Iain retires

[lifepulse]

If he or others came back to the sport after retiring, I do not believe it would be for.money. In their minds it would be for relevance and recognition. Most of us assign a certain amount of self value in how other people's perception of us validates what we have built in the gym. Theirs to a much greater degree. When they step away and downsize and the crowds are far removed, there can be a missing piece to what was once their persona.

Most of the people who go far in the sport, then retire, continue to make their money and spend most of their free time still heavily vested in the sport somehow - Ronnie or Cutler going on to create supplement lines, for example - still going to all the expos, still meeting with all the fans - or they go on to coach others, help others with posing, prep - all the “big names”, Milos, Dennis James, the list is endless. So even tho they’re “retired from competing”, they’re not really fully retired “from bodybuilding”, as the thing that still occupies most of their mental/spiritual energy.

So we get comebacks - Flex Wheeler, Kevin Levrone, Darrem Charles - you could say it’s to stay relevant, but on a deeper level, I kinda think it’s because that’s all they know, the bodybuilding landscape, it’s still too deep in their marrow to really fully walk away.

The only people who we don’t see at expos and holding out the carrot of a potential comeback, are people who go on to something completely different in life, fill that bodybuilding void with something else completely.

[Beti ona]

The only people who we don’t see at expos and holding out the carrot of a potential comeback, are people who go on to something completely different in life, fill that bodybuilding void with something else completely.

From an existential point of Camus' Sisyphus myth, the void can never be filled with anything, lol, so its just as absurd to maintain the same activity as to change it for other.

[triceps]

Brutal if true

[Bestia]

And it's a party

[letsrun4it]

I got to the point where I was getting bigger and leaner and not getting BETTER and I think Iain was experiencing the same thing on a much higher level.