Guys and girls, attractiveness of rugby players' physiques

Ulysses has an awesome physique, probably better legs and v taper. But Plitt's the only person to make the cover of Men's Fitness (fitness model) and Muscle and Fitness (bodybuilding). He earns respect from the bodybuilders and your average joe who wants to get fit. I reckon he's leaner than Ulysses as well, from those pics.

He's basically superhuman. Did you hear about his accident when he sawed of the ends of 3 of his fingers? He took the ends that had been cut off, drove to a hospital, had them stitched back on and was back in the gym after just a few weeks. Most people would take months to recover from something like that. He's a total machine.

Don't wanna derail the thread but.....FUAAAAARRRK:

It's the legs that get me. Post more pics of rugby men legs please

oh my, that man in the first picture is a rather handsome chap...

Personally wouldn't go for that. Prefer my men slimmer. I'm honestly not a massive fan of the six-pack (I know, I'm weird).

So, Sonny Bill...

There is a difference. Rugby players get into a gym to lift as a support to training, but most of the training and a lot of the muscle comes from being out on a pitch trying to stop guys who look like that beasting you around. I have a theory that playing sports will give you a more naturally muscular appearance due to it coming from more natural movements (natural in the sense of movements that would be done while fighting/hunting/fleeing on an evolutionary timescale), whereas working out in a sterile gym environment as your primary exercise will over or underwork certain areas, causing imbalance or pointlessly muscled physiques (from an evolutionary standpoint). By no means is this wholeheartedly convincing, but it does have a large degree of plausibility.


There's also the obvious: They're not going to the gym to directly look better or get bigger, they're going to the gym to get better at rugby. One is vain, the other is, for reasons I still don't fully understand, attractive.

I'm afraid your theory is absolute nonsense.

Playing sports actually does the opposite of what you say: it will make you smaller and weaker. This is because to play rugby you need an extreme amount of conditioning and the training required to gain this conditioning is not conductive to gaining muscle mass - that's why bodybuilders have an aversion to cardio training.

Players very much are in the gym to gain muscular size, and you'll find large amounts of sports training programmes are based on this style of training. This is firstly to help players become the size required to be an effective player (notice how players are a lot more muscular in the professional era compared to the amateur one) and secondly to regain the size and strength lost during the season.

Let us switch briefly to the sport of American Football because it is very similar to rugby, and also because I have books specifically about training for American football. Players were always smaller and weaker after the rigours of a full season of matches and spent much of the off-season training in the gym to regain this size and strength and hopefully even maybe come back bigger and stronger.

Now onto your theory about gym work "overworking" certain areas. This is also nonsense. In fact it is fairly common for athletes to be in the gym working on the areas that their own sport overworks. E.g. swimmers work on their backs due to the muscular imbalance swimming causes; Lance Armstrong works on this hamstrings and glutes due to the imbalance that cycling causes; and the same is true for many other sports.

Nah, Plitt is a bit overrated. Isn't Ulysses a bodybuilder as opposed to fitness model? If he was a fitness model, I'm pretty sure he'd give Greg a run for his money if he was.



****ing amazing. Also, it's the physique Zyzz aspired too so instant point. Don't get me wrong though, Greg has an amazing physique too but in my opinion, Ulisses just ****ted on him.

Note the bit where I all but said "Bigger isn't necessarily better".

I do realise that bodybuilding builds more muscle mass, my point was that there may be a scientific-esque reason why girls do not necessarily like the biggest, most muscular men. From a resource management standpoint, super hulks make no sense.

No, I am not sure where your post says that.

The scientific reason is probably: because it looks stupid.

all but said

That's less a scientific reason and more a vague and mostly meaningless statement.

In real life I am not sure if we have ever encountered a situation where being bigger won't at least lead on to other factors that imply better because without heavy anabolics use the human body simply does not grow that big when combined with the rigours of intense sports training and matches. This is also probably why there are no strength programmes with the goal of getting smaller. There are some designed to keep the athlete the same size, but these are only utilised in sports where there are weight classes and it is deemed that the benefit of being bigger is not worth the athlete being in a weight class in which the participants are much bigger and stronger than said athlete.

It perfectly explains why females do not find bodybuilders (the men with the biggest muscles) attractive.