There’s a new phenomenon called "distended gut”.
It’s been blamed on numerous factors—insulin, HGH immaculate conception—but however it
happens, it’s definitely gotten so out of control that it threatens to destroy whatever’s
left of bodybuilding as a sport.
So, with that in mind, let's take a look at the worst examples of people with distended
guts.
Scott Steiner Now, I know what you're thinking.
Scott Steiner isn't a bodybuilder, he's a wrestler!
Well, considering he shows up in a lot of bodybuilding videos/articles and was once
known as one of the most built men on the planet, he seemed like a good fit for this
list.
On top of that, he actually has something more than just pure Bubble Gut-itis going
on—he also has a gigantic separation in the middle of his chest that’s becoming
more and more apparent as he ages.
It's been discussed ad nauseam online and people can't seem to figure out exactly what’s
going on with his entire torso, but it's apparent that he's at least aware of it as he's gotten
a gigantic tattoo to cover up the middle of his chest and often wears something to disguise
his bubble gut.
Either way, if the sheer amount of premature deaths don't scare you off of stuff like anabolic
steroids or human growth hormone, then results like Steiner definitely should.
With that out of the way, let's talk about actual bodybuilders!
Phil Heath Phil Heath is the only person on this list
under the age of 40.
At 37 years old, he's an extremely well-known bodybuilder and the most successful this century,
winning seven straight Mr. Olympia competitions (the Super Bowl of Body Building) from 2011
through 2017.
However, as he's gotten older he's definitely developed a case of the bubble guts.
It's actually his rise (along with that of his competition) that’s really poured gas
on the fire that has been Bubble Guts in the sport over the last few years.
Numerous pictures of the final contestants were labeled as horrible and even the Mr.
Pregnant show, forcing the legend of all legends in the game that is Bodybuilding, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
to comment on the state of Bubble Guts in the industry.
Arnold stated that perhaps there needs to be a change to how the contests are scored
to penalize the lack of aesthetics in the sport.
The sport used to be all about the "V-Shaped" body and now it really only cares about bulk
and mass.
While Arnold admits that even he had to suck in his stomach from time to time, things have
definitely gotten out of control, and this most recent Mr. Olympia is a testament to
that fact.
Jean-Pierre Fux Outside of the hilarious last name, Pierre
Fux (I bet he does) is mostly known for a terrible accident that occurred during a weightlifting
session and almost ended his career.
He was attempting to squat almost 700-lbs while at Gold's Gym in Fullerton, California.
While initially lifting the amount, during a photo-shoot for FLEX Magazine, he suddenly
collapsed with the full weight on his back.
He describes the accident as follows: "We'd worked up to seven plates on each side.
That weight is not a problem for me -- I had done the same thing a week earlier for my
training video.
I began to squat down and everything was fine.
Then in a split second, I went from complete comfort to collapse.
My knees just went -- I crashed down so quickly the spotters didn't have time to react.
Afterward, they felt bad about it, but it was so quick, nobody could have caught the
weight."
Luckily he was prepared for such an accident and knew that if he wanted to save the tendons
in his knees/legs, he should keep his legs straight.
So, once the weight was removed he straightened his legs and that most likely saved his tendons.
He spent two weeks in the hospital and was wheel-chair bound for a long time, which is
perhaps the source of his Bubble-Gut (or maybe it was the drugs he took to catch up after
his injury).
His injury is so well-known because he urged both FLEX magazine and the photographer who
took the pictures to actually publish them to help people know what to do when they're
injured.
Which is super cool and makes you hope that he can now conquer his biggest test of all,
the Bubble Gut.
Kai Greene Phil Heath's most consistent competition has
been Kai Greene, who has finished second at the 2012, 2013 and 2014 Mr. Olympia's behind
Heath (he also won the 2016 Arnold Classic, that should at least punish someone like Greene
for having a "bottle shape" as opposed to the classic "V-shape" Arnold/everyone with
eyeballs prefers).
Greene has a tough background, growing up in the foster care system and residential
treatment centers.
