GEORGE LYNCH: How Bodybuilding In 1990s Affected My Guitar Playing

In a new interview with Greg Prato of Ultimate Guitar, legendary guitarist George Lynch was asked how being a competitive bodybuilder in the 1990s affected his guitar-playing ability: He responded: "Oh, it definitely did, yeah. I mean, in some small ways, I think it obviously made me stronger. So I think that was beneficial to a certain extent. But also I was starting to get these really massive cramps in my forearms. Static cramps that wouldn't go away. And I would get them when I'd try to play anything extended. And I had to try to do different things to try to alleviate that."

He continued: "But, yeah, it was a byproduct of that. All that lifting, it really made it impossible for me sometimes to play. Any kind of extended solo, my left arm would just cramp up. And my hand would be like a claw. It was frozen. It was really actually kind of scary. And, yeah, not good. I was definitely overdoing it."

In 2010, Lynch called his foray into bodybuilding "one of the silliest things I've ever done. I felt so anti-musical," he told Revolver magazine. "Even the guys from VH1 were making fun of me. It also makes it difficult to play. But I just work out now to stay in shape."

Last year, George admitted to Full In Bloom that he took performance-enhancing drugs for several years while competing in bodybuilding competitions.

"The things that were required, that I got into in bodybuilding, were worse for my health than anything I'd ever done in rock 'n' roll," he said.

Asked if he used steroids, Lynch answered: "Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Nobody gets looking like that by just being naturally aspirated … It's very, very common. You really can't compete without doing it. It's really disingenuous kind of call it 'sport' in quotes. It's really a drug contest. And that's why it kind of miffs me every time I see any kind of documentary or any article of something about bodybuilders. The first thing I look for, 'Are they talking about the elephant in the room?' No. Very rarely."

Regarding the impact of using performance-enhancing drugs, Lynch said: "First of all, there's all kinds of levels of steroids. The football, go-to-the-beach-and-bars kind of level of doing a little of this and that, just to kind of get an advantage and look good for the girls and impress their friends, beef up for football and that kind of stuff. Then there's the next level, which is staying on these cycles for extended periods of time, doing multiple cycles and stacking and stuff. Stacking means adding different steroids on top of each other to get complementary effects, compound effects. Then you go to another level which is you add in the growth. And growth is a whole other level. Any time you see any of these pro guys, they're taking growth as well. Growth is a completely different animal and it will get you into freak zone. It will strip away fat and you'll put on muscle like crazy. Of course you still have to work out, you still have to diet. But you can't get these freak bodies or even these admirable-looking physiques without doing some kind of cheating. And you pay the price for all cheating… There's just no free ride. You're gonna get some great advantages, you're gonna feel great, you're gonna look great, it's gonna be awesome and then you're gonna pay for it. It's a Faustian bargain with the devil."

Asked how far he got into it, Lynch said: "I never went into growth or insulin or IGF-1 or anything like that, pro-level stuff. But I did some serious cycles. I'd say I was sort of in the middle bracket for a while, for a good number of years. And what that can do to you is you can end up having cardiovascular and heart problems develop, definitely joint problems. See, what you're doing is you're building more muscle fiber than your tendons and your joints can naturally deal with because of the design of your particular body."

He explained: "We all have a homeostasis point, the set point our bodies wanna be at, ideally, just naturally, cellular level. And if you keep tricking that to get an advantage, you're gonna pay for that some other way. There's always a weak link there. There's a lot of different things that can develop because of that later in life."

Asked if he suffered from heart or join pain, Lynch answered: "Yeah, both. I manage everything pretty well because I do a… I'm not saying I am a purist but I do a pretty close to a — I try to, most of the time, do a whole food, organic, plant-based diet, which has been proven to reverse heart disease. And I do low-inflammation eating so that I can reduce the pain and inflammation in my joints and I've successfully addressed that issue to a very large part just by doing that. And continuing to work out... I do more cardio and low-impact stuff. I still do — not heavy weights, but I still do weight training, but not anything that's damaging. I still wanna put stress on my muscles and I want them to at least not atrophy as I get older. So I try to diminish the atrophying of the muscle, which is just normal as you get older. So yeah, there's all these common-sense things that I do now to kind of maintain."