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I think "better" is a pretty subjective statement. I think muscular women today look just as good as their counterparts from the 80s, but the main difference is that there is more of a "variety" of muscular women. In the 80s, you had female bodybuilding and I think fitness (I could be wrong, though. don't know when that started), but that was it. Divisions like figure, bikini and physique didn't come until later. Plus, that's only taking into account women who actually compete. I can think of muscular women who only did a couple competitions, or sometimes none at all, and instead prefer to use their physique to promote themselves as a fitness influencer or in fetish work (which makes sense, as you'll make more money that way than you would in actual competitions.)
Plus, you also have to take into account "Survivorship Bias," along with the tendency to look at the past with fondness (the definition of nostalgia.) Today, with how accessible social media and the internet is, you can have some visibility (even if it's not much) to show your physique. Back in the 80s, not so much. We know who the big names in female bodybuilding were back then like Carla Dunlap, Cory Everson and Bev Francis because of the fact that their success gave them visibility and legacy. None of us, except maybe the most diehard of diehard schmoes or fans, know who placed in the bottom tiers of those competitions, or in your average NPC show. It's kind of like how some literary fans claim that writing was better back in the day as evidenced by writers like Dickens, Hawthorne, The Bronte sisters and Austen, without realizing that there also was a lot of shitty writing back then, but no one knows about it because those works didn't survive.
So I think it has nothing to do with diet, supplements or any of the like. It has everything to do with perception, nostalgia and survivorship bias. I like looking at retro bodybuilders, but I also think competitors (at that level) today have just as much muscularity and conditioning (if not more) than them.
A lot to unload here...
As Gatsby28 pointed out, it's a subjective premise. You and several others might prefer the past generation, while others would prefer modern FBB's. My guess as to what you mean by "better" is maybe you feel like they had more preferable proportions, less skin acne, less roid gut, etc. They were still on PED's back then, but it's likely they weren't as potent as the roid cocktails a lot of FBB's are on today, which would explain why you notice them being much more massive and suffering from some of the negative (by most people's standards) side effects of steroid abuse.
And yeah, again Gatsby pointed out that diet doesn't really factor into it. The general concept/idea of dieting down for a competition has remained the same for the most part, in how they watch their macros and etc.
Lastly, you could say being shredded wasn't as emphasized in their time as it is now, so they might not have been dry and vascular as women today. Again, that might be part of what you would define as a "better" look.
I wonder if it isn't, too some extent, a question of how much muscle we see nowadays. With the advent of social media, we have a wealth of muscle, and most of it is off-season. In the old days we used to see, what muscle there was, around contest time. That plus we now have a lot of amateur muscle that doesn't go for the lean contest look.
in men's bodybuilding, aesthetics mattered alot more in the past, their goal was to look like antique greek gods, in a way. now, they dont care about that anymore, they just want as much mass as possible on every muscle fiber, as if they want to look like monsters, it turned into a freak show.
times change, trends evolve.
who knows what the next generation will go for.
feels like a lot of Gen Z (at least on social media) is drawn toward the classic look. and with all these mass monsters having issues in the last few years that certainly looks less appealing.
but they love th eposing. they're a little annoying about it because they give poses that have been around 60 years new names for whatever reason, and prob don't have any idea about most of the big old names, but whatever, it propogates the sport. and even the women love posing like that, even if they end up in figure or wellness or whatever. i think there are plenty of women who compete in figure who would like to stay that size and pose like the guys, which is why i've been supportive of a women's classic division for the sleeker women who don't want to be enormous
i think there are plenty of women who compete in figure who would like to stay that size and pose like the guys, which is why i've been supportive of a women's classic division for the sleeker women who don't want to be enormous
That's Women's Physique. At least at the amateur level. It's great because you should not be enormous, but you do 5 of the 7 mandatory poses of a FBB (no lat spreads) and you still get to do a custom 1 minute routine.
Here's my wife's first routine from 5 years ago, and 30lbs lighter (she was tiny then). First video is for her class with her routine, second was for the overall against the shorter class. Much more interesting than Figure since you actually need to do real poses. The crowd feedback is awesome.
I’m wondering if there are differences in the type of training done today vs back then. For women, it seems to me that there was more focus on training all the body parts including the pectorals. Today I see many competitors where the chest is lagging.
many competitors where the chest is lagging.
With all due respect: what?
I don’t know where you see that. If anything, training evolves and improves as time goes on. I guarantee you that bodybuilders still train “all body parts.”
With all due respect: what?
I don’t know where you see that. If anything, training evolves and improves as time goes on. I guarantee you that bodybuilders still train “all body parts.”
i do understand the chest comment, but usually when it involves certain types of implant surgeries, and maybe more often if they had inplants before starting bodybuilding. this is a reason i hate wpd posing, side chest isn't "standard", you can see a lot of different angles to highlight the chest development depending on how developed their chest is
By the late 90s insulin and growth hormone came into the scene as anabolic agents. This is when muscles began looking more "inflated" and less dense.
For women they present the advantage of no androgenic side effects. Chad Nichols one of the top prep coaches at the time was one that popularized their use. He also happened to be Kim Chizevsky's husband.
Drug use by women progressively escalated also around that time.
OP - One of the main - if not THE main - elements in your perception is the scarcity of images from those earlier times versus the deluge of images available today. Back then, only the best women got shoots and no one was doing selfies.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you there are 50 women walking around today who look as exceptional as peak Sue Myers or Carol Mock, but I can say that the number of women with tier-1 physiques is greater than it ever was. But in addition to seeing their pics/videos, you're also being exposed to everyone else and there are a LOT more "everyone else"s than there are Tier-1's, so it's easy for one's perception to be skewed by that.
OP - One of the main - if not THE main - elements in your perception is the scarcity of images from those earlier times versus the deluge of images available today. Back then, only the best women got shoots and no one was doing selfies.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you there are 50 women walking around today who look as exceptional as peak Sue Myers or Carol Mock, but I can say that the number of women with tier-1 physiques is greater than it ever was. But in addition to seeing their pics/videos, you're also being exposed to everyone else and there are a LOT more "everyone else"s than there are Tier-1's, so it's easy for one's perception to be skewed by that.
This
By the late 90s insulin and growth hormone came into the scene as anabolic agents. This is when muscles began looking more "inflated" and less dense.
For women they present the advantage of no androgenic side effects. Chad Nichols one of the top prep coaches at the time was one that popularized their use. He also happened to be Kim Chizevsky's husband.
Drug use by women progressively escalated also around that time.
I know you mentioned insulin and growth hormone but I'm curious what other PEDs are being taken now that wasn't before. Example: compare to Lesa Lewis to Monique Jones.
This picture of Carol Mock always fascinates me:
She's a competitor from the 80s, so of course she isn't huge by today's standards, but her muscularity is arguably better than most modern competitors.
This is a trend that continues even up to the 90s. What's the deal? Is it because being shredded didn't matter so much? Was it the diet? The "supplements"?