Qualy #99 - The steroid controversy： Mark's use of them and Peter's perspective
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Summary
In this bonus episode of The Qualies, I sit down with a close friend of mine to discuss his experience with anabolic steroids. We talk about the pros and cons of using them, how to deal with them, and why they should be banned.
Transcript
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Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Peter Atiyah Qualies, a member exclusive podcast.
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The Qualies is just a shorthand slang for qualification round, which is something you
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do prior to the race, just much quicker. The Qualies highlight the best of the questions,
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topics, and tactics that are discussed in previous episodes of The Drive.
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So if you enjoy the Qualies, you can access dozens more of them through our membership
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program. Without further delay, I hope you enjoy today's Qualies.
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So for this competition, are you using anabolic steroids or diuretics or any of the other sort
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You know, as in bigger, stronger, faster, you know, I talked about utilizing them from the
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time I was 25. I've been using them. You know, I've been, I say in the movie, I'm going to
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probably be on and off them the rest of my life. And that's what I believe. It's direction
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I chose. When you choose a certain thing and you like the result of it, like, I don't feel
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like there's any reason to go back. And for me, for now as well, you know, I get it prescribed,
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which is a kind of added bonus to making sure that it's like, I guess, more on the up and
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up. But to me, it doesn't really make any difference whether you grab it from some dude
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at the gym or whether you get it from a doctor. I actually think that the, I think that, you
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know, there's, they're not going to be all that regulated anyway, no matter, no matter
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But, but what are the, again, I don't know anything about how bodybuilders use steroids.
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Clean body mass is the main thing. So people get confused about what they actually do.
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People get confused about what steroids do. I think people think that, that steroids automatically
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make you strong and they don't necessarily automatically make you strong. What they do
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in most cases is they allow people to gain more weight. Now there's some cases where people don't
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gain a whole lot of weight and they do gain strength. But if you don't continue to gain weight at some
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point, that strength will only level up so much. So when you introduce steroids, steroids don't
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multiply on top of themselves. They only work to a certain level. So you're, you're on level one with
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your lifting and you progress and your genetics and everything allow you to get to level four.
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You take steroids and maybe over a period of time, you get to like level six, but you're still not
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going to be able to get to level eight, nine, or 10, where these guys like Jay Cutler and some of
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these mammoth people are because of their genetics, because of their environment as children, because
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of X, Y, and Z, you're probably just never going to be able to level up to their potential.
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But, which is an important distinction because I think a lot of people,
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Yeah. Well, a lot of people look at, you know, let's just pick Phil Heath because he's the best
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in the world today. And you're like, it's all drugs. It's all drugs. But I don't think people
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understand, like I could inject a human being with every anabolic steroid period. Like let's get the
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world's supply of anabolic steroids and inject it into me. Yeah. I couldn't look one 10th of what
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that guy looks like. Right. And the best coaching and the best, whatever. People like to make things
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easy and simplify it and they can't come close to Phil Heath. They can't even, you know, come close
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even with a ton of drugs. So they just want to say, Oh, it's just steroids. It's not, it's not like,
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Oh, this guy works harder. This guy's better. And I do think that steroids cloud the sport. I do.
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I do think that if there was a way to get steroids out of the sport, that it could be more popular
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across the mainstream. However, well, it's part of the reason why it has become more popular because
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they do have like men's physique and they got some of these different categories. Now where you're seeing,
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you're seeing more men and women. It's gone more, yeah, more mainstream with some of that stuff.
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The body types don't look as crazy, right? Yeah. Now there's a, um, a category called classic
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physique. And it's like, it's interesting because like in the very first year of classic physique,
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my friend, Danny Hester, he won Mr. Olympia classic physique. He's about 190 pounds. He looks awesome.
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He's always, he always looks awesome. He's about my height, 190 jacked shred. It looks amazing.
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And then the next year, the guy that wins, it's like 240. You know what I mean? You're like,
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this is not classic physique anymore. Like, yeah. Like what happened to the little guys that were
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in great shape, you know? And the guy that won looked, he looked amazing, but it's, and it's a
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different look than the bigger bodybuilders, but it's not like, it's not yet a natural thing. It's
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not like one guy's natural and one guy's on. It's like they're just on different levels, right?
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Yeah. So classic doesn't mean drug free. It means you're trying to produce a phenotype that
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is not the biggest. You're trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger is like, what's
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funny is like now they have a category. Arnold Schwarzenegger was Mr. Olympia seven times.
