Training on PEDs vs naturally

Frequency of hard workouts go up because PEDs enable you to recover quicker, so you can do more hard workouts while avoiding injury. The more hard workouts you can do while avoiding injury, the faster you get. It’s the same principle if you’re clean, except your injury risk goes way up. The key, clean or juiced, is training as hard and as often as possible without getting injured.

Some PEDs are legal and some not. If you seriously look at it, caffeine is a PED. Will it enhance your training as what is stated in the OP? Probably not. But it will give some better focus and alertness. Legal PED's such as certain amino acids and BCAA's can, up to a point, effect training as stated in the OP. IMO, the shoes give elite athletes a bit of an edge for improvement in time but I doubt if they enhance training. As far as illegal PED's, the chemists are usually a step ahead of monitoring but I would like to think that most athletes have evolved in their thinking to not succumb to that temptation, for obvious reasons.

JBaller33 wrote:

Frequency of hard workouts go up because PEDs enable you to recover quicker, so you can do more hard workouts while avoiding injury. The more hard workouts you can do while avoiding injury, the faster you get. It’s the same principle if you’re clean, except your injury risk goes way up. The key, clean or juiced, is training as hard and as often as possible without getting injured.

You can do all of that anyway without drugs. Why do you believe otherwise?

physiology fan wrote:

It’s hard to believe that anything (even carbon plated shoes) could change the way human physiology responds to training

No it easy to believe that shoving a bunch of chemicals in you changes how you respond to training. There are several studies that show how you gain about 3x as much muscle with steroids as natural lifting. Heck steroids and not lifting gave you 2x the muscle. Heck the whole point of EPO is to crank up RBC production.

it's nice that people can give their kids as much hgh/epo as they want at least until they're in the diamond league

physiology fan wrote:

With all the accusations constantly floating around whether athletes are doping or not I think that an important question to ask is “what does that athlete’s training look like?” I’m curious, would it mean that they do a lot more reps during workouts than normal? Or are they just crushing the pace during workouts and doing a normal amount of volume? It’s hard to believe that anything (even carbon plated shoes) could change the way human physiology responds to training

It would be interesting to see if there is an answer that goes beyond theoretical speculation, and provides support with real data, or reference to controlled research.

It is often taken for granted that 1) doping can enable increased training loads, and 2) increased training loads will translate into improved performances beyond what can be achieved without doping.

rekrunner wrote:

physiology fan wrote:

With all the accusations constantly floating around whether athletes are doping or not I think that an important question to ask is “what does that athlete’s training look like?” I’m curious, would it mean that they do a lot more reps during workouts than normal? Or are they just crushing the pace during workouts and doing a normal amount of volume? It’s hard to believe that anything (even carbon plated shoes) could change the way human physiology responds to training

It would be interesting to see if there is an answer that goes beyond theoretical speculation, and provides support with real data, or reference to controlled research.

It is often taken for granted that 1) doping can enable increased training loads, and 2) increased training loads will translate into improved performances beyond what can be achieved without doping.

If that's the case then I think more coaches are turning a blind eye to doping than we think. A coach is a specialist in the field when it comes to developing talent using tested methods. If an athlete starts throwing in an extra workout a week or smashing workouts at faster than goal pace and makes improvements instead of burning out, then it would be pretty ignorant for them to say that athlete isn't on something

physiology fan wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

It would be interesting to see if there is an answer that goes beyond theoretical speculation, and provides support with real data, or reference to controlled research.

It is often taken for granted that 1) doping can enable increased training loads, and 2) increased training loads will translate into improved performances beyond what can be achieved without doping.

If that's the case then I think more coaches are turning a blind eye to doping than we think. A coach is a specialist in the field when it comes to developing talent using tested methods. If an athlete starts throwing in an extra workout a week or smashing workouts at faster than goal pace and makes improvements instead of burning out, then it would be pretty ignorant for them to say that athlete isn't on something

Eh, that’s a very slippery slope.

rekrunner wrote:

[

It would be interesting to see if there is an answer that goes beyond theoretical speculation, and provides support with real data, or reference to controlled research.

