Tren Nation - How an obscure bovine steroid became gym Gen Z's favorite social-media muscle flex.

Not anabolic steroids. Not testosterone. Not creatine or multivitamins or a high-protein diet. No, Frank and Jesse (who both spoke on condition of anonymity because trenbolone is deemed illegal) immediately jump to trenbolone, which has quickly developed a rep for increasing muscularity and decreasing body fat all at once. Among bodybuilders it's known as the god of all steroids for its potency. To teens and young men, it's simply tren, a ticket to the prototypical social-media-friendly physique. Why? Frank, who's now 18, explains tren's growing popularity with all the confidence and expertise of someone who Googled tren once (mostly to see how jacked it made cows), watched hundreds of hours of tren content on Tik Tok, and made a ton of tren jokes. If the only thing you care about is putting on muscle, he says, it really does seem like tren is the thing to take.

- By Matt Martell - Illustration by Eddie Guy

// The text messages fly back and forth almost daily. Frank, a teenager in Massachusetts, will see a TikTok post from somebody like @vici.togi. Togi's post starts with him discussing how he took a little of an anabolic steroid called trenbolone, then cuts to him injecting himself just above his hip, followed by clips of his muscle-building progress.

Frank will immediately send it to his gym buddy, Jesse. Then one of them will make the joke, says Frank, about taking tren and turning into an animal and just lifting as much as I could and getting really big because of the tren. When the two high schoolers hit the gym, it's more of the same. Often, when either gym bro fails to set a bench-press personal best, Jesse calls out the fix: Fuck it, time to hop on tren.

Not anabolic steroids. Not testosterone. Not creatine or multivitamins or a high-protein diet. No, Frank and Jesse (who both spoke on condition of anonymity because trenbolone is deemed illegal) immediately jump to trenbolone, which has quickly developed a rep for increasing muscularity and decreasing body fat all at once. Among bodybuilders it's known as the god of all steroids for its potency. To teens and young men, it's simply tren, a ticket to the prototypical social-media-friendly physique. Why? Frank, who's now 18, explains tren's growing popularity with all the confidence and expertise of someone who Googled tren once (mostly to see how jacked it made cows), watched hundreds of hours of tren content on Tik Tok, and made a ton of tren jokes. If the only thing you care about is putting on muscle, he says, it really does seem like tren is the thing to take.