but ... but , everyone else is stronger cause they are on roids

[Dastardly]

http://www.iwf.net/anti-doping/sanctioned-athletes/

Maybe this is a bad thread to start, but what the hell.

Not a dig at the athlete, more those who whine about Americans having a disadvantage because they are super honest and squeaky clean while the rest of the world is juiced to they eyeballs.

[Mark Rippetoe]

What the hell, we've been slow anyway. First, do you are does anybody else actually believe that everybody not on these lists is clean? And second, the fact that Sarah is the only American in 10 years who tested positive for PEDs is probably a function of the fact that we don't have any international-level lifters to test. The relationship between PEDs and this fact is subject to discussion. In a very general way -- I'm not going to approve any posts that accuse any lifters of taking steroids, and if if becomes necessary I will delete this thread as a failed experiment in higher-level discussion.

[Kyle Schuant]

The way I see it, when you look at the numbers people get after 5-10 years of solid work in strength sports, it seems to be like this,

10% is talent
80% is hard work
10% is drugs

I'm judging this from countries where they have a lot of people participating in strength sports. It's harder in places like Australia where we have 1,500 or so people competing in some form of powerlifting or weightlifting, there's just not enough people to judge things, the competition numbers are all over the place, and you sometimes get higher totals in lower weight categories, which speaks to a lack of depth in competition. Places like Bulgaria or China are different.

So let's assume that everyone works hard for 5-10 years, so that the variables are talent and drugs.

So if we get someone untalented and who won't take drugs, they'll get 80% of the best results.
If they're very talented and won't take drugs, 81-90%.
If they're untalented and take drugs, 81-90%
If they're talented drug-takers, 91-100%.

If a lack of drugs were the only issue, then we'd have lots of people getting 81-90% the performance of the top athletes. And yet we don't. Thus, the real issue is a lack of talent and a lack of people working hard for long enough. Realistically, in your first year you might get up to 50% the performance of world records, and another 4-9 years are required to get you the other 30%.

But in the barbell federations here in Australia, we have lots of coaches bringing in women who can set national records in their first meet after just 6-24 months under the bar. This really is the equivalent of a first year university student being awarded a PhD. The national records are as little as 50% the world record. Others where it's 60-80%, I have lifters who are disappointed they can't get close to that today - but they've been lifting for 6-24 months. They lack the perspective that it's supposed to take years and years of hard work.

Drugs aren't the thing holding Western countries back from top performances. We just don't have enough people in it to find the talent, and more importantly not enough people willing to put in the years of hard work required. In barbell sports, this comes from most powerlifting and weightlifting coaches being shitty promoters of the sports. They sit in their gyms with their few lifters whinging instead of being out there promoting things. It's not the lack of money in the sport, that's bullshit.

Simma Park hit the nail on the head recently when she compared it to archery. Money in that? Hell no. It got more popular because of Hunger Games. But they were ready for that, instead of sitting around on their ranges whinging, they were out there in schools and so on encouraging people to give it a go. We don't have a lot of that in barbell sports. This was shown well in the "American Weightlifting" documentary, there's a coach there with the most successful high school weightlifting team - why so successful? He gets everyone to give it a go. So he has like 60 lifters while other schools mostly have none, or maybe 3-4.

We need more competent coaches promoting the sport. Drugs are just a bullshit excuse for us to sit around in our gyms doing whinging instead of moving our arses.

[Desp]

If anyone is really interested in this subject they should listen to the Joe Rogan podcast with Victor Conte, the owner of BALCO Labs - http://traffic.libsyn.com/joeroganexp/p277.mp3 (http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcast...e-brian-redban)

He explains in detail how the Olympic testing works, how baseball and other professional sports work and the history of it all. It's extremely educational... The short of it is, drug tests are not a PED test, they are an IQ test. It's all a facade, they test for the appearance of it only, and only catch the careless.

Tour De France is a good example... they finally finished their witch hunt with Lance, stripped him of his titles and gave them to... NO ONE. They were ALL busted down to what, 16th place? For taking something.

