below is an article from the saturday daily nation about kenyan bodybuilders and supplements. a lot of people on this board state "no matter how much a kenyan lifts, he will stay skinny and weak" totally false, there are some huge guys over there - especially in the luo and luhya tribes. my trainer at body tune gym in eldoret is an internationally competitive body builder whose current quest is "a neck like jonah lomu." the guy is a monster.
anyway, enjoy the article, there are some pretty funny assertions made in it.
mzungu
Sports
Saturday, March 22, 2003
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Why sportsmen are saying 'yes' to supplements
By CHARLES NYENDE
A young aspiring weightlifter walks into a chemist in Nairobi and orders for creatine and a protein supplement at a cost of several thousand shillings hoping to get bigger. Soon he is showing considerable gain in muscle mass and strength.
Several years ago the best advice one would be given on size and strength was: "train hard and eat plenty". After all, the likes of Micky Ragos and Charles Ndirangu à all former holders of the Mr Kenya title à got their impressive physique through that philosophy of "train, train and eat, eat."
How things have changed. Many top trainers cannot imagine life without food supplements.
"Most of these guys use the stuff, protein supplements, creatine, fat burners. Without them you cannot hope of getting anywhere near where the top lifters in the world are," reigning Mr Kenya Leonard Lihanda says.
Lihanda confesses that he uses different supplements depending on what stage of preparations he is in for competition. Working at a shop in town that exclusively specialises in selling supplements he says that many young people, mainly men, are always visiting the shop.
Kenya weightlifting coach Pius Ochieng' who runs a gymnasium at Pumwani Sports Ground confirms the growing interest in supplements: "Many people ask me how they can gain mass after training for sometime without any meaningful progress. And, yes, I tell them to use supplements which they do. As long as they use them in the right manner and train hard they will always get the desired results."
Increasingly, supplements are becoming part and parcel of athletes' lives in pursuit of excellence in the country.
John Njoroge, an amateur bodybuilder and rugby player concedes that since he started using creatine and soya and egg albumen supplements he has added almost 10 kg in just three months
"My weight has gone up tremendously. And my power; I can lift much heavier weights than previously thanks to taking supplements," Njoroge says.
His only dismay are the thousands of shillings he has to spend every month to buy the supplements.
But how safe are these supplements? "As long as a person is healthy and uses them correctly the supplement are safe," a Nairobi-based pharmacist who stocks them says.
The supplements are not considered as drugs and thus do not go through the vigorous testing subjected to controlled substances by the Poison and Pharmacy Board. In fact dietary supplements including creatine and fat burners with thermogenic and lipotropic formula for example are treated as food substances.
Readily available creatine, increasingly favoured by today?s athlete for strength and endurance, is a somewhat controversial substance.
While its effects of providing additional energy for muscles, enhancing protein synthesis in the body and increasing size of muscle through pulling body fluids from blood into the muscles has been documented, studies on its long term effects are yet to be concluded. There have been fears about creatine?s ability to cause liver and kidney damage.
"The benefits of creatine have only just recently began to be understood. It shall take time before results on any long term effects can be realised," the Nairobi pharmacist says.
In other words creatine is not entirely safe.
What about steroids? Banned mainly because of their fatal side effects, steroids are performance enhancing substances that few ? competitors and even administrators ? are willing to talk about.
"All I can tell you is that I cannot rule out the possibility of their use here in the country," Lihanda volunteers. "Bodybuilders may be aware of the side effects but are ready to take the risk if it means winning a championship."
Ochieng', without pointing fingers says: "Some trainers want to get big as quickly as possible and are willing to use short cut means to get there."
The recent death of Shem Chweya ? a middleweight bodybuilder who held the Mr Kenya title in 1993,1994, 1995 and 1997 ? at only 42 years has raised many eyebrows.
Cases of sportsmen dying early in the past are not uncommon. Iceland?s 32-year old Jon Pall Sigmarsson winner of many world championships in strong-man competition and Chuck Braxton the popular masters lifter who suffered a fatal heart attack at 53 in the warm-up room just before a meet are examples. They died because of their obsession of becoming the best in the game at any cost.
"The sport is clean. Bodybuilders in Kenya do not use banned substances," Kenya Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation chairman Navdeep Singh is quick to defend the sport. Perhaps too quick.
It is instructive that the federation does not and has in fact never carried out any test on competitors during national events. The plain truth is that national associations in the country have no financial and human resource capacity to carry out blood and urine tests to detect substance abuse in athletes