In 2014, I published the post 50 Ways To Spot a Fake Natural Bodybuilder.
10 years later, it’s time for an expansion/patch.
So, let’s add 50 more ways to detect a juice head:
1. If a grown man has bitch tits and some muscle on him, it’s not a “hormonal imbalance” caused by hamburgers made from genetically modified cows. It’s steroid use.
2. If a muscular young man who is about 21 looks like a 35-year-old man who’s been through one world war, it’s not the stressful TikTok lifestyle, it’s steroids. Anabolic drugs in high doses age a man’s face very quickly.
3. If a retired bodybuilder claims to be natural and yet is the biggest guy in the gym, the only thing he has retired from is wearing the bodybuilding thong. The injections are still done…almost daily.
4. If you see a man who looks like an amateur bodybuilder doing pull-ups at the local playground and claims that “this is all you need” to be like him, he has mastered the art of lying. His physique is not the result of bodyweight training…but pinning.
5. If a skinny ectomorph who’s been lifting for a long time and following some bulking regimes transforms into a full-blown Zyzz-lookalike, it’s not the supplements or the slow negatives.
6. If a man who’s been lifting at your gym suddenly goes from looking the same for the past six years to a muscular brah who’s also retaining water in a matter of weeks, the guy is more than likely on a test cycle.
7. If a guy who’s been previously obsessed with finding the right program suddenly becomes silent and starts doing the most generic routine while also getting visibly bigger in a couple of months, we are not talking about a spiritual elevation, but a hormonal one.
8. If your muscular boyfriend/son/whoever suddenly starts sweating during the night as if he is jogging in the middle of the Sahara for hours, he’s having what’s known as Tren sweats.
9. If your boyfriend suddenly develops “sensitive” nipples, he’s having a hormonal imbalance (too much estrogen) resulting in what’s known as puffy nipples – a scary condition when a steroid user starts panicking that bitch tits will soon decorate his chest.
10. If your boyfriend/son starts receiving weird packages with missing labels and tells you that it’s “supplements”, it’s not supplements but weird anabolic substances made in a basement.
11. If your son’s transformation into a health freak includes a ton of acne and muscularity, test him for drugs.
12. If your son appears on the cover of a bodybuilding/fitness magazine, his testosterone levels are more than likely exceeding those of all the other men in your family combined thanks unnatural import of testosterone.
13. If you visit the apartment of your son and find a bunch of medical vials in his fridgе, I have bad news for you…especially if the substance in one of them is yellow.
14. If you start lifting with your boyfriend, and he is the biggest guy in the gym, and everyone asks him for advice, well I have bad news for you.
15. If your gym-addicted son or boyfriend suddenly becomes overly concerned with his testosterone levels and often gets his blood tested, well I have bad news for you.
16. If your boyfriend asks you “What’s more aesthetically pleasing – a dick hanging lower than the balls or balls hanging lower than the dick?”, I have bad news for you.
(Clarification: Back in the day, Rich Piana expressed the opinion that the testicular atrophy caused by steroids results in a more aesthetically pleasing dick&balls architecture thanks to the larger contrast between the two units.)
17. If your 65-year-old husband with a beer belly goes from a dude spending most of his time watching games and telling “back in the day stories” to a lean and mean machine with visible abs and surprisingly silky skin for his age, ask him if he is sponsored by a growth hormone-producing company.
18. If your boyfriend says that he has to “optimize” his testosterone levels via injections, I have bad news for you.
19. If a man showcases “dick skin vascularity” combined with full muscles, neither whey protein nor “scientific workouts” are the engine behind his ascension.
20. If the skin color of a muscular dude looks surprisingly “redish”, I have bad news for you.
21. If your boyfriend is sponsored by a company selling supplements and/or a bodybuilding clothing line, he’s probably a massive fan of Vitamin S in all of its varieties.
22. If someone constantly pushes the “I read scientific journals, so I know how to get big without steroids.” narrative, he is spending more time on steroid forums than you might think.
23. If someone has shredded glutes and doesn’t engage in involuntary flying when there’s a lot of wind outside, he’s having a steroid love affair.
24. If someone hates nattyornot.com and constantly tries to ridicule the standards in the natty limit tables, he is either a mad juicer or a naive beginner.
25. If a woman has any upper chest development at all, Anavar is a word she recognizes.
26. if a woman has stupid wide 3D delts, she is as natural as Dana Linn Bailey.
27. If you look at a woman and you get the feeling that her face will shape-shift into one that the Creator would normally put on a man, she ain’t natty.
28. If a woman’s voice sounds like it’s coming out of an android, she is as natural as a shark swimming in a bottle.
29. If you have a friend who eats junk food all day and yet remains ultra-lean and has a bicep peak that hypnotizes people, it’s not the IIFYM…it’s the tren.
30. If a guy has 18-inch lean arms, I have bad news. It’s not coming from a secret curling exercise.
31. If a lifter who’s been fighting a long-term plateau (think years) in terms of size and strength, suddenly makes more gains in 3 months than the previous 3 years and starts attributing his success to extra protein or proper form, start looking for a steroid log on his computer.
32. If someone weighs as much as Arnold and claims that it’s all thanks to the “advances” in nutrition, I have bad news for you, brah.
