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Old 03-20-2008, 07:46 AM   #12 (permalink)
PowerManDL
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I know that you have your viewpoint and I have mine, but I'm just wanting to have a discussion, so bear with me if you want.

We may not know the limits of human performance, but within certain tolerances we have an idea.

In 1988, Ben Johnson set the WR in the 100m sprint with a 9.79 time. Asafa Powell, the current "fastest man alive", beats that with a cool 9.77 100m time.

Johnson was dinged for steroids in the 88 Olympics; as Charlie Francis has admitted since then, it's well known that everyone was on back then (and still are).

20 years, and even with the prevalence of steroids, the best we can do is .02 seconds.

It's the same with strength records. Alexeyev's records set back in the 70s in weightlifting are being skirted now, but not really blown away by anybody.

Paul Anderson live pre-steroids, and some of what he did is still stuff of legend.

Bodybuilding? Without steroids they're really screwed. Grimek, Reeves, Park, guys like that pretty much showed us the limits of a steroid-free body. It's impressive, but it's not going to be equivalent to the mass-monsters of today.

What I'm getting at is that in performance sports, the gains from using don't add up to much. The idea of diminishing returns really plays at the elite world level. The guys aren't on all that much to begin with, for one, and for two, it's just enough to allow them to tolerate the workloads that are required to shave off that extra .02 seconds or add that extra .1 kilo to the barbell. When it's all said and done, the elite are elites because of genetics, hard work, and determination. The steroids are a marginal return.

Bodybuilding, sure: without steroids and various other drugs, that sport in its current form wouldn't exist.

But, the point being, we've got a pretty good idea of human performance limits, barring the occasional +2 standard deviations that will inevitably come up. Steroids are giving only marginal returns at the top of sports.
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