💬💪🏽 “You built that body. Don’t apologize for showing it.”

A message from one bodybuilder to another

Hey brother,
If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve thought about it. Maybe you’ve posed shirtless. Maybe you’ve posted a progress pic. Maybe you’ve even done a nude shoot that felt powerful, honest, and real. And then came the second-guessing:
“What if someone sees it?”
“Will they think I’m vain?”
“Will they judge me?”

I’ve been there. I know that tension. And I want to tell you something straight up: you don’t owe anyone an apology for showing your body.

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🧍🏽‍♂️ Your body isn’t a problem. It’s your story.

Every cut in your abs, every line in your back, every vein that pops when you flex—that’s not vanity. That’s discipline, sacrifice, and consistency.
You didn’t build that physique overnight. You earned it.
And if you choose to show it, that’s not attention-seeking. That’s honoring your process.

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🧠 Why does it make people uncomfortable?

Because a man showing his body—especially outside the gym or the stage—breaks the mold.
Because some people still confuse pride with arrogance.
Because they don’t know how to look at muscle without sexualizing it.
Because they’ve been taught that showing skin equals showing off.

But here’s the truth: your body is not a threat. It’s a testimony.

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💬 What if they judge you?

Let them.
You’re not doing anything wrong.
You’re not crossing any moral line.
You’re just owning the result of your work, and that makes some people uncomfortable. That’s on them—not on you.

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✅ Real talk: how to move through it

• Share your body where you feel safe and respected. Not out of fear—out of strategy.
• Tell your story. Let people know it’s not about showing off. It’s about showing up.
• Don’t apologize. Training is not a sin. Posing is not a crime.
• Surround yourself with people who get it. Who see your body as a symbol of effort, not a spectacle.
• If the outside gaze feels heavy, flip it. Use your body to educate, inspire, and reframe what strength looks like.

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🖋️ Final word

“There’s nothing shameful about a body that’s been built with intention. Whether you pose in trunks or nothing at all, whether you post it or keep it private—your body is yours. And it deserves to be seen without guilt.”

  

Key Muscle Groups for a Harmonious Physique in Bodybuilding**

When you venture into the world of bodybuilding, it’s natural to focus on developing big, strong muscles, but the real challenge and goal lie in building a harmonious and balanced physique. Having a symmetrical figure will not only help you stand out in competitions but also help you maintain a healthy and functional body.

Here are the muscle groups you need to work on to achieve that desired shape!

1.  Pecs: The foundation of a powerful upper body – The chest is the focal point of the upper body. Well-developed pecs give you that voluminous, athletic look that stands out in any fitted shirt. Spend time on exercises like bench presses and flyes to achieve a defined, broad chest.

2.  Back: The key to the famous “V” shape – The back is one of the largest muscle groups and often one of the most neglected. Developing the lats will help you achieve the coveted “V” shape, adding width and depth to your physique. Lat pulldowns and barbell or dumbbell rows are your allies here. And don’t forget the traps—well-developed traps add visual bulk and strength!

3.  Shoulders: The touch of width— Strong shoulders not only increase your appearance of power but also harmoniously connect the torso with the arms. Work the deltoids in all their parts (anterior, lateral, and posterior) to avoid imbalances. Presses and lateral raises are key.

4.  Arms: The perfect combo of biceps and triceps – Well-developed arms are always admired. But to have fully developed arms, you need to focus on both the biceps and triceps. Exercises like barbell or dumbbell curls for biceps and dips or triceps extensions will help you maintain balance between both muscles, achieving an impressive aesthetic.

5.  Abs: Definition at the center of the body – A sculpted abdomen is the hallmark of a well-worked physique. It’s not just about aesthetics; strong abs provide stability in other heavy exercises. Incorporate variety: from crunches to planks, to achieve a strong, well-defined core.

6.  Legs: The foundation of any great physique – Voluminous quadriceps are fundamental if you want a complete and proportioned physique. Well-developed hamstrings balance the volume of your legs and protect you from injuries. Squats, leg presses, and deadlifts are essential to making your legs as impressive as your upper body.

7.  Glutes: Don’t underestimate them – In bodybuilding, well-developed glutes are crucial for a strong and balanced physique. They help improve your posture and shape the lower body. Exercises like hip thrusts and lunges are key for developing this area.

8.  Calves: Don’t neglect the details — Calves are one of the most challenging muscles to develop, but well-developed calves complete a balanced figure. Include calf raises in your leg workouts to ensure this muscle group doesn’t fall behind.

Why is balance important? – It’s not just about having big muscles; what will make you stand out is a proportioned physique. A harmonious development will help you avoid injuries, improve your performance, and, most importantly, achieve a visually pleasing body. Working on each muscle group in a balanced way will not only make you a bodybuilder but a complete athlete.

Stay motivated to keep improving! – Bodybuilding is an art, and you are the sculptor of your own body. Don’t just focus on the muscles that are more visible or easier to work on. The key to success lies in balance and consistency. With every workout, you are one step closer to your best version. Remember: true strength lies in balance! | Follow us on X | Write us at WhatsApp | chulucanasgym@gmail.com 

Go training sustainable in time!

