065 How anabolics changed the fitness industry

In this episode of Hypertrophy Past & Present, Jake and Chris begin with Leroy Colbert’s late-1970s enormous volume training plan. The conversation then explores whether using pre-steroid bodybuilders as a model for natural training is really an “appeal to tradition,” before examining the evidence that anabolic steroids can directly stimulate muscle growth even without resistance training.

Key topics include:

• Leroy Colbert’s high-volume late-1970s routine

• Why bodybuilding training changed so dramatically after the introduction of anabolic steroids

• Forcing Chris into a philosophy conversation: appeal to tradition fallacy, Chesterton’s fence, the Lindy effect, and Occam’s razor

• Evidence that anabolic steroids can build muscle without a resistance-training stimulus

• Why steroid-induced muscle growth cannot simply be dismissed as water weight or sarcoplasmic hypertrophy

• The dose-response relationship between testosterone and muscle growth

• Why “replacement” doses of testosterone may still produce supraphysiological effects at the muscle

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