Is Bodybuilding a Real Sport? – Athletes and Bodybuilders

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Do you love bodybuilding and want to make a career out of it? if your answer is yes and you have talked to some people about it, you may have heard different opinions about it and many people may even have asked you that is bodybuilding even a real sport. Today we will try to answer this exact question.

Can bodybuilders be called athletes?

Some people completely revert from this statement because they think that bodybuilders are prone to certain things that an athlete will never be. Some of these are not true while others may be facts. Most famous notions people use to rubbish these claims are.

• Working out is unhealthy for your heart and can lead to heart-related diseases
• It makes you slow and lethargic
• Once you quit bodybuilding your whole muscle mass will convert into fat which is very unhealthy.
• Weight lifting and bodybuilding may make your muscles less flexible and stiff.

There are many others which you can add to this list but you get the point. The truth is this question was a bit more critical in the past and people today are getting more and more educated about bodybuilding but the truth is bodybuilders are still fighting an uphill battle to prove themselves, legitimate athletes. So, we decided to look at the dictionary meaning of the word athlete and bodybuilding to commit a conclusion.

“Athlete” dictionary meaning

The definition is “a person possessing the natural or acquired traits, such as strength, agility or endurance, that are necessary for physical exercise or sports, especially those performed in competitive contexts.”

Let’s be honest, the words here that are used are strength and endurance, and bodybuilders are full of it and there is no denying this fact because they are especially known for their strength and the endurance to continue training for a long period of time. Bodybuilders have more strength and endurance than any of the other athletes so, in my opinion, they fit the criteria of athletes. For example, just go to any gym and ask for any build bodybuilder and an athlete to lift weights and I can bet you $200 that bodybuilder will be able to lift more.

Meaning of the word “bodybuilder”

“a person who develops the musculature of the body through specific types of diet and exercise, such as weightlifting, especially for competitive exhibition.”

It seems like complete logic to me from this definition that requirements of being a bodybuilder include strength and endurance and this definition also mention strength and rigidity, which means the people saying that bodybuilders are not athletes have no point at all and they are completely wrong when it comes to the logic factor.

Bodybuilding and Professional Athletes

Now, we are not saying that each and every athlete is a bodybuilder, also so that each and every bodybuilder is a good athlete, but saying that they not athletes at all, would be wrong for bodybuilders because they work so hard to increase their physical abilities.