Russian-born bodybuilder and fitness model Vladislava Galagan has been dubbed ‘Kendal Jenner on steroids’ and ‘real life She Hulk’ because of her pretty face and incredibly muscular body.

Old sayings like ‘seeing is believing’ or ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’ perfectly expressed the belief that one had to see something before believing it to be true. It used to be like that, anyway, before advanced digital tools made us not trust our eyes anymore. In an era of life-like AI-powered news anchors and men posing as beautiful women with the help of phone apps, it’s hard to believe anything you see these days, especially when it looks too good to be true. Case in point, Vladislava Galagan, a 27-year-old fitness model who rose to prominence on social media thanks to the ‘perfect mix’ of an attractive, feminine face, and an impressively muscular body. While boasting hundreds of thousands of fans, Galagan also has plenty of doubters who accuse her of digitally altering her photos for attention, or using AI-powered tools to ‘beautify’ herself.

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90-year-old Jim Arrington got into bodybuilding when he was 13 years old, and he has been keeping at it ever since. At 90 years old, he holds the Guinness World Record for “oldest active male bodybuilder”.

Jim Arrington discovered bodybuilding when he was 13. He walked into a drug store and saw these big, bulky guys on the cover of a muscle magazine. He immediately ordered a copy of a 25-cent book by George Jowett, a Canadian strongman, and started doing the exercises detailed in it using his father’s three-pound steel balls. They certainly weren’t the most useful bodybuilding tools, but they helped him put on more than 10 pounds of muscle in a few months, so he kept going. He has been going at it ever since, and even though his body is much more fragile now, at age 90, he has no plans of ever stopping weight training.

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Valdir Segato, a Brazilian bodybuilder in his early 50s, has been injecting an oil-based substance into his upper body muscles for year. Despite looking like someone took an air pump and inflated his arms and chest like balloons, he continues to use the appearance-enhancing substance regularly.

As a teenager, Valdir became addicted to drugs and lost so much weight that his friends started calling him ‘Skinny Dog’. He managed to turn his life around though, and started going to the gym every day. Still, he wasn’t satisfied with the results his hard work lifting weights yielded, so when someone introduced him to the popular muscle-enhancement substance synthol, he became hooked on it. The Sao Paolo-based construction worker has been regularly injecting synthol into his biceps and pectoral muscles for years, and despite being warned that he risked having his limbs amputated if he continued to use the substance, he hasn’t been able to stop.

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Bobby Humphreys, a competitive bodybuilder from Boonsboro, Maryland, has always loved dogs, but until two years ago, he never really cared for small breeds. He always felt that his pets should fit his own image, and even made fun of his male friends who owned small dogs. But one day everything changed and today Bobby shares his home with no less than 37 adorable chihuahuas.

Humphreys used to be a “Big Dog Guy” and he and his wife of 17 years had owned three Rottweilers. He loved their tough, imposing look and never even considered the idea of ever owning a small dog. In fact, he went as far as to poke fun at his male friends if they ever allowed themselves to be seen walking their girlfriends’ small canines. It was an ego thing, but one that Bobby quickly put behind him when he fell in love with Lady, a tiny Chihuahua that he now credits for getting him through the darkest period of his life. She opened his eyes to the love and support that small dogs are capable of offering unconditionally, and the big, strong bodybuilder is now what many would call a Small Dog Guy who looks after dozens of chihuahuas.

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Most octogenarians would consider themselves lucky to be able to not have a hip or back problem, but this 81-year-old Japanese bodybuilder is not only in perfect physical condition, he also looks better than a lot of men a quarter his age.

Toshisuke Kanazawa is living proof that you’re never too old to hit the gym and achieve the body you’ve always dreamed of. A multiple-time champion bodybuilder in his youth, Kanazawa retired at the age of 34 and really let himself go. He stopped exercising completely, started drinking, smoking and eating whatever he craved, when he craved it. He would often look at himself in the mirror and wondered if that was the body of a national bodybuilding champion, but it wasn’t until he was about to turn 50 that he got his motivation to get back on the horse and regain the ripped body of his younger years.

