# Steroids are not superman juice



## Intermission (Oct 1, 2009)

I will keep this nice and short but I get very annoyed when people seem to think that fighters who take steroids become a superhero or something.

Chael Sonnen and Thiago Silva are the first two that come to mind. Chael absolutely dominated Silva. 24 and a half minutes of absolute domination and he didn't dominate because he was on steroids. Same with Silva, he used Veras back as a drum... not because of steroids.

Don't get me wrong, I think people who take steroids are the scum of the sport and probably should never fight again. I have NO respect for fighters who abuse the system and I won't ever be a fan of anyone who uses it. However, lets be real... it doesn't make you superman.


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## Life B Ez (Jan 23, 2010)

Co-signing this, it's the same with all other sports. Yes it makes you stronger, yes it can make you faster, but at the end of the day, you still need to be able to tackle, to make contact with the ball, to take someone down or throw a punch. It is cheating and it does make all those things easier, but you don't go from a nothing baseball player or fighter to a world champion because you juiced. People forget Barry Bonds was a damn good player before he blew up and started crushing the ball.


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## Fine Wine (Aug 30, 2010)

In a sport when your health and therefore standard of life is at risk, it could make ALL the difference.

Of course it doesn't make you superman, but making the difference is all you need to completely alter the course of life.


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## kritter (Apr 22, 2007)

ok I agree with the opening post that steroids obviously don't improve technique, but I think in general there is too much tolerence of cheating through steroid use amongst mma fans.


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## BobbyCooper (Oct 26, 2009)

Ohh it does make you SuperHuman! 

I don't understand the people who deny that fact. Why would you risk getting a 1 year suspension, if it doesn't help you improve your limits?? The must be completely delusional then if that was the case.

Chael, Thiago are great examples that you indeed become SuperHuman. Not even Fabrico Werdum, who is probably the greatest HW BJJ artist in the World right now could control Vera like Thiago Silva did on the ground.

Floyd Landis won the Tour de France because he juiced. He won the Tour de France on one single day, that day he was drving up the mountain all by his own without anybody who could follow him.


It's a proven fact that Performance enhancing drugs these days can make you "SuperHuman". Thats why they are using them in the first place.


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## Hammerlock2.0 (Jun 17, 2009)

^Actually there's a debate going on with many doctors saying the exact opposite. Steroids actually decrease your stamina and potential to perform in the long run. There was an experiment with cyclists and the group that was on steroids actually did worse than the control group. Then add the fact that steroids like HGH are actually better for LOSING WEIGHT then gaining weight... I don't know. 

I gotta agree with Inter here. Sure, it's cheating and guys who do it should get punished, but I doubt there's a fight that would have gone differently if the other guy wasn't on steroids.


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## BobbyCooper (Oct 26, 2009)

Hammerlock2.0 said:


> ^Actually there's a debate going on with many doctors saying the exact opposite. Steroids actually decrease your stamina and potential to perform in the long run. There was an experiment with cyclists and the group that was on steroids actually did worse than the control group.


Oh I am sure that performance enhancing drugs have terrible side effect.. however, this doesn't count for fight night or the particular cycling day.

They are called perfromance enhancing drugs for a good reason guys. And today they are so greatly that it even more changes the outcome drastically.


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## Squirrelfighter (Oct 28, 2009)

Wait what? Its been proven over and over the other way around. 

Steroids have been proven on multiple occassions to conduce unnaturally developed oxygen uptake, as well as nitrogen retention in the muscles. This completely removes fatigue from the equation, making securing the takedown, and holding the position infinitely easier. 

Steroid have also been proven to assist in the development of mass. This has a protracted effect on one's strength and endurance. 

They've also been proven to dramatically increase protein synthesis, making recovery a much quicker process. 

Steroids do make a person super-human. They don't make them stronger, but they make them superior in every other concievable way.


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## BobbyCooper (Oct 26, 2009)

Squirrelfighter said:


> Wait what? Its been proven over and over the other way around.
> 
> Steroids have been proven on multiple occassions to conduce unnaturally developed oxygen uptake, as well as nitrogen retention in the muscles. This completely removes fatigue from the equation, making securing the takedown, and holding the position infinitely easier.
> 
> ...


Exactly Squirrel :thumbsup:

if it wasn't already proven into every detail..


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## KillerShark1985 (Jan 6, 2010)

Look at it how you will but Ben Johnson did not exactly loose did he.


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## vilify (Mar 23, 2010)

do you care to explain why athletes risk everything by taking steroids? is it just for the fun of it?


