Why do bodybuilders like fish oil?

The first two eras, the fat-phobic diet that removed the fish and the healthy-fats turn that put the oil back in a capsule

Why bodybuilders like fish oil is a question about gym culture as much as physiology, and the liking is best explained as three eras, because each era added a reason and the reasons stacked. The first era, fat-phobic: the competition diets of the 1980s and 1990s stripped dietary fat as low as it would go, on the belief that eating fat made fat, and with the fat went every oily fish, salmon, mackerel and sardines being fatty fish by definition, so a generation of bodybuilders lived on chicken breast, white rice, egg whites, broccoli and the leanest white fish they could find, a plate carrying almost no EPA and DHA at all, the low-fish plate that every omega-3 audit on this site describes and that bodybuilding invented as a style, the food composition data putting a portion of cod or tilapia at a few tens of milligrams of omega-3 against a salmon fillet's two grams. The second era, the healthy-fats turn: through the late 1990s and 2000s, the influential coaches of the era rehabilitated dietary fat, teaching that hormones, joints and satiety needed it, and fish oil became the first fat a bodybuilder was told to add back, partly because the research on heart and triglycerides was arriving and partly because a capsule fitted a culture that trusted capsules over food, a fish oil softgel being countable, weighable and fat-free-feeling in a way a mackerel fillet was not, so fish oil entered the bodybuilding stack beside whey and creatine as the healthy fat, and a liking was born that was, in that era, a correction of the first era's mistake, the softgel putting back what the diet had stripped.

The third era, a mechanism becoming a claim, the honest fourth era, the two reasons that survive it, and the eras filed

The third era, the mechanism: in 2011 a small trial gave four grams of EPA and DHA a day for eight weeks and found muscle protein synthesis raised in response to a simulated meal, measured by tracer in a laboratory with no muscle size measured, and within a year the forums had it as fish oil builds muscle, the mechanism becoming a growth claim overnight, the muscle-claim-by-year page's account, joined by the recovery, joint and fat-loss stories that the bodybuilder's ledger crosses off, so that the liking acquired reasons it had not had before and the softgel's place in the stack was explained, from then on, by things it did not do. The honest fourth era is the one the forums skipped: the trials that added omega-3 to resistance training in trained young adults and measured size and strength found no consistent gain, the reviews settling the shape as protection in older adults and nothing in the trained, no growth claim ever existing, and the two reasons that survive the fourth era are exactly the ones the first era created, a plate low in oily fish that leaves the 250mg heart claim unmet and an omega-3 index left unbuilt by a diet optimised for protein rather than fish, the bodybuilder's ledger's standing reasons. So bodybuilders like fish oil for a stack of reasons three eras deep, the second era's being right, the third era's being wrong and the first era's being the one that still applies, and the honest bodybuilder likes it for what a desk worker on the same plate would, one softgel for the claim at 17p and three for the index, with a little less soreness at gram doses over months as the third era's surviving footnote. The eras filed: fat-phobic diets that removed the fish, a healthy-fats turn that returned the oil in a capsule, a mechanism that became a claim, and the null era whose two surviving reasons are the plate and the index, with the worked example being the softgel that answers era one's plate, £14.99 for 90 at 17p.

The verdict, a liking three eras deep, right in the second, wrong in the third, and still justified by the first

Why do bodybuilders like fish oil: for reasons stacked three eras deep, the fat-phobic diets of the 1980s and 1990s having stripped oily fish from the plate along with all fat, the healthy-fats turn of the following decades having returned fat to the bodybuilder in the form of a capsule that suited a supplement culture, and the mechanism era from 2011 having turned a laboratory synthesis trial into a forum growth claim that the null trials in trained lifters later dismantled, so that the liking is right in the second era, wrong in the third, and still justified by the first, a chicken-and-rice plate leaving the 250mg heart claim unmet and the omega-3 index unbuilt, which one softgel and three softgels respectively fix. The softgel that answers era one's plate: Futuro Labs Omega 3 Fish Oil, one with food, 180mg EPA and 120mg DHA, 90 for £14.99 at 17p a day.

What to check on the label

Questions people also ask

When did fish oil become popular in bodybuilding?

In the healthy-fats turn of the late 1990s and 2000s, when influential coaches rehabilitated dietary fat after the fat-phobic competition diets of the 1980s and 1990s, and fish oil became the first fat a bodybuilder was told to add back, in a capsule that suited a supplement culture that trusted capsules over food.

Why did bodybuilding diets have so little omega-3?

Because they stripped fat to the bone, and oily fish are fatty by definition: a plate of chicken breast, white rice, egg whites and the leanest white fish carries a few tens of milligrams of EPA and DHA a portion against a salmon fillet's two grams, the low-fish plate every omega-3 audit describes and bodybuilding invented as a style.

Is the bodybuilding reason for fish oil actually true?

The second era's reason is, that a fat-stripped plate needs its omega-3 put back, and the third era's reasons are not, the 2011 synthesis trial having measured a mechanism without size and the trials in trained lifters having found no growth, recovery, joint or fat-loss effect, leaving the plate and the index as the reasons that survive.

What is the one bodybuilding fish oil claim with something behind it?

A little less soreness: the review finds perceived soreness a point or so lower at two to three grams a day taken for months before a damaging session, with no faster return of strength, a footnote at the higher rungs rather than a reason.

Should a bodybuilder still take fish oil?

Yes, for a desk worker's reasons: a chicken-and-rice plate leaves the 250mg heart claim unmet and the omega-3 index unbuilt, so one softgel fixes the first at 17p and three or a concentrate build the second over months, with the muscle, recovery and fat-loss stories left in the era that invented them.

Sources

1. The food composition data for fish: white and lean fish, cod, haddock, tilapia, pollock and canned light tuna, carry a few tens to a couple of hundred milligrams of EPA and DHA a portion, against around one and a half to two grams in salmon, mackerel, sardines and herring, so a diet of lean fish does not supply the omega-3 that oily fish does. PubMed record
2. Smith GI, Atherton P, Reeds DN, et al. Dietary omega-3 fatty acid supplementation increases the rate of muscle protein synthesis in older adults: a randomized controlled trial. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2011;93(2):402-412. PubMed record
3. McGlory C, Calder PC, Nunes EA. The influence of omega-3 fatty acids on skeletal muscle protein turnover in health, disuse, and disease. Frontiers in Nutrition 2019;6:144. PubMed record
4. Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition and Committee on Toxicity. Advice on fish consumption: benefits and risks (two portions of fish a week, one oily). TSO, 2004. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sacn-advice-on-fish-consumption-benefits-and-risks

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