34. If a natty who’s tried all the routines under the sun from powerlifting-fatso-approved Rippetoe nonsense to Jay Cutler’s pump series suddenly gets excited and starts training again with a peculiar “first love” style of motivation, watch out. He may have found the real “magic.”
35. If the officials on an airplane come next to your bodybuilding boyfriend and say “Sir, we will have to inspect your carry-on luggage.” and your loved one reaches anxiety level 100, you should know that his purse isn’t filled with injectable Vitamin B.
36. If a lean fighter suddenly decides to go up a weight class and gains mostly muscle mass in a short period, it’s not the secret routine of his overpaid conditioning coach. It’s the needle.
37. If your female English teacher has mesmerizing veins on her 15-inch biceps, she didn’t get them from making bread at home.
38. If a guy has consistent cycles of inflation (gains) and deflation (losses), he is essentially flipping the “S” switch on/off.
39. If your muscular man gets extremely depressed after you begin attempts to have a baby, it’s because he’s off the drugs and his hormones are out of balance.
40. If your son/boyfriend/friend is paying a muscular “nutritionist” an enormous amount of money for meal plans and “prep”, the plan includes a lot more ingredients than chicken, broccoli, and tuna.
41. If someone gets lots of stretch marks all over their body and is simultaneously getting more muscular (not fatter), a miracle drug originally synthesized in 1935 is probably at play.
42. If a muscular guy at the gym tells you that he is on TRT only, he is on a full-blown steroid cycle.
43. If someone has professional achievements in a strength sport (weightlifting, powerlifting, arm wrestling, bodybuilding, strongman), the skin on his glutes has been acquainted with the sharpness of the needle very well.
44. If someone has been selected to advertise the latest and greatest whey protein powder, I have bad news for you my friend. The only thing true naturals advertise these days is the art of being skinny.
45. If a muscular dude stands behind you in a line and breathes heavily like a gazelle chased by a lioness, I have bad news for him. His heart is having a hard time supplying all that roid-powered muscle with blood.
46. If someone is as big as roid users but never talks about drugs in any shape or form, it’s not because he’s a natty. It’s because he doesn’t want to come out of the closet and prefers to continue to collect TikTok money from semi-educated muscle worshippers.
They don’t make them like this anymore.
47. If a big dude in the gym says that he is spending 500 dollars on “supplements” each month to maintain the wellness of his muscle fibers, he is not talking about retarded things like creatine, BCAA, glutamine, and other particles. He’s talking about the real source of modern anabolism.
48. If your gym-addicted boyfriend routinely goes to the pharmacy with a script that looks extremely suspicious as if it was written by a street doctor with no real practice, well I have some bad news for you, baby.
49. If the web browsing history of your boyfriend includes the keywords “restore natural test”, I have some more bad news, baby.
50. If your girlfriend starts getting 3D-esque and her hairline gets thinner, I have some really bad news, man. Soon, you might be dating a dude.
As a medical student I have to be the hater here and call #1 BS. You can develop gynecomastia in your puberty and have muscles as an adult. More guys than you think suffer from it. Sure, if “some muscle” means looking like Zyzz I agree. Still I would argue that more natty guys have gyno than juicers.
But what about having no gyno ever and then suddenly getting muscular and developing it as an adult?
It could also be a side effect of many different (common) medications or conditions such as diuretics, tumors in your testicles or hypothalamus, liver cirrhosis etc.
If it comes with a drastic increase in muscle mass (especially when the subject is low in body fat and overall healthy) I would suspect steroids as well!
Where are your TREN/ANAVAR promo codes?
I like your style.
I don’t do bodybuilding, but I’ve always had mentally ill shoulders and arms. I’ve been W-shaped since I was a kid. I’ve had gray hair since I was 11, too.
Shit, I think my parents might have been feeding me steroids.
I do running and biking, and everybody thoughts I am a 44-year old bodybuilder. Damn I am 29.
Yes. Genetics trump everything it seems.
Thank you for the support! I try to keep the content mixed and avoid repeating the same stuff forever. Sometimes it works; sometimes it fails.
Nice work
Thank you for the support.
16 is funny as hell 😀 I remember seeing Piana talking about this with his girlfriend (or whoever it was).
Yes. Soon, the kids won’t even remember him. Time flies.
With the ubiquity of roids now compared to 20 years ago, It’s almost as simple as “is he in a gym? got bad news for you…” It’s almost easier to count who isn’t on the juice now. If you’re not injecting there’s almost no need to even go to gym.
It depends on the gym. If it’s a hardcore gym, yes. If it’s a local gym in some family apartment complex, most people would be natty.
This is my experience. A couple of years ago I tried to start working out in a gym after training at home for over a decade. When I was in the reception of the gym, I saw the people who were training there, and there were quite a lot because it was probably the peak time. There was a guy with a sleeveless shirt doing bench. He had 3D-delts and massive arms. 20+ years ago I never saw a guy like that in a gym. I also saw a woman in tightest possible pants doing some glute / hip exercise while watching her own ass from the mirror. For me, it was the first and the last time I went to that gym.
Nice article , I’m glad you mix it up with “juice “ observation stories , how to train articles and the girl dating articles, all on point and your observations leave me like “ yes , that’s it , why didn’t I see that “ I’m thinking in particular the article “always go for the kiss” spot on , keep rotating them, great talking points .
Lol. Number 25 made LeanBeefPatty come to my mind immediately.
She has to be analyzed then.