Semi-realistic post-apocalyptic body-building

[Spore]

Now that title is a mouth full. :smallbiggrin:

I have a system that is not relevant bar the fact that I have a pretty high Body score: 5 out of 6 to be exact. Sub skills are Athletics (climbing, also movement per round), Melee (unarmed), Power (carry weight, melee damage), Melee (armed), Endurance (stuff like slogs, stay awake for days at a time, overland speed while overburdened) and Hardness (health points). All of these improve when I put a point into Body.

It would take me about 10-12 sessions to accumulate the amount of points. And now to my problem. This is peak physical fitness, barring skill (like for melee fighting) or survival training (like for endurance and athletics). 10-12 can be several months during which physical training can be implied. But if the action focusses now, the sessions can very well just be 1-2 weeks, during which such a training can only be retroactively implied. Our DM is very heavy on creating a reason on why one would invest in a skill (so you cannot improve charisma without saying a damn word).

The character is 30ish so past his physical prime but still capable. He likes to brute-force things but he is poor enough so that he has no time for training regiments. He works as a scrapper but he is unskilled enough that he can only assist others with physical labor. alone he would likely just break out cement blocks and carry them back to sell them to survive.

How would you explain an all-around physical improvement? My idea would be mental blocks overcome because much of high-end sports deal with the brain as much as with the body (stuff you only can achieve when you overcome certain mental states).

I could imagine the very famous "truck wheel exercise" but to bring the wheel back to town to sell it. But that would mean my character is too stupid to turn the wheel sideways and just does this exercise for a few miles, in a world where his next meal is not secured. Also speaking about meals: How would you ensure proper nutrition in a world where every second person is malnutritioned?

[BWR]

How would you explain an all-around physical improvement? My idea would be mental blocks overcome because much of high-end sports deal with the brain as much as with the body (stuff you only can achieve when you overcome certain mental states).


I'd (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1FCwSkNWvg) invoke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ihfOB4-VcE)Fist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTDy8XVdRSk)of the (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqgt9LrMwG0)North Star (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=104pC-Nrt8I). Everyone who isn't a civilian (and even some of them) is ripped (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd9T2Yktq3s)as hell.
That and cannibalism.


Seriously, though, it won't work unless you are a warlord of some sort. You won't get a bodybuilder's physique on a poor diet. You need to have some way of securing food, which means you have to be near the top of the food chain in an area that can easily enough get enough food for one person to bulk up even if it means others starve.

[Spore]

Maybe a bodybuilder physique is not even implied because bodybuilding is for show, and I do not think strongman feats are to be represented by the attribute system either. So normal bulky powerhouse would be enough imho. (and bulky because I have Dex 2/6 and nothing invested in its subskills. I am as nimble as a sack of bricks).

The system is lacking in consistency because going beyond 6 in a main attribute is usually only possible via nano-medicine.

[Cespenar]

Reason that now that your character is learning to utilize his strength better in an instinctive way? Better form, better stance, better leverage, etc.

[TheStranger]

So, nutrition - like BWR said, it's nigh-impossible to get bulky on a poor diet. And if your means of getting enough money to buy more food involves hauling cement blocks around, you're investing serious calories that need to be replenished before you can bulk up. Basically, you need to come up with a reason that, although most people in the setting are malnourished, your character has plenty of food. Possible reasons include a secret food supply like a garden he tends outside of town, or just beating people up and taking their food. Or he's just obsessive about making food *the* priority when he gets paid, maybe basing his diet on high-nutrition but unappealing foods that he can get cheaply. Everybody else gets a big payday and they buy red meat and a bottle of whiskey, your guy buys canned mealworms in bulk.

As for training, how much of a stickler is your GM? From what you said, you'll either be spending your time hauling cement blocks around or in the middle of action, which usually means fighting. Either of those seems like a direct application of the Body attribute, so you've got a pretty solid argument for increasing it. Most GMs wouldn't demand more of a justification than "my character is a strong guy in general, and I've been doing physical stuff constantly." If you want to flavor it a bit more, look online for a good bodyweight training routine and say your character does that in his downtime.

