Extreme bodybuilding: the price of an abnormal body

Extreme bodybuilding: a profitable business, an unsustainable body

Does it make economic sense to wreck your health for a superhero physique? That question hangs over the case of bodybuilder Joan Pradells, who has 740,000 Instagram trinc and whose muscle volume now approaches that of today's comic-book Captain America. But the biological price is enormous.

The real risks of extreme muscle

A liver and kidneys turned to mush, premature heart attack: the clinical analysis of a body subjected to drugs and overload leaves little room for doubt. The heart, after all, is a muscle that loses efficiency when it hypertrophies pathologically. Those who enter this world without medical supervision – and there are some, with regular jobs and twice-daily gym sessions – have it even worse.

The business of the unnatural body

Pradells is an entrepreneur of his own image. Trinc translate into income, and the risk taken on is part of the capital. Some argue that, like any elite sport, this too produces injuries; the difference is that here the appearance itself is the product, and the aesthetic goal has no ceiling. The debate over unrealistic female beauty standards has been around for years; the male one, by contrast, is barely questioned in schools.

How far does the influence reach?

Comparisons with the pressures on women's bodies are inevitable, but not equivalent: extreme bodybuilding affects a significant percentage of young men, probably below 20% of those who train intensively, whereas the female beauty ideal impacts nearly all women. The question left hanging is how many boys get the message that this body is a healthy ideal before the medical bill arrives.

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The irony of economics: the body that sells best on social media may be the one with the least time left to cash in.