Bodybuilding has become a very popular sport over the past few decades. A bodybuilder trains with heavy weights to increase strength and to build large muscles for posing competitions or cosmetic purposes. While some body builders do so for competition purposes, still others simply like the look they can create for their own motivation.

Body builders also learn how to perform poses that accentuate the display of different muscle groups for purposes of being rated by competition judges.

Various training methods are used by bodybuilders to get results, including training techniques like Positions of Flexion (POF), Static Contraction Training (SCT), High Intensity Training (HIT), Superslow Training, Hyper Contraction and Plyometrics.

Bodybuilding has become an extremely competitive sport. Unfortunately many top bodybuilders all over the world use anabolic steroids, hormones and other possibly dangerous substances to reach the highest possible level of achievement in their sport.

However, experts disagree on whether the use of these aids are dangerous or not and the topic remains a controversial issue. Athletes who prefer not to use steroids can opt to participate in what is know as "natural bodybuilding".

People often confuse bodybuilding with weightlifting or powerlifting. However, they are two totally different types of sport. Powerlifting is a sport in which the participant does competition lifts to try and lift the heaviest possible amount of weight.

The fundamental goal of powerlifting is to get strong. In bodybuilding the goal is to develop large muscles and low bodyfat. This requires a different type of fitness and training regime.

Also do not confuse bodybuilding with normal strength training that most people do in a health club or gymnasium. Strength training is a recommended fitness activity for all people, both male and female. The goal of strength training is not to build huge muscles, but to improve functional strength, muscle endurance and general fitness to promote overall health and increase quality of life.

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"Bodybuilding Is Living."

Another day...
"Another rep, another nail. Another set, another brick. Another split, another backbreaking load of concrete... An honest day's work for an honest day's pay. In here, no distractions. Not like the outside, with ignorant people and their questions such as, 'Is bodybuilding a sport?' The first hundred times, I answered. I've stopped answering long ago..."

What can a word mean?
"Sport. What does the word even mean? Yeah, it is a word that's easily defined... Still it doesn't mean much. Let me ask you, how do you describe what you do in a single word, an entire way of living with just 5 letters? I cant. What I do is more than a word. What I do cannot be confined by the basic limitations of language. Who I am, cannot be so easily defined."

Bodybuilding is more than a word...
"Bodybuilding is a sport, one that doesn't end with stepping up on stage... That's just a detour. But bodybuilding is more, like breathing or living. It is transcendent. It in not merely a word, but a symbol, a process of becoming -a constant striving to better oneself. This great journey that I'm on, one that we all can become a part of, has a beginning but no end.

As I sit here, in the middle of my labor with two and a quarter on my back, I know I'm just a tiny speck. On this ordinary day, as I hammer out reps, each one drives my determination deeper into the grain of my being.'

..taken from Flex Magazine, August 2006