Steroids Are Pointless

http://www.mmafighting.com/2011/03/02/james-irvin-suspended-after-positive-steroid-test/

So this MMA fighter Irvin tested positive for steroids use but the guy lost the fight. Basically I was just thinking about how steroid users in combat sports end up losing at least half the time. As a result I personally strongly feel that steroids don't improve a fighter's chances.

I'm not really interested in talking about whether or not steroids are right or wrong. I just wanna know if its the general consensus or not that steroids, or even other banned substances, aren't too helpful in competitive martial arts.

 

If you mean "Do they cover up deficiencies in technique?" then the answer is clearly "No"

However, with all other things being equal then yes they absolutley do give you an advantage over someone who does not take them.

Or you could just be a liar like Sonnen and claim "Oh it's for a medical condition"

 

I may be completely wrong, but I don't get the idea that steroids or PHD are designed to make them a "better fighter" per se, as much as they are used in training to keep a person able to train harder and faster so they will be ready for their fight. As we all know, athletes sustain injuries of various sorts and I assume that steroids and such can keep them training through pain and injury. They also allow an athlete to build muscle quicker and rejuvenate faster. That'd be my guess for why people choose to use them.

Along similar lines, I remmeber watching a documentary on Mark Coleman or Dan Frye and it got into the use of painkillers (if I remember correctly)... higher and higher doses to keep the pain down so a person could train and be ready to fight...

 

Close on the documentary - it was "The Smashing Machine" with Mark kerr I think you'll find

 

Thomas, I don't recall any documentary on Frye or Coleman, but there was a rather famous documentary of Mark Kerr called "Smashing Machine" that chronicaled, among other things, his abuse of and addiction to pain killers. Is that what you're thinking of, perhaps?

Pitfighter, my take is this: they're illegal, so don't use them. But some have made fairly convincing cases that they shouldn't be illegal. The idea, again, is not that they suddenly become better grapplers or strikers, but that they can push themselves harder in training for longer periods of time, and that they can recover faster. My admitedly layman's understanding of steroids is that they're for muscle growth. MMA fighters don't need to be giant mounds of muscle (in fact, it's probably a detriment) but they do need for their muscles to recover quickly in training in order to perform at a higher level.

Finally, I'd go so far as to say that the % of guys who get popped who lose their fights is higher than 50%. Except for Josh Barnett after the Couture win, Tim Sylvia after I think the Rodriguez win, and Sean Sherk after the Franca win, I can't recall any winners who've popped for them. I'd even speculate that the guys who get popped think they need some sort of winning edge because they're not as skilled as their opponents.

Edit: Hannibal beat me to it!

 

I suspect it's prevalent in just about all pro sports... they wouldn't be doing it if there weren't gains to be made. I suspect some of the difference is that at the NBA or NFL level players can afford top notch labs to develop stuff that is ahead of the testing curve... at this point in MMA... not so much. Jeez - just look at cycling or baseball seems like just about every day someone is being busted and banned. I know quite a few ex-pro Rugby players who did heavy cycles at some point. That on top of being big strong lads to begin with and good training = equals longer playing lifetimes = more money. Also many of them had injuries and went on steroids while recovering to help speed up recovery.

Competitive martial arts are no different than any other competitive sport - if you can shorten recovery time, train harder and add more lean muscle mass... then it's an advantage to a point. It's not going to replace technique or guts or skill... but strength and the ability to train like a beast and recover quickly is a pretty big advantage for just about any physical endeavor.

Always going to be someone arguing it's right or wrong... so I don't even bother with that sort of tedium. Personally, not my bag of tricks... I think the hormonal system is a tad more complicated than most people give it credit for. But to each their own right. Recently there was a thread with someone arguing that steroids were ok or some such. If you got in the loop during the early days of BALCO and the likes of Patrick Arnold then you could get hooked up probably... but by the time they were in full swing... you better have a good stash of cash to get in on the right type of stuff.

Did it ever strike you as odd that up to somewhere around 60% of the Olympic athlete population claims 'exercise-induced' asthma... and are prescribed clenbuterol. While not a 'steroid' per se... it has an effect on certain types of aerobic exertion. 60% have excercise-induced asthma... lol. Please.

