[toshinoriyagi]

Steroid use has been shown to increase muscle in untrained males by around 25-30% I believe, without adding any exercise. That doesn't accomplish too much. If you want any worthwhile results, you will still have to train, although the steroids produce significantly more results for the same investment.

[QuercusMax]

Andre the Giant said he never worked out, he just wrestled. He had some kind of growth hormone disorder, if I recall.

Think about gorillas, who are pretty similar to us - they don't lift weights in the gym, do they?

[toshinoriyagi]

I don't know much about Andre's strength feats. Was he exceptionally strong? Wrestling definitely involves lifting heavy opponents, especially in Andre's weight class. So, if he was extremely strong, I can see why despite no explicit resistance training, given his wrestling and increased HGH.

Yeah, this whole discussion is based on assuming human genetics. Every animal, without any resistance training, will develop an amount of muscle within some range. This can be massive, like for gorillas. Perhaps someday we will have gene editing that allows us to have the muscle building genes of gorillas, so we can all bench 1,000lbs with no training.

I wonder, do gorillas possess the mechanism for stimulating muscle growth via resistance training? How strong could one be with a dedicated training plan and coach?

[tormeh]

Yeah, muscles are mostly about genetics, just like anything else. A mouse won't become a rhino by lifting. Humans are so incredibly genetically homogeneous that it can sometimes be tempting to ignore this, but even between humans the variability is quite large.

[samiv]

Andre the Giant was also not particularly athletic or healthy. He was just a huge guy caused by disruption in the growth hormone at some point in his life and he died of alcoholism.

[solumunus]

It’s infuriating that this gets parroted so often. The study you’re referring to measures “fat free mass”. Anabolic steroids acutely increase water and glycogen retention. All that study is showing is that taking steroids increases your body weight due to increased muscle fullness.

You won’t gain any significant amount of muscle tissue from taking steroids without training.