In a survivalist situation, though, training is a luxury that very few people can afford. When every calorie counts, you don't waste energy doing push-ups. Personally, I'd just stick with the idea that your character spends his life digging through wreckage and hauling heavy stuff back to town, so he's about as strong and tough as a person can reasonably get.

[GungHo]

I could imagine the very famous "truck wheel exercise" but to bring the wheel back to town to sell it. But that would mean my character is too stupid to turn the wheel sideways and just does this exercise for a few miles, in a world where his next meal is not secured.
Don't forget to hit the wheel with a spare sledgehammer (or a spare friend) for a couple of hours. You can also hang ROUS corpses up in a meat locker and pulverise them like Rocky in order to make them tinder for cooking later. There's likely an entire martial art centered around headbutts. Rusted rebar javelin throws. Car axle deadlifts. Roboskull shotput. Radsaunas. You could end up with Muscle Beach Cult that worships Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno posters on the edge of toxic tar pits. They all speak in bro.

[Spore]

So I should probably invest in Charisma even though we have a face to improve supply lines? I can't become a warlord easily if I am to stay with my group. I can however bully and befriend my way up the other knucklehead scrappers that do the heavy lifting.

[TheStranger]

Well, you have to figure out some way to get way more calories than the norm for the setting. Way, way more calories - 5,000+ a day is probably a good ballpark for an elite strength athlete (bodybuilder, offensive lineman, Mountain that Rides, etc.). And if you're scavenging ruins 10-12 hours a day, you might actually need more than that to put on muscle. That's for actually building muscle, though, not just surviving - if you eat less, you'll be tough as nails, but you won't bulk up.

Anyway, eating like that in a scarcity environment isn't easy. You don't need to be 1% wealthy, but it's probably above the level of "bullying a few other guys on the work crew." Maybe if you do some pit fighting on the side? I could see a scenario where the toughest scrappers fight at night for wagers and prize money - that could get you to the level of local celebrity and justify a good diet.

[Mr Beer]

Yeah if it has to be realistic, you cannot reach peak human strength and stamina without abundant calories.

[Spore]

Maybe if you do some pit fighting on the side? I could see a scenario where the toughest scrappers fight at night for wagers and prize money - that could get you to the level of local celebrity and justify a good diet.

We do have a fighting pit on the side. But unless there is need to appease the gods' divine winds (west wind driving over dangerous mutagenic spores) it is not well visited. And my character left the gang that operates the pit by means of (unsuccessful) assassination. If they know I am still alive, I have to rejoin, do jobs for them and stumble into the scope of the sadist that set my character on fire in a backalley. Maybe I do start to fight there, just for the heck of it. After all, hard work is not the way to rise in ranks in this backstabbing city. :)


As for training, how much of a stickler is your GM?

It's her first real game. She uses the rules as a crutch to get backup. She quit one session early because people regularly disputed her rulings (understandably). There are not rules for background RP, but she needs a semi-solid reason. Her husband is working as a nurse and she is a insurance broker. A fellow player is a teacher for sports and math. So it doesn't need to be in-depth. But I want to at least make sense to these three players that know a thing or two about nutrition.

In turn my sensibilities as a food science/chemistry major are challenged every time someone opens 500 year old cans of rations to eat it or uses 500 year old cement blocks to build something but hey. Apparently the post apocalypse just happens in a world where decay is slow.

I think I will go the "Dragon Ball" route. Just binge eat once I get the chance. I think fat tissue is not too bad in a world like that. Other than that, my usual route is the smartest thing to do.

________________________

But I am really thinking of investing into social skills. I am doing couples RP with a little scrapper girl that is as socially inept as I am. But we need some connections that neither the party face nor the party doc (has charisma dips as well) just cannot organize for us.

[Spore]

Maybe if you do some pit fighting on the side? .


Seriously, though, it won't work unless you are a warlord of some sort.

I have decided on a path to go. I will neglect body for now and work on getting ahead in the leadership game. The scrapper boss is wise, but also old and while I by no means want to replace him (not my character's goal) I want to get on his level and on his good side. If I need cash urgently and feel the risk is low enough because of enough backup from the scrappers, I will go and pit fight (of course with a few scrappers to watch me - partially just so that my character doesn't "vanish").