Peruvian host Elías Velasco shows us what the fitness gave him but from an alternate perspective.

 

Photos by Jair Tacza Herrera, special to ChulucanasGym. Special gratitude to Legion Fitness Gym (Lima) for allowing us to shot the star of this entry during his training session.

 

In 2007 Mister Lima, 2007 Mister Summer, and 2007 Mister Peru (Photos from Elías Velasco’s archive).

 

“I live sustainable in time inside-to-outside,” Elías Velasco (Lima, Peru, November 21^st, 1974) affirms. Almost turning 49 years old (at the time this entry is posted), the director, creator, and host of Café & Conversa, a Spanish-language streaming TV talk-show, looks like an amazing body, that highlights from other guys of his generation.

 

Elías began in bodybuilding in 1993 like a psychological therapy. A love disappointment, a dismissal in a job opportunity, and a good friend were the blasting recipe that turned a thin guy, 5.6 feet, 119 lbs, into a128-pound athlete in the lapse of one year.

 

In 2004, he studied and specialized in fitness. Later, in 2007, he started contesting  in Mister Summer, in Lima, what he wan. Then, Mister Lima selective came on, what he reached the second place in classic bodybuilding category (137 lbs, 7% body fat). Ultimately, in the same category, he got a third place in Mister Peru (141 lbs, 10% body fat).

 

Bringing down, then being reborning

He couldn’t go ahead in the competitive field because he took anabolics that activated a bone disease that reduced him to 108 lbs. elías depressed so much that he almost committed suicide.

 

In 2008, when he healed in body and mind, he returned to the gym  but another thinking. He never left it from that moment on, restoring his physique – his inner peace, over all.

 

Inclusive, he was summoned to work as an artistic model  in three times, even, between that year and 2012. Eventually, he played the role again for one of his shows in 2023 – he continued to look like amazing. At this entry closed, Elías have scheduled to feature his body for another  art exposition. Meanwhile, the pictures we present you here, all were produced exclusively for ChulucanasGym.

 

A new philosophy

“The humankind has built pretty fragile, easy-to-corrupt personal issues in time because it don’t know itself, it don’t train inside neither,” elías says to ChulucanasGym.

 

“People vainly live decorating the front yard in their lives, but  not generating substantial changes because they hardly negotiate and deal for living collectively  healthy,” he adds.

 

Elías Velasco affirms the main benefit of training sustainably in time is having found the balance between body and mind, at least speaking by himself.

 

The power of mind

Training with emotional intelligence, having reached living inside-to-outside seem to be the break point, in his words.

 

“Because you achieve training and empowering yourself plenty finding harmony, balance, fullness, and a pretty mighty and clean decision power  to live in health connected to the cosmos, so you apply it into your daily life, then you will look like strong inside and outside,” he advises.

 

Additionally, Elías has found his vocation working in the media, and he is preparing more and more each time, learning from the guests to his TV show. “We’re what we decide,” he states.

 

Follow Elías | Comment on X | chulucanasgym@gmail.com

  

My Profile – Ronny Rondón

My change began that afternoon when I saw myself in the mirror across the shower.

 

I’m Ronny José Rondón Acosta, a fitness trainer, son of Juan José Rondón Tovar and Nely Josefina Acosta Vallejo. I was born in Cumaná, Venezuela, in 1989.

 

The big change I made into my life happened at 18 years old, but before, I want you think on this quote by the Classic Greek philosopher Socrates (470 BC to 399 BC(: “a life without exam is not worthy to be lived.” Join me up next to understand how it applied me.

 

In 2007, I graduated as Sciences Bachelor from José Castro Machado Lyceum, and I didn’t only bring good scores since my childhood – the overweight came me disturbing the life constantly. In fact, I was one of these three Venezuelans over or above a healthy weight. I’m 5’6 feet, I was 212 lbs. To make you an idea, I only wore 12-size pants and my shirts had to be XL-size.

 

According to Mayo Clinic, “the obesity is a complex disease that consists in having  an excessive body fat amount.” It adds it’s not only about an aesthetic issue. In the other hand, the overweight second voice for Oxford Dictionary is simply “The weight excess of a person or an animal.”  It was not so simple for me.

 

When you have obesity, your body image often is negative or distorted compared to the reality. You feel bad, you suffer, and you even feel the society rejects you. In this point, it’s convenient we work on and re-adapt to release that insatisfaction on our body, but let’s continue with my experience.

 

I grew up at my mother-grandparents’ house. Once upon an afternoon, I entered the bathroom just before getting to the yard. I saw my body in the mirror while I took a shower. Right there, inside that room, I sweared myself I’d never be fat again.

 

I decided to enter a gymnasium that same day. I got one of the best fitness female trainers who was encouraging me to work out and having the body I get now, that I look like proud. Today, I wear M-8-size shirts due to I have got a wide back, and my pants are  8-size.

