Why 8X Mr. Olympia Lee Haney Calls Modern Bodybuilding: “Frankenstein Era”?

After Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s record-setting reign as Mr. Olympia, no champion could hold the title for more than three years. However, Lee Haney changed that after capturing the Mr. Olympia title for the first time in 1984. After his first victory on the Olympia stage, Haney continued to improve his physique and established a championship reign that lasted eight years.

Haney became the first person to break Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s record and, to this day, remains one of only two people to do so. The eight-time Mr. Olympia has been critical of the direction bodybuilding took right after his reign. However, Lee Haney recently gave his harsh opinion on modern bodybuilding. Ironically, it came only days before the year’s biggest guest posing session at the Pittsburgh Pro. 

What does Lee Haney think of most modern bodybuilders?

The 64-year-old posted a throwback image of himself on Instagram around a week ago. It was a signed image of the eight-time champion hitting a variation of the side-chest pose. However, his aesthetic physique wasn’t the highlight of the post. Instead, the caption revealed how Lee Haney felt about most athletes who compete in the sport he once dominated.

“Is it just me, or does 90% of the current group of bodybuilders have the same squatty shape? Wide waist, big arms, overly developed quads, small calves, and weird shoulders,“ wrote the bodybuilding legend. “It looks as though somebody closed their eyes and threw muscle at a dartboard without giving it any thought. The new Frankenstein era,“ added Haney.

The former chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports didn’t hold back on his criticism. Bodybuilders today have achieved a mix between mass monsters and creating the aesthetics of the Golden Era. However, Lee Haney—it seems Lee Haney isn’t a fan of the aesthetics that modern open-division bodybuilders have achieved. Yet, why is that?

Lee Haney and Arnold Schwarzenegger have similar views

Lee Haney was the final champion in the long line of Golden Era bodybuilding legends. Many believe that his physique embodies the ultimate mix of aesthetics and size. At 255 lbs, Haney was only slightly heavier than most 70s-era bodybuilders like Schwarzenegger. The 80s bodybuilder improved onstage conditioning and muscle mass without sacrificing aesthetics.

The eight-time champion spent considerable time perfecting his physique’s proportions and symmetry. However, Haney’s successor, Dorian Yates, started the mass-monster era. Yates made it all about maximum muscle mass and bone-dry conditioning. The six-time Mr. Olympia bulked to 310 pounds during the offseason. However, Yates sacrificed aesthetics.

After Yates, Ronnie Coleman took the mass-monster era even further. However, Lee Haney didn’t like that bodybuilding became about chasing muscle mass. Lee Haney thinks that most bodybuilders today have sacrificed aesthetics and balance. In his opinion, bodybuilders have become too big and disproportionate. 

The eight-time champion’s take is very similar to what Arnold Schwarzenegger said. “They have taken it, in my opinion, too far. It has gotten too competitive. They’re gonna take more and more stuff that they’re not supposed to, and sometimes it kills people,“ said the five-time Mr. Universe. Haney has also criticized how bodybuilders train today.

The bodybuilder said that extreme bulking and cutting are hurting modern bodybuilders. They also have to deal with far more injuries than the bodybuilders of his time. “Not only me, but you have people like Ed Corney; you have Arnold; you have Franco Columbu… We never got hurt; we’re still walking around without injuries and without surgeries,” Haney said during an interview. Surprisingly, the bodybuilding community got a glimpse of what Lee Haney meant just days after his post, at the NPC Pittsburgh Pro.

The aftermath of the Pittsburgh Pro guest posing

The year’s most star-studded guest-posing lineup appeared on the Pittsburgh stage. There were so many top competitors that the guest-posting session acted like a teaser for the upcoming Olympia. Right, champion Derek Lunsford and top contenders like Samson Dauda, Andrew Jacked, Nick Walker, and others blessed the live audience.

However, Nick Walker, who’ll compete in less than a week at the New York Pro, drew criticism from fans. Fans criticized Walker for the exact reasons Lee Haney listed in his Instagram post. Bodybuilding fans agreed that the 2022 People’s Champion had put on too much muscle mass. He could barely control his midsection and may have thought he had developed a sort of bubble gut.

While others, like Andrew Jacked, garnered praise, many pointed out that everyone on stage lacked conditioning. Ironically, they praised the two Classic Physique competitors on stage for their conditioning despite being in their off-season. Many fans were even surprised at how Urs Kalecinski maintained such a conditioned physique during the off-season.

The open division at Mr. Olympia is the one that’s officially recognized as the biggest stage in bodybuilding today. However, it was the bodybuilder from the division created to bring back the Lee Hany and 70s-era physique that garnered the most praise. The single most popular bodybuilder today is also from Classic Physique, the five-time champion Chris Bumstead.

Lee Haney doesn’t think that every modern bodybuilder lacks aesthetics. The veteran bodybuilder has even praised bodybuilders like Samson Dauda in the past. However, he doesn’t seem too impressed with most of today’s pros.