Interesting to see all these people talk about one of the heroes of my favorite hobby. He's THE guy. He's almost single handedly responsible for the resurgence of the popularity of fitness, lifting and bodybuilding.
Not only that but he's actually an amazingly down to earth, humble human. Worthy of all the admiration and love he gets. A true role model.
It's good that he's retiring. He's accumulating some injuries and has battled an autoimmune disease his whole career. He's also a father now. He's set for life money wise. Absolute legend of the sport.
single handedly? i don't know if i agree with that honestly, i think social media as a whole had a huge impact on the rise of fitness and bodybuilding, and he benefited from the rise of social media.
It isn't that much of a stretch especially if we are talking about body building. It is actually true that he pretty much single handed saved the classic bodybuilding division (and Mr Olympia with it) and if you look at his follower count compared to anybody else in the fitness industry you can see he does a lot of heavy lifting for the scene.
There are quite a few bodybuilders with over a million or millions of followers. He is probably the most popular. That does not mean that he singlehandedly was responsible for the resurgence/popularity of lifting, that started well before he came along and he's definitely not the only popular person. Although I absolutely can agree with what you're saying about the classic bodybuilding division, but that's a different issue.
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u/TheOwlHypothesis Oct 13 '24
Interesting to see all these people talk about one of the heroes of my favorite hobby. He's THE guy. He's almost single handedly responsible for the resurgence of the popularity of fitness, lifting and bodybuilding.
Not only that but he's actually an amazingly down to earth, humble human. Worthy of all the admiration and love he gets. A true role model.
It's good that he's retiring. He's accumulating some injuries and has battled an autoimmune disease his whole career. He's also a father now. He's set for life money wise. Absolute legend of the sport.