Devlin Brown at the water cooler: Comparison is misery, especially when steroids are involved

No matter how hard I train I am nowhere near to attaining the kind of physique or fitness of famous social media influencers or Hollywood actors. Should I just accept I have bad genetics?

I can say with certainty, without knowing your age, gender and training experience, that you have made a self-diagnosed mess of understanding what’s really going on, even if you did pull a joker from the cosmic deck of cards.

It’s trendy on fitness and gym social media to talk about genetics. In professional bodybuilding they talk about good genetics and bad genetics. Someone with good genetics, they say, has a small (tiny) waist, wide shoulders, a good V-taper and X-frame, and full, round muscle bellies. They also tend to gain muscle more quickly. 

I’ve always found it hilarious that this ideal has made its way into the mainstream. Imagine a blindside flank on a rugby field with a tiny waist and small hips — he or she would get cut in half. Good genetics for swimming aren’t necessarily good for running; a genetically gifted rugby prop has about the worst genes you could ask for in soccer.

Outside congenital conditions, you are probably underselling yourself on someone else’s ideal. The reason you don’t look like your favourite influencer or celebrity is complex. They make their living off how they look and so even if they tell you they do a push-pull split three times a week, I would bet my last cent they do a lot, lot more, many times a day.

And then there is the elephant in the room. Don’t assume they are training naturally — that is naive. It’s like believing the progressive caucus is progressive. Take a look at this introduction from a GQ article called “Why is everyone on steroids now?” published in June 2024:  “Someone in your life is using performance-enhancing drugs. I feel comfortable making that bet because I recently discovered how many people in my life are using performance-enhancing drugs. Maybe your dad scored human growth hormone at an ‘anti-ageing’ clinic. Maybe the woman you met on Hinge just ordered her first ‘peptide stack’. It’s definitely the middle-aged white dude at work who calls you brother who takes beta blockers before presentations.”

The author’s argument is that performance-enhancing drugs are no longer the preserve of athletes wanting to cheat. The world is awash with new compounds and telemedicine clinics. People are experimenting with new and old drugs for just about anything. We are, he says, in the age of Ozempic. Look, he’s American and that place is like a cringeworthy reality TV show but we aren’t exactly on a remote island cut off from civilisation, even if it feels like that to those of us reliant on City of Johannesburg infrastructure.

Then, in the US particularly, testosterone replacement therapy is being prescribed to younger and younger men. Even if your favourite celebrity isn’t taking obvious anabolic steroids, they probably — and I’m confident being this confident — have another helping hand.

The same article quotes Kenneth Boulet, known as Kenny KO on social media, who is famous for asking famous people if they use performance-enhancing drugs. He’s quoted as saying: “The amount of pro athletes and actors that have slid into my DMs, asking for input on cycles they’re on — it would be a mind-blowing thing for people to see.”

A physical therapy professor at the University of Southern California estimated that up to 75% of Marvel stars used performance-enhancing drugs. “Reacher” look jacked? He’s taking testosterone. Does US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy look more like a WWE star than a politician? You guessed it, testosterone.

Armed with this knowledge, you can make more rational judgments about your own progress and context. This is not about guessing who’s “natty [natural] or not”, it’s about having realistic expectations if you are natural, and knowing what’s happening in your body if you’re not. Abuse is deadly, and the GQ article quotes a terryfing slogan: “Live large, die large, leave a giant coffin”.

The best advice would be to stop comparing yourself with people on your screen. With persistence, you will make progress, you will lose fat, you will become fitter and you will gain muscle.