Bodybuilding: Physical Culture vs Drug Culture
“Premature deaths of bodybuilders have raised questions about the safety and associated risks of this discipline. The main objective of this study was to analyze mortality risk in a large international population of bodybuilders.”
“The results of this study should alert the bodybuilding and medical communities to the need for improved preventive measures to promote safer sports participation.”
Since 121 deaths occurred over ~190,000 athlete-years (which covers ~18-20 years of data roughly), you might extrapolate to roughly 5-10 deaths per year in that cohort. But that’s very rough and not limited to “competitive bodybuilders everywhere” (just IFBB male competitors) and doesn’t specify “in competition” vs retired.
Solution Based vs Complaining Based Mindset
I’m just thinking out loud here but it seems like we should LOOK AHEAD and not look behind us as in “well, that never worked before (drug testing).” To me, the power in the future of competitive bodybuilding would be in telling the stories of each competitor. We love our stories. Make this a 3 month or 6 month countdown until the bodybuilding contest – think “Pumping Iron” but modern day. Tell the story of each competitor. Their struggles, their victories.
Similar to what Dana White did with the UFC – telling the stories of the competitors. Back in the bodybuilding magazine days, we got a magazine every month as a way to keep up with the competitors. It was flawed in that most of the articles were written by ghost writers. Today we have video, so we can see and hear the competitors. What is their story? It should be shot like a film with narrative – athletes’ philosophies, struggles, training, and daily life. Let’s have competitors from all over the world – we can easily translate any language barriers. CrossFit does a good job of this as well – highlighting the competitors leading up to the annual CrossFit games.
We have to be drug free and we need sponsorship. Big companies – CrossFit had Reebok, UFC has Disney/ESPN, Crypto.com, DraftKings, and Anheuser-Busch just to name a few.
The sponsorship money would help pay for the drug testing. A serious bodybuilding league doing it properly might face a total cost around $300,000–$600,000 per year – scalable depending on athlete count and number of events. It’s not small change, but it buys the thing bodybuilding has lacked for decades: CREDIBILITY. Once fans believe what they’re seeing is real, ticket sales, sponsorships, and viewership could actually make that cost sustainable. And we need prize money. Dependable prize money from reputable sponsors – not shady bodybuilding promoters.
The sponsors would get a chance to be part of something potentially big and long lasting while selling their supplements, clothing, exercise equipment to the general public. I could get into a lot more like revamped judging and presentation, posing as live art using professional choreographers, history of physical culture, including the fans – creating a culture of participation, not just voyeurism. If done right, this kind of league could draw not just bodybuilding and fitness fans, but anyone who loves mythmaking, athletic beauty, and cinematic storytelling. It could live on Netflix as much as on a stage. Start small. Yes, I know. The idea is the easy part putting it into motion…not so much.
I don’t have a horse in this race but this seems like a possible solution worth exploring.
Credibility.
This is a conversation worth having. – Scott
references:
https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/46/30/3006/8131432?utm_source=chatgpt.com&login=false
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40393525/