[Closed] Body Building & Steroids

tbh im 40 this year and im starting to look at this kind of thing with interest.

Ive decided that i dont want to die early (although max age in my family is currently 69) and i want to be able to ride my bike. I look at these things and think great if i could pop a pill in the morning and have working legs every day and ride back to back days id be interested.

why dont they develop stuff like this? surely the market is massive?

There was a guy on here a few years ago saying what gym stuff he needed to do as he “wanted to be big”

Not necessarily a mental health issue, could just be narcissism. It displays itself in many ways.

It's no different to women wanting to be slim. 99% of women's mags etc show size zero women and 99% of men's health style mags show ripped to buggery models (jacked to the eyeballs) on their covers. Hence every insecure male teenager thinks they need a 6 pack and 36" biceps to get a girlfriend and taking gear is a relatively cheap and easy way to get there.

I go to the gym, have a trainer. No drugs, just shows me the correct way to do the weights and has helped me around my knee injury.

I was talking to him about a friend of mine who thinks he's too fat to go to the gym as he's worried about folk staring at him. The trainer said that every single guy in there is just staring at themselves in the mirror. It's very narcissistic - especially near the dumbbells!

To be fair, there are TV screens in there with "#gymselfie or it didn't happen"... Hmmm.

gear is a relatively cheap and easy way to get there.

But it's not, the drugs allow the user to train harder and more frequently than without, they do not substitute the workload they increase it.

This is one of the knowing misdirections by the sports cheats and those that enable them (the omerta of past pros in the commentary box etc), they pretend that the cheats are taking the easy route while "honest" athletes have to work harder to achieve the same. But in reality it is the cheaters who work the hardest because without the drugs the human body just can't hack that level of training.

It's just the usual double standard tosh.

Can't be seen to promote in any way shape or form those naughty cheaty drugs.

But it’s not

Numerous studies indicate that stuffing steroids into a couch potato will result in muscular growth and fat loss.

Obviously you add "normal" training and then the real magic happens.

Yes, they also raise the bar in terms of how much training you can do, how large you get, etc. My point is they also raise the de-facto status quo position.

But in reality it is the cheaters who work the hardest because without the drugs the human body just can’t hack that level of training.

Not necessarily, loads of weight lifters probably lift too frequently for their recovery rate and could make the same gains for less hours in the gym or more gains with drugs for the same time. In cycling, the hours on the bike don't vary, you just recover faster / adapt better with drugs.

The only competitive body builder I know probably trains less hours than I do and he's absolutely huge (Mr Olympia invitee next year). But the main effort he puts in is eating, 7000+ calories a day means eating a portion of lean mince ever hour; which I simply couldn't do.

With EPO you can get fitter doing less as it just ups your red blood cell count whilst you sleep, so you basically get a 'free' aerobic boost without needing any training. Obviously, if you want to with the TdF seven times, you still need to put in the work; but probably no more than a clean team (who just wouldn't make the podium).

Steroids are completely normal across bodybuilding and strength sports, so I'd take the niaive comment from the judge with a pinch of salt. As mentioned above, there's no taboo but you won't see it in interviews because the pro body builders and magazines rely on supplement companies for sponsorship.

I've got a good friend who competed to a high level in 'clean' powerlifting. Despite his natural talent, he quit the sport because there was no point in him moving to open competitions because he could never compete against dopers and wasn't willing to dope himself.

I met a young lad a while back, he admitted using gear, having injections at the gym. When I asked him what he was using, be didn’t know. W T A F … I can’t grasp that you’d be into the whole scene & let someone jab you without actually: 1) understanding the drugs 2) actually knowing what your using.

In my experience the serious bodybuilders and athletes have many years of experience and knowledge before they consider doping, so they're much better informed. It's the young lads exposed to environments where it's culturally normalised and they're looking for a shortcut to get huge that are at risk. They generally don't know the risks, or are too short sighted to care.

There is a very good episode of The Real Science of Sport Podcast about drugs in sport I would recommend to anyone with an interest.

With EPO you can get fitter doing less as it just ups your red blood cell count whilst you sleep, so you basically get a ‘free’ aerobic boost without needing any training. Obviously, if you want to with the TdF seven times, you still need to put in the work; but probably no more than a clean team (who just wouldn’t make the podium).

Thats not strictly true, while it gives you a boost, you still need to train like a bastard to benefit from the boost, it isn't like adding a motor to your bike, the boost it gives is beyond your natural maximal effort, you have to train your body to take advantage of it. Your muscles still have to adapt to push every pedal stroke.

So for example if you are a clean cyclist you perform to your maximal natural training level, your ftp is say 250. You then add epo to the mix and you start pushing an ftp of 300 it feels easy, but your muscles will fail before the hour because they are not adapted to it, you still have to train up to that level. But with the boost that EPO is giving you you can up your training incrementally and achieve the results beyond your natural ability. Then you add testerone into the mix, and you can train 6 days a week instead of 4 or 5, and soon your ftp is getting beyond 400.

I think it was one of the sprinters who got busted who said, epo was great for increasing volume and intensity per training session, and the roids were great for adding more training sessions.

With EPO you can get fitter doing less as it just ups your red blood cell count whilst you sleep, so you basically get a ‘free’ aerobic boost without needing any training. Obviously, if you want to with the TdF seven times, you still need to put in the work; but probably no more than a clean team (who just wouldn’t make the podium).