It is often taken for granted that 1) doping can enable increased training loads, and 2) increased training loads will translate into improved performances beyond what can be achieved without doping.

Read Tylor Hamilton”s book The Secret Race. He goes into the details of what he could do when doping. I think the effects are more obvious in older athletes since the ability to train without getting hurt declines dramatically. There was also an article in Outside mag several years back where the author went on a doping regimen and documented what he was able to do.

I don't agree with the idea that athletes can't achieve without doping the same results. Firstly, we have to look at different doping for different events : for example, from 1988 practically throwers were not able to achieve similar performances, except for Ryan Crouser, who is a real freak of nature. In discus we are in the range 68-70m against 70-72 of the past, in hammer we have winners with 81m when in 1988 there were 4 athletes always over 84m, this for men : for women was still more different. The percentage of decrease after the "steroid age" for female throwers is around 10%. The same happened for jumpers : in high jump now the best are under 2.40, 30 years ago there were athletes like Sotomayor 2.45, Sjoeberg 2.43 and some other over 2.40. World records in jumping events, men and women, are very old.

So, we can say that without steroids at the moment is not possible to enhance the muscle strength till the same level possible with steroids.

Different is the case of blood doping. I have too many examples, among my athletes and other top athletes of the past and of the present, that, with REAL PROPER TRAINING, it's possible to better a WR training in clean way.

I agree that, when the aeroibic level is low (for example, after a bad injury or a long resting period), using EPO or other kind of blood manipulation, you can reach a level of 90% of your best Aerobic Power in very short time, for example in two months, when with training only you need to work for six months. But, after this, for moving from 90% to the top personal level, doping can't add anything to a real training.

The stay for long periods in altitude, for example, produces modifications in the personal physiology that can last for long time, but go back again if athletes stay sea level for 5-8 months after the period in altitude.

Nobody denies that, for example, with EPO it's possible to recover in shorter time, but the real question is : WHERE IS IT WRITTEN THAT HARD SPECIFIC TRAINING 3 TIMES PER WEEK CAN PRODUCE BETTER RESULTS THAN TOUGH TRAINING TWICE PER WEEK OR THAN ONE SESSION EVERY 5 DAYS DURING THE SPECIFIC PERIOD ?

The most important reason in training is to create the possibility to better support the SPECIFIC TRAINING. But, in any case, the QUALITY of specific training must be the same for analogous performances, but the full picture of a specific period, for athletes of different typologies (for example, fast or resistant typology of athletes for 1500m), is designed in very different way.

I give an example : if I want athletes running 3'30" in 1500m, a session such as 5 x 500m in 1'10" (race pace) with 4 min of recovery is the same for the fast and the resistant. However, for the fast (for example, able to run 1'44" in 800m) we see a higher accumulation of lactate, but also a different adaptation to remove in shorter time the producted lactate from his fibers. For this athlete, two easy days before the next training are enough. Instead, for the resistant type, the production of lactate is lower, but the time of permanence of it in the fibers is longer : this athlete needs one day more for fully recovering.

Opposite if we go for 10 km fast : for the resistant, one easu day id enough, while the fast feels tired for the next 3-4 days,

This means the secret is to evaluate the typology of the athlete before giving his training : what can't change, is the level of the workout, but the length of the recovery can be completely different, and at the end they are able to achieve the same performance.

physiology fan wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

It would be interesting to see if there is an answer that goes beyond theoretical speculation, and provides support with real data, or reference to controlled research.

It is often taken for granted that 1) doping can enable increased training loads, and 2) increased training loads will translate into improved performances beyond what can be achieved without doping.

If that's the case then I think more coaches are turning a blind eye to doping than we think. A coach is a specialist in the field when it comes to developing talent using tested methods. If an athlete starts throwing in an extra workout a week or smashing workouts at faster than goal pace and makes improvements instead of burning out, then it would be pretty ignorant for them to say that athlete isn't on something

That's taking for granted that there is any increased training load significant enough for a coach to detect above and beyond what is typical.