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## Hammerlock2.0 (Jun 17, 2009)

This is taken directly from wikipedia (don't worry, the source is legit):



> Acromegaly patients, who suffer from natural growth hormone levels of up to 100 times higher than normal, have lower stamina towards physical activity than people with regular levels.[4] When the patients are treated and their growth hormone levels decrease, their stamina improves.[4] This knowledge is part of the evidence behind the new belief that athletes who use supplemental HGH to raise their levels far above average could actually decrease their exercise tolerance, and thus hurt their athletic performance.[4] Further backing was provided in a study done by the Danish Institute of Sports Medicine. They found cyclists of good health and endurance “were unable to complete accustomed cycling tasks after administration of exogenous hGH” and concluded that HGH can inhibit recuperation from exercise.[4] Participants have also been found to have lower stamina after HGH treatment along with higher rates of fatigue.[2]


If anyone cares enough to read the whole source article, here it is: click.

As for the gaining weight thing with steroids... 

As far as I know steroids (in particular HGH) actively reduce your body fat ratio, but don't actually effect the muscle growth. At least in lab tests steroids do not cause muscle growth. It's the combination of losing fat and working out that makes you get bigger. 

Again, just posting some stuff or discussion. I'm not condoning the use of steroids.

Edit: an interesting line I found in the article...



> The balance of evidence suggests that, in healthy adults,
> growth hormone does not build muscle and provides no
> athletic advantage. Growth hormone abuse, however,
> does cause disease. This message needs to be taken on
> board by coaches, team doctors, and potential abusers.


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## Squirrelfighter (Oct 28, 2009)

Proof of effects of mass development:


> A review spanning more than three decades of experimental studies in men found that body weight may increase by 2–5 kg as a result of short term (<10 weeks) AAS use, which may be attributed mainly to an increase of lean mass. Animal studies also found that fat mass was reduced, but most studies in humans failed to elucidate significant fat mass decrements. The effects on lean body mass have been shown to be dose dependent. Both muscle hypertrophy and the formation of new muscle fibers have been observed. The hydration of lean mass remains unaffected by AAS use, although small increments of blood volume cannot be ruled out.


Source location: Hartgens and Kuipers (2004), p. 519-527 http://www.xp4g.net/uncategorized/h...ids-in-athletes-1-pdf-health-fitness-massage/

Effects on blood volume and rate as related to endurance:


> The haemodynamic effects of endurance training with or without anabolic steroid treatment (nandrolone decanoate, 5.0 mg kg-1 week-1) were studied before and after a six-week sedentary period in anaesthetized, open-chest rats during isoproterenol and CaCl2 loads. In comparison to the control group (CG I, n = 13) endurance training (TG I, n = 10) increased the resting stroke index significantly, end-diastolic pressure and during CaCl2 infusion the end-diastolic and end-systolic volumes.


Source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3227924

Effects on muscular recovery:


> After isometric contraction of the calf (50% body weight for 3 min), phosphocreatine recovered to significantly higher levels after application of aldosterone compared with placebo. Other parameters were not significantly changed by aldosterone. Effects appeared immediately after isometric contraction and, thus, occurred within 8 min of aldosterone administration. They are, therefore, likely to represent the first contemporary evidence of nongenomic in vivo effects of aldosterone in man. These findings also point to an involvement of aldosteron in the acute stress adaptation of cellular oxidative metabolism in human muscle physiology


Source: http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/81/12/4296

There's plenty of other articles and studies, on animals and humans, noting the unnatural and body altering effects of steroids. These are only a few. And in each case the same effect would lend a super-human advantage to a fighter.


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## SeanY (Oct 24, 2010)

Of course steroids can win you fights. One of the things steroids do is minimize resting times, and in some cases eliminate muscle fatigue so much, that you are able to train 110% everyday. If you can train day in day out, you will have a better advantage BEFORE walking into the cage. The fact isn't that you may be X stronger than another fighter, it is your preperation WILL be better, that is a fact.


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## mastodon2222 (Feb 4, 2010)

SeanY said:


> Of course steroids can win you fights. One of the things steroids do is minimize resting times, and in some cases eliminate muscle fatigue so much, that you are able to train 110% everyday. If you can train day in day out, you will have a better advantage BEFORE walking into the cage. The fact isn't that you may be X stronger than another fighter, it is your preperation WILL be better, that is a fact.


The truth about PEDs lies somewhere in between - they help with size and strength, but not with skill. It may help an elite fighter train and recover better, but it's not going to turn an average fighter into an elite fighter.


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## Ape City (May 27, 2007)

Bopp Sapp supports this message.


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## DonRifle (Jan 18, 2009)

It depends on the sport - in athletics you certainly get faster times. Same as rowing. Im sure theres a dozen sports they would directly affect the outcome of


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## BobbyCooper (Oct 26, 2009)

DonRifle said:


> It depends on the sport - in athletics you certainly get faster times. Same as rowing. Im sure theres a dozen sports they would directly affect the outcome of


Generally they help you drastically in every high-performance Sport, and MMA is at the top of that list in my mind with the cycling sport, which is full of Drug abuse.


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