I need "Authority" and "Network" now. These are RP "skills" that cannot be improved with XP but with RP. And for these I likely need social skills since one is for inner-guild relations, the other is to get a few friends outside of the guild (but NPCs, PCs do not count).

[S@tanicoaldo]

You may want to ditch the whole bodybuilder look, that s*** is not natural, it's pure aestetic, made to look good rather than be functional.

Here this guide may help you: link (https://orig00.deviantart.net/ed1c/f/2009/219/8/2/abdomination_by_coelasquid.jpg)

The biceps and pectorals are the muscles that many people (erroneously) believe to make up the bulk of physical strength. In actuality, muscles like the Latissimus dorsi and triceps contribute far more to functional strength (especially the Latissimus dorsi). Bruce Lee is an excellent example of this: his biceps and chest were not abnormally large for a man his size, but his Latissimus dorsi were enormous.

You may want to use strongman from strongman competitions as your base, they are really strong, fro realz, able to do great feats of strength.

Think less like this (https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTxuW6FwXn2RVlYZ4YQQfhhx76TiDVJr Yh93w6OKgn8UfCSJliV)

And more like this (http://wikiofthrones.com/static/uploads/2016/11/mountain-compressed.jpg).

[Kaptin Keen]

The character is 30ish so past his physical prime but still capable.

I'm 47. I can still toss 20yo's around like rag dolls. Sure, the curve is in some theoretical way trending downwards, but trust me, for at least another 10 years, it's pretty flat on top. At 72, my dad rode 384 km on a bike, just to pop in on my first day at a new job and say congrats.

[TheStranger]

You may want to use strongman from strongman competitions as your base, they are really strong, fro realz, able to do great feats of strength.
This is definitely true. And building that kind of muscle only takes about 12,000 calories (https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a19516547/world-strongest-man-brian-shaw-diet/) a day. This can't be said enough, the calories are the primary reason every scrapper in your setting wouldn't be built like that (or as close as their genetics allow), because you're all basically doing CrossFit all day. I should point out that this isn't unique to the setting - it applies to people in the real world who spend their lives doing physical labor, too.

Although, I wonder if a setting like this couldn't inadvertently replicate the bulk/cut cycle that bodybuilders use to add lean muscle. You need a calorie surplus to effectively build muscle, so bodybuilders alternate that with cutting weight to get the extremely low body fat they need for competition. Strongmen and other athletes who don't need to be lean skip that step, so they don't get ripped in the same way despite being stronger overall. But in a post-apocalyptic, missing meals involuntarily could have almost the same effect. Your muscle distribution would still be more functional than showy, but you might get ripped almost by accident.


I'm 47. I can still toss 20yo's around like rag dolls. Sure, the curve is in some theoretical way trending downwards, but trust me, for at least another 10 years, it's pretty flat on top. At 72, my dad rode 384 km on a bike, just to pop in on my first day at a new job and say congrats.
That's another good point. Fast-twitch athleticism peaks early and drops off, but strength and endurance peak later and plateau for a long time. I remember reading (I think in Born to Run) something that basically said if you start intensive endurance training (i.e., marathon running) early in life and continue throughout adulthood, your endurance will increase throughout your teens and twenties and peak somewhere around 27-30. Then it plateaus for a *long* time. If you keep running throughout adulthood (and avoid injury), your age-27 peak endurance won't drop back to the level it was at at age 18 until you're in your sixties. I don't have numbers on strength, but I'd expect it to be similar, and maybe even skew a little older. Basically, the real reason most of us go to pot physically in our 30s is that we don't exercise enough and eat like crap (I certainly include myself in that category).

Anyway, all of that is kind of tangential to the original question, but I find it all fascinating.

[Mr Beer]

Raw strength doesn't drop off significantly by age 30, barring injuries or not training, they may be as strong as they ever were, potentially even stronger.

Take a look at a world strongman contest, these field isn't exclusively in the 18 to 25 range. In fact I suspect you'd usually need to be mid-20's to have trained long enough to reach your full strength potential. It's not something you hit in 2 years.