Is Helmut Strebl on Steroids? Discover the truth!

DOES HELMUT STREBL USE STEROIDS?

Hulk-like physiques and steroid use are almost synonymous, right? Well, being a mountain of a person is one thing, but being a mountain with incredibly defined muscles is a whole different thing. You see, for you to create muscles that turn heads, you need to be on a calorie-dense diet. This is what allows you the energy as well as the nutrients required to push through grueling workouts as well as supply your body with the nutrients it needs to create muscle.

A calorie-dense diet, on the other hand, implies that you will not only gain muscle mass but fat as well.

This is why being jacked while having extremely low body-fat levels is such a difficult feat to accomplish. To illustrate this better, ever wondered why professional bodybuilders look ‘fat’ when they are not competing? That’s right, maintaining such low body-fat levels is not only difficult but also unhealthy. As a result, professional bodybuilders only get to single-digit body fat percentage levels when they have to.

Now, being shredded is one thing, but looking like a walking and talking human anatomy chart is another, and this is the case with Helmut Strebl.

Helmut has earned himself the moniker of being ‘the most shredded man alive.’ Now, think about that for a minute. How sliced do you have to be for everyone to unanimously agree that you are the most shredded of them all? Yes, you do have to look like a literal anatomy chart, and that’s what Helmut Strebl looks like.

And he isn’t any twig either; he carries a decent amount of muscle mass on him. Naturally, this has led to discussions about his apparent steroid use. What is his steroid cycle like?

Well, asking such questions implies the assumption that Helmut takes steroids, which apparently, isn’t the case according to the man himself. As you can imagine, not everyone is buying his claim of being natty (natural). So, is there a way that we can know for sure whether Helmut juices or not?

Unfortunately, unless we drag him into a drug testing lab and put him under a microscope, there’s no way we can prove whether he’s on steroids or not. What we can do, however, is speculate based on the various parameters used to determine the probability of someone being on the juice. This article aims to determine the likelihood of Helmut Strebl being on steroids.

Who is Helmut Strebl?

As mentioned earlier, Helmut is widely recognized as the most shredded individual to walk this planet. The only other person who came close to rivaling Helmut’s obscene conditioning was Andreas Munzer, who actually died from it. And just like Munzer, Helmut is also Austrian. Must be something in Austria’s water, seeing that Arnold Schwarzenegger also hails from there.

Helmut Strebl was born in 1968, which makes him 51 at the time of writing. As a young boy in the rough streets of Austria, Strebl was constantly picked on by the other kids due to his small stature. However, he noticed that his friend, who was bigger than him, did not receive the same kind of treatment.

Strebl figured that if he were to add some mass onto his frame, maybe the bullies wouldn’t pick on him anymore. So, he got started. Instead of going to the gym right away, Helmut made his own weights by filling 5-liter water bottles and going to work with them. He made lifting the makeshift weights a routine, and soon enough, he had grown considerably.

Another thing Helmut noticed was that the other kids stopped picking on him, and this only fueled the inner fire in his heart.

When he turned 16, Strebl signed up for a gym membership and hasn’t looked back ever since. He has led this lifestyle for over 35 years and has collected numerous trophies from various bodybuilding shows.

Helmut Strebl’s Physique

Pictures of Helmut’s physique have gone viral severally over the past few years. How can one achieve such ridiculous levels of leanness? Helmut is so lean that a paper cut looks like it could potentially end his life due to his extreme vascularity.

Helmut stands at 6’3″ and weighs between 200 and 215 pounds; raw muscle. At that height, you can tell that 200 pounds isn’t a lot, and this tells you how incredibly lean he is. When preparing for a competition, Helmut can get his body fat levels to as low as 3 percent. When he bulks, his body fat levels rarely go past 5 percent, which is a lot leaner than what most pro-bodybuilders bring to the stage.