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Meet Roger, the alpha male at the Kangaroo Sanctuary in Alice Springs, Australia. When he’s not too busy fighting off younger males for the title of supreme leader, Roger likes to show off his muscles and practice his kickboxing moves.

If you’re an aspiring bodybuilder desperate enough to accept tips from a kangaroo, you should know his favorite training exercise is crushing his metal feed bucket with his bare paws. Sure, it sounds extreme, but just look at Roger’s guns!

You can tell he knows he looks good, too. The way he flexes for the camera and stares menacingly into the lens, he’s a natural superstar.

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People often believe that female bodybuilders have to compromise on their feminine charm in order to lift heavy and win competitions, but Japanese bodybuilder Tomoko Kanda is proving them wrong. The 48-year-old has dedicated her life to bodybuilding and weight training, but also managed to retain her feminine beauty.

Tomoko, who lives in Abeno-Ku, Osaka, was introduced to the world of bodybuilding during her years working for the Department of Defense at Yokota Air Base. “I got fat very easily because of my body type, so a soldier there told me about weight training,” she recalled. “I first did it to lose weight. I was 23 at the time, a late bloomer.”

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Most of us find it normal to consume cow, goat and even donkey milk, but there’s something undeniably creepy about adults drinking human breast milk. Yet, it’s the latest fad among bodybuilders convinced it will help them gain muscle faster.

It’s unbelievable how many fitness fanatics out there believe that drinking human milk is the ultimate way to gaining muscle mass and are willing to go to any lengths to buy as much of it as they can. A simple Google search reveals dozens of online forums and articles this growing trend, and one thread on bodybuilding.com actually hails breast milk as the ‘greatest supplement ever’.

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50-year-old Sayagh Jacques has a rather unusual hobby for a homeless man – bodybuilding. Although he’s been living on the streets of Paris for years, he hasn’t let his homeless status stop him from training harder than most people, and maintaining his six pack abs. I suppose it goes to show that if you’re really passionate about something, you can make it happen under any circumstances.

Jacques has no qualms about working out right in the middle of the street. When people give him money, he doesn’t use it to smoke or drink. Instead, he tries to eat specific foods that will help him gain muscle. He’s also managed to procure a few pieces of makeshift equipment – a cable and a few ropes – that he ties to lamp poles and park fences. He uses these to do basic bodyweight exercises like pull ups, push ups, pullovers and rows.

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Meet Jari “Bull” Mentula, a bodybuilder from Finland who looks a lot like the Marvel superhero The Thing, of the Fantastic Four. Not only is he muscular enough to fit the bill, but his head gets so abnormally wrinkly when he flexes his muscles that the resemblance becomes uncanny.

Jari has been a familiar face on the IFBB (International Federation of BodyBuilders) tour during the last 15 years, making a name for himself in competitions and even winning the European Bench Press Championships in 2002, 2004 and 2008. But he only became known to the general public last year, when a photo of him working out was posted on popular news sharing network Reddit. The image was captioned “I guess that’s the brain popping out, isn’t it?” And indeed, the bodybuilder’s head looked so incredibly wrinkly that it looked like his brain was about to burst through his scalp.

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Sam ‘Sonny’ Bryant Junior doesn’t look a day over 40. He’s a bodybuilder with a perfectly ripped body that puts younger men to shame. Especially when they get to know about his real age –70 years and still going strong. Very strong.

“They ask me when I’m going to retire. I say never. I say more people die retired than they do when they are working. I’ve been doing this for 27 years.” Sonny says. He started working out at age 44, when he was in a bad marriage. Initially, he just went to the gym to relieve stress; he knew nothing about working out or lifting weights.

But he never gave up and just 11 months later, Sonny’s instructor asked him if he wanted to take part in a bodybuilding contest. “I said, ‘You think so?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ So I went to a contest in Georgia. I’d never been in a contest or competed for anything, you know. I won third in the novice, fourth in the master. And then I was hooked.” Before he knew it, Sonny was addicted to the gym. “I love to work. I love to work out,” he said. As for age, well, he says that it’s all in the mind. “People have a misconception that age makes you old. I realize that it’s the state of mind that makes you old. Age is just a number, you know.”

