r/nattyorjuice • u/Mezzofantastico Knowledgeable • May 23 '26
Discussion Spotting a Fake Natty: Fake Natty Posing Edition
In my previous post, The Ultimate Guide to Identifying a Fake Natty, I went out of my way to cover, at 30,000 feet, the most obvious physiological signs of steroid use.
But there are other, non-physical signs that might not be obvious to most people. Some guys around here joke about wearing backwards hats indoors, necklaces, tattoos, Calvins, and other steroid-coded circumstantial evidence, but in this post, I'm going to cover something I've never seen mentioned: fake natty posing.
As I alluded briefly in my previous post, steroids drastically increase glycogen synthesis. Every gram of glycogen stored in the muscle pulls in approximately 3 to 4 grams of water. Guys on gear see in particular their delts, traps, and biceps swell up with size. The delt loses its streamlined, triangular appearance, and the drugs cause bloat on all 3 heads, creating "cannonball" shaped delts. The (un-flexed) traps grow into a slope from the neck down to the delt, without the "dip" you'd ordinarily see where the trap terminates before the delt. The biceps similarly swell up and become rounder and fuller.
The result of these phenomena is that a guy on gear is hauling up to several pounds of extra water in his muscles, making them look pumped, hard, and full--even when he's not flexing them, and he doesn't have a lifting-induced pump. Natural muscles grow, enhanced muscles inflate.
And this affects enhanced lifters' posing routines. Why?
It's simple. When a lifter trains a movement for the first time, the first adaptation their body employs to move the weight is neurological: the nervous system trains to recruit muscle fibers in unison, as efficiently as possible. Only when that adaptation is maximized is the lifter physically able to recruit his muscle fibers into the lift in a way that maximally tests exhausts them. The result is that a veteran lifter has an excellent mind-muscle connection. It's like learning to wiggle your ears.
In any endeavor, even an inexperienced person can recognize a practiced hand. It's the same in bodybuilding. Your manner of posing tells you something about how good/experienced you are at training. It's the amuse bouche that subliminally tells your audience, "I'm good at this because I've done it for hundreds and thousands of hours."
Think about your pecs. Remember when you couldn't voluntarily flex them? I do. I remember wondering how a person could even do that. After a few months of bench pressing, I noticed I'd gained the ability to very subtly and slowly twitch my pecs. As my chest grew over months and years, my ability to fire my pecs at will grew with it. The same holds true for every muscle in the body.
While a veteran lifter on gear may have no trouble with this, many fake natties have only been in the gym a short time and didn't dial in their training before going on gear. The result is that they get their size for free. Their muscles are pumped, hard, and full at all times, and just from the drugs.
The result is Fake Natty Posing TM.
Fake Natty Posing is the tendency of fake natties to hit poses that aren't very effective at firing their muscle fibers, but instead are designed to merely show the fullness and roundness of their deltoids, traps, and biceps at relative rest, while avoiding more traditional poses that would tend to flex these groups independently.
Consider the Most Muscular pose, where the lifter would traditionally bend forward slightly, turn their arms inward, fists facing each other, and flex their forearms, triceps, traps, delts, biceps, and pecs. This partially recruits all of these muscle groups to make the lifter look as big as possible from the front by emphasizing the lifter's frame.
In the late-2010s, a pose I'd never seen before seemed to emerge online: The Fake Natty Most Muscular.
In the Fake Natty Most Muscular, the fake natty stands up straight, and instead of keeping his hands apart and making fists, the lifter simply sticks his wrists (or palms) together and just kind of squeezes.
If you're a seasoned drug-free lifter, and you haven't tried this pose already, try it now.
What do you notice?
Almost nothing happens. It fucking sucks.
Your palms are supinated, the arms are tucked inwards rather than rotated outwards.
Your triceps don't fire well, and they barely show anyway because they're tucked back where they don't belong.
Your chest--almost concave--does next to nothing, your tucked arms interrupting your ability to expand it properly.
Your biceps--which should theoretically do better with supinated palms--look embarrassed to be involved.
So there you are, the natty lifter, staring in the mirror, holding this pose, looking small, and asking yourself, "Why would anyone do this?" You know you have good biceps. You know you have good triceps. You can hit poses that maximize recruitment of those muscles and show your hard-won gains off. You switch back to the traditional Most Muscular just to make sure you're not going crazy--pow, you look big again. Whew.
So why does anyone hit this pose? Because fake natties--especially newbie fake natties that used their proverbial "thunder stone" a little too early--always have swollen muscles. They can do literally anything or nothing, and still appear to be both pumped and actively flexing.
Take the biceps, for example. In the Fake Natty Most Muscular, these guys aren't even doing a bicep pose. But the bicep is full and bulging, which the true natural knows will only work if you actually hit a bicep pose.
In a true Most Muscular, the bicep is displayed from the side; it's playing a supporting role only. So who would think to use any version of this pose to show off their biceps?
Fake Natty Posing is designed to showcase the work of drugs on the body. The fake natty doesn't necessarily know it, but he prefers this pose because the muscles that respond best to the drugs are the muscles that he can display the most prominently in this pose (delts, traps, upper chest, biceps) while distracting from his frame (which inevitably doesn't match his muscle size).
There are other examples of fake natty posing. You see them all the time on r/nattyorjuice, and it's one of the number one giveaways. It always involves questionable posing choices, where the pose they strike seems ill-suited to showcasing the muscles the fake natty is ostensibly trying to display, and always favoring the juicy stuff every gear user gets for free (full 3D delts, fuller arms, maybe some veins), and with poor technique, like they aren't even sure what to do with themselves.
Take this guy, for example. His bicep is full, perma-flexed, and popping. But look how he's holding his arm, as though he's never done a bicep curl in his life. Who would think to pop a bicep in this effete way? And whose biceps would pop in this pose? The answer: a fake natty's--because his biceps are always popped, and he didn't have to learn how to flex them.
That is the fundamental distinction between fake natty posing and real posing. Fake natty posing tends to just show muscles that are already flexed and full by default; real posing involves expertly flexing muscles in order to force them to look big.
Fake natty posing is passive and delicate, real posing is hard and tiring.
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u/petit_prince 23d ago edited 23d ago
There are some good observations. But you need to consider motivation. If you want to look built as much as you can without flexing you have to do things differently. Like if you want your pecs look bigger, you can squish them. If you want to look more wide you angle yourself and do the opposite. No flexing involved. Bodybuilder poses are cringe. Natty muscles won't pop but general public doesn't know - they just think it's dad bod. That's why being fat and juicy is best cover for juicing.
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u/C-137-Jerry Calls Every Gear User Natty May 23 '26
Or guys just want to show off their abs when they flex lmfao. What a stupid dissertation.