At 51, I have been advised that my blood work reveals low T, so I’ve begun TRT. Prior to this, I’ve never used steroids or any other kind of PEDs. Does anyone have a general sense of how the main powerlifting federations view this? I hate to think that if I now want to compete in powerlifting, I have to compete with guys who are unabashedly availing themselves of PEDs, when that’s not at all what I’m doing. To be clear, I’m not talking about general ethical considerations or whether I’m “allowed” to call myself natty; I have no qualms about using medicine to get “normal.” I’m just wondering about the implications of TRT for guys who want to compete in tested federations. Thanks very much in advance.
No drug tested sports organization of any sort allows TRT, no therapeutic use exemptions or anything. It seems unfair, but allowing TRT would make it way too easy to cheat drug testing, just take high doses out of comp and then lower to regular TRT doses when you expect to get tested.
Just compete untested, it’s no big deal unless you were planning on breaking tested records. There are guys who are clean and still compete in untested meets, often for the sake of convenience.
Also there is evidence that TRT doses that bring you into the normal T range provide a performance enhancing benefit beyond what you would get from being at that level naturally. I guess whatever resources the body has to put into test production get used up elsewhere instead.
Actually N.A.S.A here in the U.S. does… But any record one might break while on actual TRT is not counted.
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I stand corrected.
But I still don’t see the big deal about just competing untested. I would do an untested meet, it just happens that the only non-IPF fed that holds meets in Ottawa has a tested division. Pissing in a cup with some guy next to you is pretty weird though.
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I guess that’s a fair point. I’d like to see some distinction between guys using T for therapeutic reasons v. guys who are using just to get as strong as possible, but I get that making a set of rules for such a distinction would be tricky. We could require a note from a doctor, but then suddenly everyone would have one, and the medical exception would become the norm.
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And I guess at the end of the day, everybody has some advantage, be it shorter limbs for better leverages, more fast-twitch muscle fibers, whatever. We do the best with what we have. That’s what it’s about.
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I like that rule. Ipf should do that.
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