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Unsatisfied with her looks, Candice Armstrong, a former barmaid from London, started going to the gym and working out for three hours a day. After two years, Candice still wasn’t getting the results she wanted, so she began taking steroids and ultimately became addicted to them. Today, the young body-building enthusiast has virtually transformed into a man, with unusually broad shoulders, noticeable stubble and developing male sexual organs.

Candice, who suffers from body dysmorphia, has always been dissatisfied with her womanly looks, especially her upper body which she thought was too thin. “I hated my body. My hips and legs were too big and my arms and torso too skinny. I thought I was out of proportion and not attractive. I’d never had a proper relationship with a man,” Candice says. She soon found herself at the gym, lifting weights and doing push-ups to improve her physique, but after a couple of years of hard work, she still wasn’t ripped enough. Candice stepped up her game becoming obsessed with the way she looked and working out for three hours a day.  Without giving it too much thought, she also started taking daily doses of Trenbolone – a steroid normally used by veterinarians to increase muscle growth in animals. She thought the steroids would finally help her have the bulky upper-body she had always wanted. “After a year, everyone said I had Madonna arms but I wanted them bigger. I heard about steroids and bought them online,” she explains. “When I started taking them I trained very hard. It enabled me to build more muscle and I was making gains I could see.”

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Neck-up, a 70-year-old man. Neck-down, a 20-year-old bodybuilder. This is what a photograph of Dr. Jeffrey Life looks like. When I first looked at it I thought it was actually a young person whose face is ageing due to an illness, but it’s actually the other way round. The photo is that of a real 70-year-old, and we can safely vouch for the fact that his head hasn’t been photoshopped onto a model’s body. Although, Dr. Life’s methods to achieve the body of his dreams can’t exactly be termed as natural. The man is heavily dependent upon hormonal modifications to look like this.

Dr. Life’s life (that’s weird) changed at the age of 60, when he started to take fitness pretty seriously. Until then, he was overweight, a borderline diabetic and stressed-out. It was when he came across a 12-week fitness challenge on Muscle Media Magazine that he decided to make a few changes in his life. So he sent in his before picture as required by the challenge and started to work out big-time. After the 3 months were up, he had lost over 25 pounds and considerably cut-back on body fat. This, however, was not long-lived and at age 64, his body could no longer hold muscle mass and began to shrink. The culprit – a condition known as andropause – involving a steady decline of testosterone levels.

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Belgian Blue cattle may look like they’ve spent most of their lives pumping iron, but they owe their double muscle characteristics to years of careful breeding and genetics.

Like the name implies, this incredible bred of cattle originated in Belgium. In the second half of the 19th century, Shorthorn bulls from the United Kingdom were sent to Belgium to improve the muscle structure of the native cattle population, which was mostly of the dairy type. Until the 1960s, a balanced animal, which provided average quantities of milk and had averagely lean meat was desired, but in response to the demands of the meat industry and the general economic climate, the Belgian Blue began being bread for its meat. This is when the “double muscling” breakthrough was achieved, after farmers began breeding their most muscular animals to each other. The size of its muscles, low fat and especially the tenderness of the meat made the Belgian Blue a very popular breed.

Some people believe “double muscling” means these cattle have two of every muscle, but that isn’t the case. The term refers only to the size of each muscle, meaning that muscles of Belgian Blue cows and bulls are at least twice as developed as normal cow muscles. Genetic scientists have managed to achieve this by “breaking” the gene that controls the secretion of Myostatin – a protein that inhibits muscle growth after a certain point of development. By suppressing the production of Myostatin, they’ve created a kind of Arnold Schwarzenegger of the animal world.

If you’re having trouble understanding just how big and muscular these animals are, you should know some bulls weigh over a tonne. And to think that’s mostly muscle…Some countries, like Denmark, have advocated eliminating the strain, but considering Belgian Blue is for meat what the Holstein breed is for milk, I doubt breeders will stop raising these animal bodybuilders anytime soon.

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Ray Moon is well in his 80s but age has never been a problem when it came to his biggest passion, bodybuilding. He’s the oldest bodybuilder in the world and he looks awesome for his age. Here he is at the Victorian Bodybuilding Championship in Melbourne where he competed for the 2008 title.