Starting with this most important word *if*, then similarly, if it's not the case then there would be nothing for the coach to see with both eyes wide open, even if we take your new assumption for granted that a "coach is a specialist in the field when it comes to developing talent using tested methods".

It seems like there are many important questions that need to be answered before we start to point fingers at coaches.

In all these doping threads, I have seen many similar unsubstantiated claims and rationalizations that remain unconfirmed. I have yet to see any study or otherwise controlled observation that reliably confirms increased training loads and/or reduced injury rates enabled by doping. Even the doping studies that exist showing improved performance in the short term, fail to show that the levels of performance observed exceed that which is possible when not doping.

LA has some nice gyms. I'd drop by and pay for a day pass and use Zoo Culture for 3 hours when I went there the odd time pre covid. They're still open through covid though. The day pass there is more expensive than most gyms'monthly member rate. But I like the atmosphere and the women are hot. I've been offered drugs there a couple times as well without even asking.

drozwn wrote:

Read Tylor Hamilton”s book The Secret Race. He goes into the details of what he could do when doping. I think the effects are more obvious in older athletes since the ability to train without getting hurt declines dramatically. There was also an article in Outside mag several years back where the author went on a doping regimen and documented what he was able to do.

While such books and experiences may be interesting and insightful, I cannot put full weight on the self-told personal anecdotes of Tyler Hamilton, and even less so on an article found in Outside magazine. I watched "Icarus" with a certain expectation that with the help of an experienced doping specialist, he would achieve great things, but reality did not confirm the prediction. In the real world, there are many variables and doping is only one. While you cannot prove anything by example, you surely cannot prove anything when the example fails.

I would like to read Tyler Hamilton's book, but haven't yet. If I do then, I would already have in mind that doped athletes describing there personal experience are not making independent and neutral observations:

- Hamilton's doping was not blinded. He knows he was doping, and there was a high expectation and strong belief that it would enable increased training and performance. Hamilton would be unable to distinguish between genuine physiological effect, and psychological placebo effect.

- Hamilton's doping was not controlled. As a team and group, under Armstrong's charismatic leadership, there were many significant changes put in place regarding team structure and training, including in part doping.

- It is well known in psychology that people are afraid of admitting mistakes. There is a huge psychological investment and many rationalizations when making the decision to break the rules, and attempting to cheat your fellow competitors. Over time, the doper will convince himself he did what he had to do for substantial reasons, and that this decision against acceptable morals and principles actually produced the expected results, making the initial choice worthwhile. If any contrary evidence ever comes to light, the athlete would be reluctant to accept it and admit it, because it would mean accepting that he made mistakes, and the decision to take great risks was not worthwhile.

Anecdotes are interesting, but cannot be accepted at face value. We need independent controlled observations in order to confirm and corroborate such anecdotal experiences. Otherwise it is folklore.

Tyler Hamilton's power outputs on EPO were in the normal range for an elite cyclist. The numbers he lists in his book actually show the exact opposite of what he claims.

Dopey delusions. He was naturally gifted and heboth knows it and denies it at the same time. A bit like cocaine addicts who convince themselves they are more creative on the stuff than off it.

Thank you, Renato.

Accounts of El Guerruj's training (if accurate) always struck me indicating doping. Basically continuous threshold runs on easy days, followed by extremely hard interval workouts.

Also, the way people used to race very frequently and at a high level is amazing. If you look at someone like Komen's racing schedule, it's just unbelievable and something you don't see anymore. Look at 1996:

https://worldathletics.org/athletes/kenya/daniel-komen-14208667

Over 16 weeks from May-September, he races 15 times; his peak looks like this:

8/10: 3000 in 7:25

8/14: 5000 in 12:45

8/16: 1500 in 3:34

8/23: 3000 in 7:25

8/30: 5000 in 13:01

9/1: 3000 in 7:20

9/7: 5000 in 12:52