Because of that, he acted out and luckily for him his science teacher noticed that he
had behavioral problems and also a genetic gift so he helped him pursue bodybuilding
to take advantage of those gifts while giving him a place to vent/funnel all of his anger
and emotion.
What so sad about this current trend is you hear these amazing stories about how bodybuilding
can save a life like Greene's, but at the same time all of that work is essentially
going down the drain because it appears that Bubble Guts are permanent and there's really
nothing that these guys can do and thus their careers will be over.
Now, granted a lot of them are fairly old and Greene (at 42) is at the tail-end of his
career, but still, you'd hate to see an entire generation of bodybuilders wasted because
drugs were taken too far.
Ronnie Coleman If Phil Heath is the most successful bodybuilder
of this decade than Ronnie Coleman was the most successful bodybuilder of the 90's.
He won eight Mr. Olympia's in a row and also holds the record for the most IFBB professional
wins at a staggering 26.
He is now retired and 53 years old so you can't expect him to be in peak shape but it
is sad to see someone who was as huge as Coleman fall victim to Bubble Guts himself.
This guy is a complete beast and makes a lot of his competition look small by comparison,
and that’s helped off-set the obviousness of his protruding stomach.
But really if anyone should be the poster boy for whatever causes Palumbo-ism , it should
be Coleman.
You'll notice that while Arnold did gain a gut in his later years, it was a natural gut
made of fat and sagging tissue not one that appears to be made of pure muscle.
So, something that these guys were either doing in the late 90's or are doing recently
is causing this to either manifest years later (when they're around 45-50) or their older
bodies just can't handle it.
There are a ton of theories as to what is causing this problem as discussed in the intro
and in order to get to the bottom of it before it destroys the sport, more guys like Coleman
should come out and discuss it openly.
One has to commend Dave Palumbo for discussing this on his YouTube channel and attempting
to turn a negative into a positive, so hopefully more people will follow his lead now that
Arnold has come out and weighed in on the topic as it's something that needs to end
before next year's Olympia if the sport intends to exist beyond that.
Markus Ruhl At 5'10" and around 310 pounds, even around
other body-builders, Markus Ruhl is considered to be a huge guy, with gigantic arms and legs
that many of his peers just don't have.
A lot of what body-building at least used to be is symmetry and what's aesthetically
pleasing.
While that's obviously subjective and can change from era to era, a lot of guys don't
go for massive bulk as there are also scores for how lean someone is, how vascular they
look, etc.
So, while that means he may not win every competition because of his pure bulk, Ruhl
has actually weathered the Bubble Gut era pretty well despite having one himself.
His massive arms and legs help cover up the fact that he does have a distended stomach,
which really makes him look a lot more like a Ninja Turtles action figure than something
like a He-Man action figure, which, one can assume, is not what he was going for when
he started bodybuilding.
King Kamali King Kamli is a 45 year old body-builder that
was born in Tehran, Iran but now lives in New York City.
Sadly, 45 is around the life expectancy of most bodybuilders thanks to the abuse they
do to their bodies, which is extremely ironic considering bodybuilding is a health-related
sport.
Nicknamed "The Persian Pearl" for some reason and "The Terminator" (which is a bad nickname
when you compete in the same sport as...
You know, the REAL Terminator?), Kamali actually has a Bachelor of Science degree in Exercise
Physiology from George Mason University, meaning he should know better than anyone why he's
suffering from Bubble Gut and what to do to fix it.
However, it does seem like a lot of the examples of Bubble Guts in the sport end up happening
to older men as opposed to younger ones so perhaps it has more to do with age than anything
else.
Either way, he's clearly past his prime and shouldn't be competing any more, as there's
really no point, and as the recent sad death of perhaps the most famous bodybuilder there
is these days, Rich Piana, showed just this year, there has to be a time where you stop
abusing your body and if your gut is literally distended because of the drugs you're using,
maybe that's a good sign.
But, what do I know?
I don't have a Bachelor of Science in it!
Greg Kovacs As just mentioned, 45 seems to be the age
that most bodybuilders end up—a fact driven home by learning about Greg Kovacs' life and
career.
