It’s really a false impression that body-building is an activity that is full of dumb meat-heads for lack of a better term! In fact there are so many different sub-communities these days with many different outlooks on the lifestyle from veggie and vegan bodybuilders to clean bodybuilding and disabled competition, bodybuilding is a broad church inclusive of many different styles and ways of doing it. This article will outline some of the interesting and surprising communities that exist under the broad umbrella of body-building from clean bodybuilding to vegan, disabled and transgender examples, it really has become an amazingly more diverse activity in recent years.
Natural (Clean) Body-Building
For some time now there has been the concept of clean body-building out there and there are numerous advantages from financial saving to staying legal and very much the health benefits of clean body building are appealing with steroids having side effects including; hair loss, testicular dysfunction, kidney failure, liver failure, heart attack, gynaecomastia. It’s also said you keep your gains longer if they are obtained without using supplements. It’s the thought of many in this area that you get a better sense of self-satisfaction in training and competing in this manner. The World Natural Bodybuilding Federation has been promoting strict anti-drug competition for 30 years now, since 1989. From an initial competition with just 13 competitors the drug-free ethos has grown and gone from strength to strength. The judging criteria is mostly similar or the same as most other body building competitions focusing on two main rounds for “Symmetry encompasses overall balance and conditioning” and “Muscularity and conditioning judges mass, definition, and proportion.” which is designed to give an overall score in the end taking in the body as a whole and scoring on that basis.
Vegan & Vegetarian Bodybuilding
With the rise of meat and animal free diets on the rise it can come as no surprise that vegan and vegetarian bodybuilders are a large and increasing part of the community as it’s more and more popular. The biggest question is always around training and diet, like all body-building, and it’s all about protein intake, thankfully there is a lot of reading on what to eat for veggie bodybuilding. It’s easy to be creative when finding ways of creating vegan and vegetarian protein sources, you can use the usual sources of beans pulses and other natural ingredients but there are so many instances of using ingredients such as matcha tea in things such as these chocolate fudge protein bars which are an interesting take on a classic protein source. It’s easy to see that veganism is not a barrier to success, there are many examples of bodybuilders achievements and in mainstream competition as well so it can only be a matter of time before more and more veggies and vegans are seen in mainstream competition.
Disabled Bodybuilding Competitions
As with most sports these days disability participation has been a fantastic step forward for inclusion and body-building has been no different. WABBA (World Amateur Bodybuilding Association) has created a concept known as Adaptive Bodybuilding which allows a points scoring system designed to allow compensatory points to be allocated depending on the extent of the participants disability which is not dissimilar to the IOCs Olympic system. So inclusivity is certainly here to stay and the sport is all the better for it. There is, in fact, also a wheelchair bodybuilding organisation that offers competition opportunities, they give excellent advice and even have some great advice on training regimes and how to get started as they recognise that someone just getting started is not going to be an overnight sensation but with preparation and hard work it can be achieved.
Youth Participation Body-Building
Is bodybuilding for kids or youths ethically positive? It’s a big question and with so many youngsters struggling with obesity whether bodybuilding is an appropriate pursuit for kids and, if so, what age is appropriate to begin? It’s an interesting thought and this article argues that strength training for children is beneficial which, if supervised by appropriate adults and done properly, is hard to argue against, like any sport that has an impact on the body it’s essential that your child is trained and supervised by appropriately qualified trainers to best prevent injury and harm. It can also be a really fantastic idea for a young person to get into bodybuilding as not only does it have the obvious physical and health benefits it can help a youngster gain great confidence in themselves, this article by Layne Norton who cites that he was bullied at school and this really helped him, now with a PhD in Nutritional Sciences it not only helped his confidence soar as a teen it has provided a career as well, so the advantages can be far reaching if you are dedicated enough so his advice is well founded.
Transgender Bodybuilding
With the knowledge and acceptance of transgender people in recent years it’s great to see that the bodybuilding world is right up there in the inclusivity stakes. There is actually a transgender specific bodybuilding competition which is great and hopefully a step in the right direction and who knows maybe it will become a category in general competition sometime in the future. In fact there is even this fantastic example of a trans man who is aiming to compete in the Mr. Olympia competition one day which would show a fantastic achievement and if he gets there I’m sure would make a great story. It will be interesting to see how the participation of transgender bodybuilders grows over the coming years?
Surely it is abundantly clear to see how diverse and accepting the world of bodybuilding has become and even I was so amazed by some of what I learned while writing this article. It cannot be said that the world of bodybuilding is one of intolerance and hopefully this can encourage more and more people to participate in this wonderful activity.
