Steroids are as Commonplace as Marijuana - By RJ Hicks, BS, CSCS

Every time I go into the gym I see 10 obvious steroid users. Most people pass right by them without even knowing the difference. Many beginners have no idea about drugs and give these people their full attention. They are the first people beginners begin to idolize and go to for training advice.

Whenever I watch them train they are always working on the easy exercises. I never see them doing heavy squats or deadlifts. I never see them overhead pressing , doing weighted chin ups or heavy rows. I always see more focus on pumping the muscles than progressing the weights, more flexing than lifting and more resting in the gym than actually training. These trainees are nothing but frauds.

Many of these people are in the gym for the wrong reasons. They get into training for the egotistical purposes and bottom line results. They could care less about earning the muscle and are willing to sell their health and integrity just to look big. There is a need to recognize that these people are doing it wrong and to stop giving them the credit they don’t deserve.

But who is to blame them when all the bodybuilding champions past the mid 1960s have been heavily involved in steroids. Professional bodybuilding has become a game of who has the best chemist. You can tell from how bloated and unnatural all of the top professional bodybuilders look. Whats worse is the magazine companies will try to deceive you by using these drug-enhanced champions to promote their supplements for profit. Throw away all of your copies of “Muscle and Fiction” and refuse to follow the advice of any of these drug assisted bodybuilders. Drug user routines do not work for natural trainees simply because you are not on the drugs. The training routines they follow have NOTHING to do with their results. What they are doing and what natural trainees do are completely separate activities. None of the pre drug era champions would come close to the monsters seen in today's contests.

Power lifting has been practically ruined from the rampant use of steroids. The record totals these athletes are producing at meets have been artificially enhanced by the use of equipment and drugs. It is nearly impossible to compete in any of the top organization unless you submit and become drug assisted. Many people will lie and suggest they have new ground breaking training methods, but in reality it is just them using drugs. Former Powerlifting coach Dick Conner in Bob Whelan’s Natural Strength Night Podcast on MindForceRadio.com even said if you can bench over 350 pounds natural, (and raw, no gear), you could bench over 500 with a bench suit and steroids. What difference does it make? It is all a joke. It is the equipment and drugs doing all the work not the athlete. This is not just the case for power lifting, but in all the strength sports.

Steroids have gotten so out of control that there is hardly any good information to read anymore. Bob Whelan has expressed his frustrations with me many times about how much over the last 15 years the average training knowledge has gone down. All through the 90s before the Internet there was good information to read; HardGainer by Stuart McRobert, Hard Training by Ted Lambrinides, The IronMaster by Osmo Kiiha and the original Dinosaur Files by Brooks Kubik. Now most of what people read is riddled with drug user routines with the exception of a few good sites like NaturalStrength.com. Although NaturalStrength.com has been around for over 20 years, the average trainee doesn’t know about it because it is dwarfed by all the crap on the internet.

Drugs are so common that the average person thinks if you control the way you take it or how much you take that you can take them safely. What a complete lie! Why do you think many steroid users die prematurely? The truth is there is no safe way to taking steroids. Bradley Steiner another guest on Bob Whelan’s Natural Strength Night Podcast said the idea of believing there is a safe way to take steroids is as insane as saying there “is a safe way to play Russian roulette”. That any athlete or person interested in strength training should stay away from it because, “there is no way to predict 100% about how it [the drugs] will effect the body even when it is used for legitimate medical purposes.” But that is not what people want to hear.

All of this to say if you train natural AND train properly like what is advocated on NaturalStrength.com you are unique. Most natural guys train like the drug users and wonder why they are having all sorts of problems.



Editor's Note: Awesome article RJ!