 

As I said in the beginning, I’m a fitness trainer. Today, I have female pupils who started like me, with obesity. Time later, they look like gorgeous.

 

When I look back, and specifically that afternoon when my image reflected in that mirror while I was taking a shower, and I compare to actual time, I overall feel pride and I feel this is just one of the first goals I have got in my life. I still have much land to conquer but I hope to tell you in other entry. Will you join me again?

Contact Ronny Rondón | Let’s talk on X | chulucanasgym@gmail.com

  

What do I do now when I can’t already play soccer?

When an injury stops your sports career, it doesn’t mean necessarily it’s the end of your labor life.

 

The photos of this entry have been provided by Martín Castañeda who is the model too. For contacting him, check the story right below.

 

Martín Castañeda, 48, is looking for a job as personal trainer, bodyguard, and driver. Due to the existent economic crisis in Peru, this former pro soccer player decided to expand his job chances, so he told us his story hoped to somebody could hire him. “Work dignifies  people,” he states.

 

Castañeda is a Sullana, Peru-native. He began a productive career in soccer, in 1994, when he was 18 years old. He held active until 2010, when he was 36 years old, the moment when he was forced to retire because of an injury in the meniscuses of knee.

 

How did he deal with the injury after 16 years chasing a ball, that included to join Alianza Atlético, the emblematic pro soccer team of Sullana?  “I took it pretty relaxed because I was just finishing my career,” he says.

 

What he did OK

When you face a similar situation which you had a highlighted career in sports in general, and any circumstance forces you to stop, your choices will be ever to think it’s already the end, or reinventing yourself not leaving to do what you like to do, or adding other abilities you already had but what were not necessary to deploy once a time.

 

If you think it’s already the end, go here to read more tips.

 

If you chose to reinvent yourself, the plan that Martín Castañeda decided can serve you as a reference.

 

1. Turn on your lamp – Being a competitive athlete is ever going to put the spotlight on you, but when you’re out, that lamp is going to be turned off for other new talents to occupy the place you occupied. It’s a life rule, you can’t do much against it… or maybe you do. Turn on that lamp again but this time holding your whole legacy under your arms and a good story to tell based upon your achievement and experience.
2. Become trendy – The social media allow that any retired athlete follows keeping in it if somebody knows how to keep a close, warm relationship with his community of followers. And if you don’t haveany? Do what Martín did – meet some specialist who have followed your career, who has the skill to hold you in, so no matter if you are not in activity, you will be indeed in the active mind of everybody. It’s called… marketing.
3. Open up your chances – This is a time of your life which you don’t have already to focus your full time on one only activity, but you can add others more which you have trained or which you have proven experience. If you don’t have it clear, do like Martín did – he sat down to talk to one of our producers, he began to think about himself and his talents, and he could define in the process he could be an excellent personal trainer, an skillful security agent, a right driver. Explore these things you do well too, these can turn in a way to pay your bills, including your sport abilities. Everything counts.

 

What he must do now

A Martín Castañeda’s comparative advantage is he met ChulucanasGym, then he told his story. That is going to provide him international exposure and it’s a good play because the people who come toward Peruvian Northern are going to contact him directly for taking any of the services he provides. We are going to leave his contact later.

 

In fact, this article is a big step but it’s not enough so what it’s coming up next counts as much as what he did up to this moment.

 

1. Acquaint yourself to technology – your social media accounts give you exposure but they also must allow you to talk directly to the people who are going to take your services, and that means you must develop skills for that contact to be made in a kind, friendly environment. If you get that contact to talk to you through any chat application, it’s an extra point. But remember – never be impatient, remind the smiles are for free to give but they end to reward you worthy at the less-expected moment.
2. Provide an excellent service – We repeat that if you get to close a deal, give your best for the experience working with somebody else hiring you to be satisfactory in every sense, since the moment both say hello until the moment both say a see-you, and that to start a long-term relationship. Don’t push the people to hire your or to follow hiring you – let the things to flow naturally. A user who feels to take the control of the situation uses to turn a satisfied user, and that means he can recommend you to his contact list, what will be a better advertisement than the best pic, the best vid, or the best written copy.
3. Don’t let they miss you – Do you remember that about don’t let to turn off the lamp what we suggested you in the beginning? The fact you have engaged with somebody doesn’t mean you can chant victory. In the opposite, that means you must grow a relationship which you make to highlight every certain time. How? Look for special moments (birthdays, holidays) to send a greeting and remind you are ever available. Or sometimes, setting a good conversation asking for the mood of that user uses to come good, especially in these times when it seems the stress is going to swallow us. And never push – let everything to flow organically.

 

Thanks, Martín, for trusting us, we hope those tips serve him as well as yourself. If you want to contact him, go to his Facebook and WhatsApp profiles.

 

If you want to share your story with us, or learn more insights about this issue, contact us by Twitter, WhatsApp, or write us at chulucanasgym@gmail.com