diet and the medicine cabinet. All these constantly changing factors need to be perfectly timed to present the most amount lean muscle.
There are many published university studies showing that GH ingestion will cause abdominal distension. Most doctors that prescribe GH to their patients don't explain about the coming gut distension they'll get. But a professional bodybuilders medicine cabinet will not only have GH and insulin, a few androgens, some anti-cortisol drugs with diuretics before competing, along with diet, training supplements, and many other factors that need to be perfectly timed when competing professionally.
Also, gut distension can result from slow digestion because of taking diuretics.
Whatever the reason for a bodybuilder showing a distended gut something should be taken into account when seeing a bodybuilders abs sticking out like he swallowed a chicken, the bodybuilder is probably completely dehydrated trying to saturate all his muscles with enough glycogen to pump them out.
If the athlete onstage has taken diuretics on-top stuffing himself with carbs for the glycogen, it's little wonder that the food just sits in his stomach without getting fully digested. That "Turtle Belly" looks that we see in some professional bodybuilders is usually a sign of incorrect Ph balance from taking diuretics without taking sodium to retain some water needed for the glycogen production.
Bodybuilding is a constant learning curve and the top professionals we see onstage at a Mr Olympia meet have bodybuilders who know their bodies very well. The years of trial and error it takes to present a rock hard body with a 4% to 7% body-fat at a bodybuilding competition will change with each individual bodybuilder.
In closing it needs to be added that at the latest Arnold Classic the man himself stood up and said publically that the judging standards in all bodybuilding competitions has denigrated into what Arnold calls a shameful degree where bodybuilders bodies no longer look athletic or "beautiful", he openly said that top professional bodybuilders no longer represent the body anyone would want themselves. Yep, said by Arnold himself.
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