 

Among many things gear vastly decreases recovery times, allowing a fighter to train more and harder for longer.
So does training more make you a better fighter? Hell yeah.

 

This and also what the heck is the point of having steroids in you're system when you fight? The purpose, as others have said, is to let you train harder. If you have them in your system in whilst you're in the fight then you're doing it wrong.

 

IIRC:

I watched the online documentary "Bigger, faster, stronger - the American way" on youtube a while back. They interviewed the ex-head of the US Olympic doping authority and he said that in his ten years and two Olympic cycles they saw 5,000 failed tests but they sat on the results. I remember working out that its twice as many failed tests as it is people the US sent to the Olympics in that time period. Now given that there are a lot of steroids out there that disapear from the system within 24 hours and given the fact that you can miss 2 doping tests without any penalty, what does that tell you?

One of my friends trains approaching full time as a triathlete and Ironman competitor. Genertically he is pretty much ideally suited to the sport except for being a bit too tall but he reckons he will never break into the real pro ranks in the sport because he categorically will not take steroids. Now obviously you can say its all just sour grapes but he got up to trainning mroe than thrity hours a week and it just wasn't sustainable for him.

The bottom line to me is that when I watch any professional sport I assume that the athletes are using. It spoils it a bit for me, I got up to trainning weights hard four times a week and judo twice a week and I ached 24 -7 and it just felt unsustainable. I may not be a genetic specimen or have that much grit but I doubt that ofboth of those down were ideal it would put my trainning up to the level pro's work at.

 

Interestingly though, studies have suggested that although clen can alleviate athletics-induced asthma, it's use can actually reduce athletic performance

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12471305

I know this is a study on horses, and may not be wholly and accurately transferable to humans as we have less beta 2 receptors than horses, and as such the effects of clen may be slightly different. However, as far as I know, clen has not yet been tested on humans extensively.

Although, Id imagine that most olympic athletes wouldn't be prescribed clenbuterol. If anything they'd be prescribed albuterol, particularly in America, where Albuterol is the FDA's drug of choice for treating asthmatics. I could be wrong though.

 

**DISCLAIMER: I do not condone nor condemn the use of anabolic or androgenic steroids. All posts made here after with the exception of the following paragraph are for educational purposes only.**

I'm sorry but you're statement isn't really correct. Having anabolic steroids in your system (hence forth refered to as 'gear'), is exactly what you DO want! It increases your strength and performance every moment it exists in your blood stream and during a competitive bout the results of that are increased strength, increased reflexes and an overall increase in aggression.... how is that NOT what you want?

Quick breakdown of the way gear works. Injectable testosterone... lets say Test Cypionate (enanthate for you blokes in the UK), has a half life of 12 days. That means if I take an injection today of say 200 mgs, in 12 days I have 100 mgs still floatin about. 12 days later, 50 mgs, etc... The trick is to not let that level dip. You want to keep that level constant for the duration of the cycle which can run you anywhere from 8 to 16 weeks. By letting the levels of test in the body dip you run the risk of creating an environment when estrogen exists in higher proportion to test and thats not good. So during the entire cycle time you have a testosterone level nearly 10 times greater than your body ordinarly produces - all day, every day, whether your training or fighting or taking a pee break, its there.

Orals are different. The half lives of orals are FAR shorter with some being simply a few hours, such as dbol for example. It has a half life of only 3-4 hours depending on metabolic rate and which website you read, lol. Others have nearly triple that. Though to do an oral only cycle is incredibly hard on the liver since the chemicals pass through it twice, once during digestion and once again while in the blood stream so anyone doing that is itchin to get onto a liver transplant list by the age of 32.

Typically the user combines both to create the optimum growth environment.

Certain compounds have a very synergistic effect. In one such instance chemical "A" increases nitrogen in the blood stream whereby making it possible to process more of the protein we consume and chemical "B" actually increases appetite whereby we consume more protein. By doing this our bodies have more of what they need to replenish after training allowing us to get greater benefit out of the efforts we make.