Kovacs was a Canadian bodybuilder who passed away in 2013 at the age of 45 due to heart
failure.
Now, before discussing his career a bit we should really look at the fact that these
men are killing themselves over something that shouldn't be deadly.
No one would argue that bodybuilders in the early 70's or before didn't look a lot better
than the ones do today and perhaps that's why the "Natty" movement has really gained
a lot of steam lately.
But when your sport needs a "natural" division because of the rampant drug use and oil injection,
perhaps it's time for your sport to stop being a sport?
Especially when most of your icons die of "natural causes" before their 50th birthday.
Either way, Kovacs was a beast among beasts.
He was actually the largest pro bodybuilder there was in the latter half of the 1990's,
at 6'4" and an "off-season" weight of 330 pounds.
His arms measured 25 inches, his chest 70 inches, and his legs a colossal 35 inches.
That didn’t help hide the Bubble Gut towards the end of his career, though.
Big Lenny Some people actually believe “Palumbo-ism"
should've been called "Lenny-ism" or "Big Lenny-ism" because the bodybuilder known as
Big Lenny definitely rocks the biggest bubble gut of any man, woman or child in the known
world.
In fact, he's more stomach than man at this point, and while he’s muscular as compared
to a regular person, he doesn't really seem to be in that great shape.
He also appears to give zero F's about it (at least in most of his pictures).
Like many others on this list he definitely is past his prime, but considering how he
looks now I'm not sure he ever technically had a prime.
Called Big Lenny because of his astonishing height, there is a video of Lenny on Youtube
where he discusses his case of Bubble Guts.
In the 21 minute video, he blames too much cardio on the fact that his legs are smaller
than his stomach.
On that subject, he says that his belly "isn't going anywhere" as it's "large and hard" and
blames it on the fact that he used to weigh 450 lbs.
He says that essentially he'll build the rest
of his muscles around his stomach to compensate (which has worked for other people on this
list) and while he does say that he doesn't take "any of the stuff" people blame Bubble
Guts on, there's no way that a human being gets this large without having taken some
sort of performance-enhancing drug.
If he was telling the truth, that'd be great, as he calls drug-users "half-assers" and "corner
cutters", but it wouldn't be a surprise to find out he's lying about where that gut is
coming from.
Dave Palumbo Thanks to a YouTube channel titled "Nick's
Strength and Power" Dave Palumbo will forever be remembered as the man who changed the term
Distended Gut from Bubble Gut to "Palumbo-ism".
And the new name has infiltrated the bodybuilding world for sure, as it was brought up to Big
Lenny in an interview conducted at, where else, the gym about his bubble gut (this is
like bubble gut Inception!).
Like the other members of this list, Palumbo is getting up there in age (49) and is definitely
past his prime.
Perhaps better than most people on this list, he represents the 90's era of bodybuilding
as the gigantic, unnatural and hypervascular type of builder.
He’s retired now but still works in the industry, serving as the Editor of Muscular
Development Magazine, and the CEO of RX Muscle, where he sells supplements.
I can't imagine that being the namesake for a term as embarrassing as "Palumbo-ism" is
great for his brand, the sales of his supplements, or his self-image.
A lot of body-builders are known to suffer from a form of body dysmorphia, called Bigorexia,
in which they are never happy with their appearance and can never quite get big enough.
Perhaps that's why a lot of these guys just destroy their bodies with all sorts of injections
and pills.
While many have died over the years, the fact that death hasn't stopped them shows just
how important being "big" is to them.
Perhaps the silver lining in all of these bubble guts is the fact that it looks terrible
(unlike steroids that make someone look bigger and more powerful, but not bad) so it may
finally be the impetus for change in an industry that is so drug-ridden that it has separate
competitions for people that don't take drugs.
Imagine if Major League Baseball had a Steroids-Free division!
Wait, they used to, it was called the AL Central in the 90's!
Either way, Palumbo truly is an icon in the sport and perhaps can use this to his advantage
at some point.
What do you think?
Was this list big enough?
Sound off in the comments below.
Thanks for watching!