Here's a question I have been mulling over for nigh on 25 years. Let me be explicit in my target audience: this post is directed to those lifters in their late teens, early twenties maybe even mid twenties who are on a cycle.
What I want to know is why so early on in your journey do you feel the need to take a needle and inject gear into your ass?
Now before you write me off as another wowser pushing the drug free line let me be clear. If I reach 50 and my Dr says my testosterone is lower than a pre-pubescent girl then I will be the first guy to sign up for therapeutic dosing to return me to baseline levels. I have read Pub med long enough to understand the clinical issues for men ageing with declining testosterone. However we aren't talking about this scenario at all.
I am pointing the finger at those of you who are young with many many years of lifting ahead of you. I should declare I have never used and I am no pharmaceutical expert but again I have been around over 25 years watching strength sports from the periphery. In that time I have had the opportunity to watch many many guys slip into their first cycle. I was around a certain gym in the eighties when a number of athletics sprinters (1 of whom would be busted and thrown off the Australian team) were dosing. I watched many young guys kick there first cycle off and explode their total in a month. So I know just a little of what I am asking.
Again back to my point what makes a guy who starts with a 400kg total grows it to 570 in a few years then decides to kick into the gear as he gets close to 600kg. Help me out here? Is it because the slowing in gains is too hard to bear? Is it because it's painful to have to work endlessly for a year for only a 15-20 kg bump in your total? Is it because your mate in the 75kg class is on and you can't bear to watch him blow past you?
Forgetting about whether we are in a tested fed or not, when you stand on the podium and take the first place medal and look across to the guy in third or fourth who didn't inject, what do you feel. How do you reconcile that medal that elevates you against your peers to the exogenous testosterone flowing through your veins.
What about those of you that don't compete, taking gear just to improve your silhouette in the club on a Saturday night. Why do that? Are you so devoid of self respect that you need PED's to improve your chances with women. Can you, can this generation be that vacuous and self absorbed?
When you do take the leap to the other side why do so many of your then choose not to monitor its impacts. I know so many lifters that wouldn't know their blood work hormonal profile but when you make the choice to inject you should know it. Why wouldn't you want to know what it is doing to your baseline test, or your lipid profile or C-reactive protein (both positive and negative).
I am not preaching doom and gloom. Their are plenty of bodybuilders and strength athletes from the the 90's still around today but perhaps they were smarter, who knows?
I talked to an old school lifter this year that still competes in his twilight years and it was interesting as we discussed the names and faces from the 80's that I grew up watching. So many were geared up and yet when I enquire about them today not only are they absent from the platform some are absent from normal activity as well. I think it is no coincidence that I have so few masters lifting at 43.
I wonder for those of you that are 22 and who have popped into my old gym, suddenly growing your total by 50kg's within a month. Do you wonder about the future or is it all about how good you look at Sterosonic with the rest of your image obsessed clones?
To be contrarian I agree somewhat with John Romano who says if PEDS are that dangerous then where are the bodies? My point however is deeper. If you are young and lift then learn to graft, learn to lift long and learn that gains in lifting like life come slowly and if they come fast then often there is a price to pay.
Will you pay a price, will this journey into the iron be a life long passion or something fleeting. From someone who has seen many come and go in this sport and others. Take the time to push yourself as far as you can go naturally. Take your body to its very limits, wringing every ounce out of your genetic potential. In doing so you will learn to master your response to training, to understand what you are truly capable of.
It's a free world and far be it from me to say don't try it. But before you do make sure you are doing it for the right reasons and for a small second look outside yourself . Imagine at the end of your career looking back what you might think about the choices you have made?
Stay safe
Thomo
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