What’s more, he’s been consistently doing this well into his late forties, and now, early fifties. This is why a lot of his skeptics are on his case. There’s no way that he can maintain such a physique naturally. This is because, to get that lean, he must at least use some kind of diuretic such as Winstrol, which not only allows him to shed fat but to maintain his muscle mass.

All these are speculations. So, let us try and find out how much water they hold. We shall do that to see how Helmut compares against the most common signs of a steroid user.

• Substantial Changes Within a Short Period

One of the dead giveaways of steroid use is seeing massive changes within an unreasonable period. Even with the best genetics, diet, and training program, it will take years before you build enough muscle to turn heads on the street. We are not talking about pure mass since a calorie-dense diet will make you a lot bigger since it will be a combination of both fat and muscle. Instead, we are talking about lean muscle mass. On average, steroids can give you between 20 and 30 pounds of lean muscle mass within just a few months, while it would take you years to build that kind of mass naturally.

Helmut Strebl has been lifting for more than 35 years, and, therefore, it wouldn’t be fair to attribute his physique to steroids. Besides, the guy is not a mass monster, which only makes his claim of being natural to hold even more weight.

Moreover, Helmut’s muscles have that ‘mature’ look. They look hardened, which is a sign of muscle maturity that can only come from years upon years of dedicated lifting. A typical steroid user can be ripped, but there’s a certain ‘softness’ to their muscle’s appearance, regardless of how low their body weight.

• Massive Shoulder Muscles

Those who have been around the bodybuilding community for a while know to look at an individual’s deltoids (delts) and trapezius (traps) muscles when trying to determine whether someone is on the sauce.

This is because almost every steroid user has tremendous development in the group of muscles on their shoulders. They have cannonballs for delts and small hills for traps. Additionally, their shoulder muscles seem to overpower every other muscle group on their body, and this isn’t by coincidence either.

The traps and delts contain the highest number of androgen receptors of any muscle group in the body. Androgen receptors are nuclear factors that enhance the rate of muscle growth when stimulated by androgen hormones, such as testosterone.

Since most muscle-building steroids are synthetic versions of testosterone (the muscle-building hormone), using these substances increases the levels of testosterone in the body, and this is what allows steroid users to build muscles at such a tremendous rate.

Since the shoulders contain the highest number of androgen receptors, they grow at an even faster rate than the other muscles when exposed to testosterone, and this is why steroid users have fantastic shoulder development.

While Helmut Strebl has a decent set of shoulders, they are really nothing to write home about, considering that he has been actively lifting for such a long time. His shoulders, in fact, are one of the giveaways of being natty.

• Gynecomastia

Popularly referred to as gyno, it is a condition characterized by excessive development of breast tissue in males. As such, an individual with gyno appears to have little ‘tits’ that resemble those of a woman.

It is usually caused when the body has too much testosterone, which converts to estrogen in a bid to maintain hormonal balance. Increased estrogen levels are what cause the development of feminine characteristics in men, such as breast development. It is very common among steroid users.

In all his years of lifting, Helmut hasn’t displayed signs of gyno, which only further validates his claim of being natural.

The Verdict

If we were to eliminate the ultra-shredded aspect of Helmut Strebl and leave him with about 10 percent body fat, not many people would raise an eyebrow if he said that he was natural.

As such, the bone of contention between Helmut and his critics is his leanness. Before throwing him under the bus, one has to consider Helmut’s body type. He has said that he was skinny growing up, and even eating copious amounts of food doesn’t get him fat. He’s just one of those guys with a metabolism that functions on overdrive.

Couple that with the fact that Helmut’s diet is typically very low on carbs, it is not hard to see why he barely has any fat on his body.

Thus, while Helmut might not use anabolic steroids, it is very likely that he uses something else to help him maintain his physique. We strongly believe that Helmut could be on legal steroids, as they are known to have the anabolic and fat-burning properties of anabolic steroids, but without the side effects. Legal steroids are definitely worth checking out when looking to build a lean physique, as they are more effective than your typical supplements.