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Rich Gaspari is one of America's golden age bodybuilders who never won the Mr. Olympia despite being an elite in the sport. He finished in second-place three times in 1986, 1987 and 1988 making him one of the unsung heroes of American bodybuilding. Since his retirement, Gaspari has gained significant value as a commentator in the sport, often drawing comparisons between old-school and new age bodybuilders and giving fitness advice to his audience.
Gaspari recently appeared on Dragon Slayer Media's podcast where he discussed the woes of aging and anti-aging measures with John Romano:
"I know you take TRT but getting on something like the peptides for increasing the growth hormone. There is, of course, a brain fart right now, when you get older and start losing muscle, there’s an aging process. It’s a process that your body goes through after age 45, 50, 60, where it accelerates, where your body naturally loses muscle, you know, you’re getting older. It just something that happens."
Aging comes with Sarcopenia, which is a significant decrease in skeletal muscle tissue. Research suggests that after the age of 30, muscle mass decreases approximately 3-8% every decade.
Gaspari mentioned that he uses a combination of testosterone, resistance training, and growth hormones to slow aging down:
"But you can slow it down through testosterone, weight training, GH, all these different ways of slowing it down, slowing down the aging process."
Interestingly, John Romano is still using the drugs he was introduced to in the 90s. His reasoning behind the use of old-school performance enhancers is simple: the bodybuilders just looked better back then. Romano said:
"The stuff I use is from 35 years ago, Dan Duchaine taught me how to do this stuff in the 90s and I’ve stuck with that protocol all this time ... The reason is… when we look at bodybuilding shows, what do we always say, they don’t look as they looked in the 90s. Right. So, that’s why I’m not looking at anything new because the stuff I’m using, the stuff I practice and suggest people use, is that 90s technology because to this day, no one has eclipsed the conditioning and the look that was prevalent in the 90s."
Gaspari believes that bodybuilders today lack conditioning
In the 80s, Gaspari was known for his dry build and the former bodybuilder has been critical of the sport today on multiple occasions. After Hadi Choopan's Mr. Olympia win in 2022, Gaspari drew a comparison between the Iranian and six-time Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates, criticizing Choopan for not focusing on conditioning. Despite retaliation from Choopan, Gaspari still believes the focus has shifted from conditioning to sheer size, especially after Phil Heath's first three Olympias:
"Bodybuilders are not as conditioned or not as shredded – this ultra shredded look… I would say I started it but then you had guys like Ronnie Coleman who set another standard. Well, you had Dorian [Yates] then you had Ronnie came after. I would even say right up to Phil Heath in his first three or four Olympia he had that conditioning and then from there, it kind of got lost, and then Phil played the size game"