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He was considered in the Guinness book of world record, the greatest male physique, which
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is just a title that gave him. He couldn't win a California bodybuilder. That's what I'm
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saying. You can't win anymore. Like it. So, so they, if you look like Arnold, you'd win
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classic physique now, which is kind of crazy. So who's your favorite seventies, eighties
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bodybuilder? Frank Zane, Mike Menser, Mike Menser. Yeah. And Arnold, Arnold's a really
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big influence. Huge fan of Dorian Yates too. You know, we blood and guts. A lot of that
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was Mike. Well, he was, he was later, right? Nineties. Oh yeah. And Menser and Yates actually
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have quite a bit in common philosophically. They trained, they trained together too. And
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I trained with Mike Menser when I first came out here, when I moved out here in 93, like
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you see people at the gym and you're a meathead. First thing I did was like, I'm training with
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Mike Menser. You know, I don't care. He blew out my knee because he had me do these crazy
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squats in the squat machine and it messed up my knee for like six months, but it's,
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I still had got to train with him that, which was cool. But at the time I got to train with
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him, I showed up at the gym and he was outside smoking a cigarette and he was all fat. And
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it was just like, Oh, this is Mike Menser now. This is what he is. You know? And it's
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like, you know, you, a lot of times in life, especially me, I've met all my heroes and pretty
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much everybody's let me down. So it's just the way life is, I guess.
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Have you ever met a hero that where they exceeded your expectation?
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Um, I don't know. Let me see. Have we? Yeah, we have many times. I'm sure. I'm sure we
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have. Ed Cohn. Yeah. Ed Cohn. Jay Cutler. Stone Cold Steve Austin's one of my favorite
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people in the entire world. He's amazing. He's so intelligent. Joe Rogan's fucking cool.
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He's so well-researched. Like he just, he's just awesome to be around. Like there's, there's
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people like that. I think where we, the rock, the rock is an amazing dude. Like when you
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meet the rock, you're like, well, it's all probably just an act, but the rock will look
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you in the eye, shake your hand and say, how's your mom doing? Like, and he means it, you
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know, and you could, you could feel that he means it. And, uh, and that's important, especially
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when you're that big of a celebrity and stuff like that. You know, one of the things I struggle
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with, and I was actually talking about this a little bit when I was on Joe Rogan's show,
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I've been pretty vocal and open about my view that once I really spent like five years learning
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everything there was to learn about anabolic steroids, I came to the conclusion that, well,
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I can't speak to what happens in bodybuilding. Cause I think that takes it to a different
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level, but certainly within the level of how they're used in cycling or, you know, more
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physiologic levels of use, I can't see any evidence of harm. Now EPO is different. You
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can certainly take too much EPO and cause problems. But once you start talking about testosterone,
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stenozolol, oxandrolone, these drugs that are typically used in sports, again, I was having a very
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hard case. I'll give you, I'll show you right here, my tricep that's torn. I was bench pressing
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455. After it, my triceps hurt a little bit. They were sore. And then I popped my tricep. I've never
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been hurt lifting in my entire life. At the time I was on a ton of juice. So your argument would be
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that you just didn't have the tendon strength necessarily. Yeah. And I attribute that to steroid
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use for sure. A hundred percent. So to say that there's no ill effects of them or no side effects or
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Yeah. I guess I'm thinking more of the cardiometabolic stuff. Yeah. Liver, kidney,
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cardio. No. But can you injure yourself? You know, Joey Diaz, one of my favorite people in
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the world. He's hilarious. He says, he's like, you see these guys in the gym and they're like 50
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years old and they used to take steroids. And now, now it's like, like a bag of shit. You know,
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it's like, I kind of agree with that statement too, that there are a lot of people that have taken
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steroids and abused them and gotten really crappy skin and crappy, like just, you know,
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things that, uh, that don't look good, not necessarily aesthetic and probably not healthy.
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I'm sure that they've driven a lot of people's blood in a bad direction, which could, which could
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lead to other things possibly. Right. But, but not definitely. So I think that's where we're looking
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at like the detrimental effects of steroids would be among, it's like among the users that are losers.
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If that makes sense. It's like, it's among the users that, that aren't paying attention to
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everything else. Yeah. And I guess under medical supervision though, when you're again, doing
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these things within physiologic doses, which is pretty different than what the average person is
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doing. We're talking like something that a doctor would prescribe. Yeah. When it's like, yeah,
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it's like you, well, you know, for example, you take somebody whose testosterone is like
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two standard deviations below the mean and you revert them back to the mean or median level of
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testosterone. If we're going in that respect, I would have to go back and say that you're a hundred
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percent right. I haven't seen anything like even a muscle tear on a normal dose, but I was,
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I was using pretty good doses. How much were you taking? Well, I was at the time I was using
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trend balloon and I was using testosterone together. And then I was taking some other oral stuff. It was
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like right after I got out of rehab, I'm like, I got to get jacked, you know? And like, and it's funny
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because they tell you in AA that if you're on steroids, it affects you from the neck up and you're not
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allowed to take them. Hope you enjoyed today's special bonus episode of the Quali. New episodes
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