Gear acts as a magnifyer. Think of it this way. If I handed you a hand powered drill, a hand saw, and a hammer and told you to build me a house, you could. It would be an arduous task and by all rights certain elements of quality would be lacking. Now, if I gave you a power saw, a power drill and a nail gun... you still have to BUILD the house, you still have to put in the work but the time frame is reduced, the quality increases and the finished product becomes "more" than it might have been otherwise.

Sounds wonderful, right? Maybe, but lets flip the coin now, shall we? One of the side effects of testosterone use that many dont talk about is a "drying" of the tendons as its called. In short, the result is a loss of tendonous elasticity which can manifest itself as tendonitis (severe!) or even tendon tears - both are killers in the martial arts. Hypertension is another side effect, high blood pressure approaching stroke range can occur quite suddenly.

Lets talk about gynocamastia for a second. Commonly known as B*tch t*ts, coming off cycle too quickly with poor Post Cycle Therapy can bring about an enlargement of the gland behind the nipple and an increase in fat around the nipple creating the appearance of pubescant breats on men.

Male pattern baldness, excessive back hair, sterility... thats right, sterility. Contrary to popular myth gear doesnt have anything to do with shrinking your weiner. It will shrivel your testicles to almost nonexistance due to the simple fact that they are no longer necessary to produce testosterone so they "shut down" and shrink up. They go dormant. After cycle, if you've done it right, they return. Cycle too often or too long and while they may drop again, you very well may find they have ceased to produce motile sperm.

Then there's roid rage. We've all heard the stories, and though some are exaggerated there is enough truth behind them to make any one stop and think twice... or at least they should.

To come full circle, and back to my original point. If you choose to go the gear route in an attempt to better yourself, then understand they are with you in no small way during everything you do the entire time you're on. With every passing day they effect your body and its systems. And while they bring with them outward benefits, they also carry with them unseen dangers that upon surfacing are often too late to reverse.

The question was raised whether or not they are pointless or useless and I answer that with "they are whatever you believe them to be" ... for my money they are best avoided as the toll the take could be the dream you have of having a family or even simply of having a long healthy life. Ask yourself this: If steroids were as safe as many say, why arent there very many 70 year old bodybuilders walking around today?

Here endeth my rant... sorry fellas. (God I hope this doesnt get deleted, I just spent my whole lunch hour writing that, lol!)

 

Nice detailed post, Mikey - thanks.


Documentary was on Mark Kerr... thanks for pointing that out fellas... I couldn't remember at the moment.

 

That the confirmed steroid users end up losing fights could also point to the fact that the guys training intelligently are also using steroids intelligently and aren't getting caught. As with anything illegal the sample size being considered is usually the ones who aren't that good at getting away with it. The best criminals aren't the ones in prison.

 

Bolded cause it's true.

 

Mikey, do you know what the effects are for a woman's endocrine system? No, I'm not going to actually take anabolics, I'm just curious...

 

this site really lays it out well. I could cobble something together to try and sound smart about it but I'd rather you have all your questions answered properly.

http://www.steroidabuse.com/steroids-and-women.html

Obviously, given the sites name its safe to say that the slant will be an anti-steroid one but the information it shares is pretty neutral all things considered.

 

For every sport out there there should be a natural league for folks that feel as you do, and an "enhanced" league for the others. Then, three weeks later, when the natural league goes broke y'all can come over to OUR side and watch the good stuff!

 

heh fair enough. Sorry, I deleted the original post because I thought, well, it wasn't really contributing much to the discussion.

 

You're assuming that the people who used steroids had an even chance of winning the fight even before they started using steroids. But that's not a safe assumption. To me, using steroids seems like a desperation move, something you'd do if you thought you were probably going to lose without it. If the people who are using steroids only had a 25% chance of winning without them, the fact that only half of steroid users win their fights is actually proof that the steroids are helping their performance.

Without knowing whether the chances of winning without steroids were 25%, 50%, or something else, we can't discern positively whether steroids are helping their performance. But it seems to me they would. Steroids don't impair your strategy or technique. All other things equal, if your strategy is equally good and your technique is equally good, if you hit harder, you're more likely to win. Steroids let people hit harder than they would without them, which is why they give an unfair advantage.

 

LMAO when I read this!