Don’t miss the channel 4 documentary this Thursday (9 pm I think). A group of athletes will be given Steroids to try and see how effective they can be.
cheers mate. I’l record that one.
Thanks for the info, I didn’t even know that it was on. Hopefully it wont be dumbed down too much.
And if you live in America, don’t forget to watch Outside the Lines or something to see how steroids are evil and are ruining all sports and only guys who get caught must be using because testing is soo good and lock your doors, aaaargghh, STEROIDS!
Man, that sounds great! I’m gonna check out this link right now. Unfortunately, I’m in the dead center of the states, so I reckon I won’t be seeing this interesting piece of work. Oh well. Someone is gonna have to post something on it to keep the less fortunate up to date on this (please).
Hi All,
I’ll give a detailed rundown of the docu afterwards.
see ya
Hi all,
Sorry for the late reply to this, but I might aswell give a bit of a summary.
Well, I won’t be able to summarise without some subjectivity since I found the whole study nonsenical, I’d go as far as to call it borderline farce.
The title was ‘Cheating in Athens, is it worth it?’. It was done as a sort of precursor to the Olympics, in light of all the recent drug scandals (as well as past ones). The docu was attempting to set the record straight as far as how effective drugs can be in improving an athlete’s performance.
The 6 week study involved 24 male RECREATIONAL athletes being put in a perfect training environment to get the best of the study. Group consisted one former pro tennis player, some semi pros, but most had modest backgrounds in amateur sports. 6 were put in a supplement only group (creatine, tribulus,colustrum etc) and the other 18 were in a steroid/placebo group, it was a 50/50 split and no one knew who was on what, including the researchers. The amount adminsitered was very low and was in the form of a weekly (bi weekly?) injection.
As for testing, they were in two forms: Gym and track,
Gym consisted of max smith bench, leg press and some V02 max stuff tested three times. Track consited of 100m sprint, shot put and a 5km run.Track work was tested at the start and end of the study.
Let me talk about the results first off, they were very scattered and left more questions then answers, since their were improvements and regressions in all groups. Although, the documentors leaned toward steroids being helpful in enhancing performance.
The biggest problem was with the title (Cheating in athens, is it worth it?), the study carried out was irrelevent in answering that question since to justify such an answer, you would need to use great athletes already in peak condition who have mastered the technical aspects of their events, put them in such a study and see the effects , but who would volunteer? The issue of technique was the a key one for me, since their were mostly improvements in the 100m and the shot put, but these are incredibly technical events and require years to develop a good technique, for those who don’t possess the technique, they will have pretty variable and hence superficial results. The particpants spent the weeks learning the technique and imo (logically speaking) had better results for this reason, so the chemical aspect of the study could never really be justified, but even still the results were not significant at all.
Closing words: This docu was a not so thought out atttempt at answering a very imporant question, I feel a better title should have been: Do steroids help you to curl better in a power rack?’
NoMojo - It was on in Canada a week ago - I agree, quite poor science, completely unpublishable, even the statistical analysis was ridiculous (if someone adds 50 pounds to a 100pd leg press, how is that better than someone adding 50 pounds to an 800 pound leg press?). And why use doses <50X what Olympians/athletes would ordinarily use? Unfortunately, many sports science studies suffer from the same problems.