For most of the men who reach the top of competitive physique sport, the question of what to take is not really a question. It is an entry fee. The line between a clean athlete and a chemically optimised one runs not through the locker room but through the wallet of whoever is willing to…
Most former IFBB Men's Physique competitors do not talk on the record about why they stopped competing. Steve Cook does. The conversation below, recorded in January 2024, when Cook was 38, is his retrospective on the trade he refused to make: the four-or-five-compound stack required to win at Olympia level, and the realisation that becoming…



