This is so fucking true and a fantastic observation.
In general, the level of survivorship bias in the fitness/bodybuilding world is staggering and has caused major, major issues.
A basic example would be the massive obsession with the big three compound barbell lifts. Some people have no business EVER touching those lifts, and a large % of people have no business touching them without working up to them along with significant technique/form work.
So, 10 guys walk into the gym and get told by the big guys there to get under the bar and squat or you're a bitch. A very high % of them destroy their bodies and get nowhere, and quit.
Meanwhile, the small % who are lucky enough to get away with that join the other big strong guys at the gym telling the newbies to stop being a bitch and get under the bar.
The same phenomenon is absolutely true with PED use as well ("anything under 600mg of Primo and 80mg/day of Anadrol is a waste of time!!!11") with possibly (probably?) even more deleterious health consequences, especially as PED use goes more mainstream.
Yep! It is a fact that the big three are subpar exercises for those not built for them (broad-shouldered, short-armed mesomorphs for the bench press; quad-dominant, optimal tibia/femur ratio for the squat and long arms favoring the deadlift in addition to a longer femur). This excludes many. Then, these exercises are not even optimal stimuli for the target musculature. They are middling at best exercises for hypertrophy.
Now when it comes to training, or exercise science or whatever you want to call it, there is very wide inter-individual heterogeneity in response. To any given intervention (call it training program, or training methods), there are not only your typical responders, but hyper-, hypo-, and even - (in every program) - those that actually get
worse, as in weaker and that actually lose muscle - to the same intervention when the sample is random and representative of the general population.
I think that those that reach an
advanced status (the outliers, the remarkably muscular and strong guys) are usually those that filter through from some combination of early success (hyper-responders) and those that had to commit to a resistance training program for their sport. You'd think, and this may be a faulty assumption, that guys that use steroids are typically those that see this early success or hyper- response to training, but become frustrated by the inevitable diminishing returns.
I hope that very few that reach the boards are those seeking a silver bullet.
So, as I see it it, those that are on these boards are a mostly heterogeneous mix of hyper- responders and those frustrated by their lack of hyper-response.
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Now I think that the phenomena we described are two sides of the same coin. They are both selection biases.
You're describing survivorship bias: this bias is typified by reference to the personas or individuals that would succeed often in spite of what they do rather than because of it. Anything put out there by these high status personas could be received as "gospel" by the normo- & hypo- responders, rather than their information being evaluated by its merits. This can be especially pernicious.
What I previously described was non-responder bias: this bias is typified by discussions about PEDs/drugs. Where the salient "war stories" (e.g., Tren) are shared by those with perhaps less than favorable androgen capacity/resilience (and later recalled more vividly by readers, inducing a recall bias [cherry-picking]), while those who experienced mild or no side effects and average or above average gains likely don't even reply (because these discussions becomes an echo chamber of sharing the more scintillating and perhaps even salacious aspects of the drug]).
Both are what seem to rise to the top or to the attention on social media, including bodybuilding forums. These are the elements that drive clicks/views and discussion.
What I try to do is - well, enjoy it (unless dangerous in the unusual case of pernicious survivorship bias where dangerous advice could be disseminated despite a lack of trustworthiness or sound rationality of their advice), because these discussions are scintillating and salient. I enjoy these memes in the true sense of the word (meme as a cultural unit that evolves and propagates). But I also try to, as best as I can, weigh these anecdotes against the larger universe of heterogeneity in individual responses and a presumed normal distribution, accepting that this board and our community is a subculture (largely influenced by early responders/hyper-responders and prone to "war stories" about drugs).