It's all really ridiculous, and the only reason people should even talk about it so they know it's a scam.

[DirtyRed]

Kazakhstan needs to either stop cheating or learn to cheat better. God damn.

[Lionheart]

Wow, these athletes love them some winstrol (stanelozol). Looks like the prevalent drug all these athletes are getting busted for, interesting.

[Splat]

He explains in detail how the Olympic testing works, how baseball and other professional sports work and the history of it all. It's extremely educational... The short of it is, drug tests are not a PED test, they are an IQ test. It's all a facade, they test for the appearance of it only, and only catch the careless.

Reminds me of the old Dr. Z anecdote about how he got kicked off ESPN for suggesting that modern players would able to do PEDs without getting caught.

The IQ argument is further buttressed by those failed schemes such as the whizzinator.

To me, the whole thing kind of seems obvious if you think about it for a moment or two. In order to come up with a PED test, someone first needs to come up with and successfully use a PED. The testers will always be behind the users.

[quad]

The way I see it, when you look at the numbers people get after 5-10 years of solid work in strength sports, it seems to be like this,

10% is talent
80% is hard work
10% is drugs

I'm judging this from countries where they have a lot of people participating in strength sports. It's harder in places like Australia where we have 1,500 or so people competing in some form of powerlifting or weightlifting, there's just not enough people to judge things, the competition numbers are all over the place, and you sometimes get higher totals in lower weight categories, which speaks to a lack of depth in competition. Places like Bulgaria or China are different.

So let's assume that everyone works hard for 5-10 years, so that the variables are talent and drugs.

So if we get someone untalented and who won't take drugs, they'll get 80% of the best results.
If they're very talented and won't take drugs, 81-90%.
If they're untalented and take drugs, 81-90%
If they're talented drug-takers, 91-100%.

If a lack of drugs were the only issue, then we'd have lots of people getting 81-90% the performance of the top athletes. And yet we don't. Thus, the real issue is a lack of talent and a lack of people working hard for long enough. Realistically, in your first year you might get up to 50% the performance of world records, and another 4-9 years are required to get you the other 30%.

But in the barbell federations here in Australia, we have lots of coaches bringing in women who can set national records in their first meet after just 6-24 months under the bar. This really is the equivalent of a first year university student being awarded a PhD. The national records are as little as 50% the world record. Others where it's 60-80%, I have lifters who are disappointed they can't get close to that today - but they've been lifting for 6-24 months. They lack the perspective that it's supposed to take years and years of hard work.

Drugs aren't the thing holding Western countries back from top performances. We just don't have enough people in it to find the talent, and more importantly not enough people willing to put in the years of hard work required. In barbell sports, this comes from most powerlifting and weightlifting coaches being shitty promoters of the sports. They sit in their gyms with their few lifters whinging instead of being out there promoting things. It's not the lack of money in the sport, that's bullshit.

Simma Park hit the nail on the head recently when she compared it to archery. Money in that? Hell no. It got more popular because of Hunger Games. But they were ready for that, instead of sitting around on their ranges whinging, they were out there in schools and so on encouraging people to give it a go. We don't have a lot of that in barbell sports. This was shown well in the "American Weightlifting" documentary, there's a coach there with the most successful high school weightlifting team - why so successful? He gets everyone to give it a go. So he has like 60 lifters while other schools mostly have none, or maybe 3-4.

We need more competent coaches promoting the sport. Drugs are just a bullshit excuse for us to sit around in our gyms doing whinging instead of moving our arses.

Sorry but this looks like the argument any drug user makes.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Wow, these athletes love them some winstrol (stanelozol). Looks like the prevalent drug all these athletes are getting busted for, interesting.

Perhaps a supply issue.

Sorry but this looks like the argument any drug user makes.

Any drug user?

[mcclamic]

To Klye's point, and as suggested in Rip's earlier post about CF may be a force that drives more people into weightlifting, assuming that they don't burn out first or get injured. With more interest, it should start to produce some critical mass that hopefully keeps the ball rolling.