Gatorade = Performance Enhancer??

Only thing it has to enhance your performance is lost salts and carbs.

You could get this in many other forms. Apple juice, what have you.

Chocolate milk works better.

Fat Boy wrote:

Chocolate milk works better.

There are so many electrolytes in chocolate milk, good call.

Yes but Gatorade works better than water, and unlike milk does not encourage mucous secretion.

Also evidently is a good bomb substance

idont know wrote:

In my experiance gatorade has indeed "enhanced" my performance so to speak. Therefore should this be banned or labeled as an illegal performance enhancing substance?

WADA is not interested in "so to speak".

Fat Boy wrote:

Chocolate milk works better.

I think chocolate milk is only good POST run.

Could you imagine chugging milk in the middle of a run?

how come you can take all these supplements....cytomax, endurox, salt tablets, glyceren, phosophorus, take IV's between events, ice baths, massage, plenty of sleep......everyone of these ultimately can enhance performance.

Running and training hard is a performance enhancer...will this be banned anytime soone?

Shoes are an enhancement, let's go oldschool...

Water is too. It replaces lost fluids and keeps you hydrated. Let's ban water.

Let's ban Dick Pound. He continues to make his false and unfounded remarks about US drug testing - USADA. Why is he only going after Americans?

Haji wrote:

I think chocolate milk is only good POST run.

Could you imagine chugging milk in the middle of a run?

I can imagine Geb at mile 21 of the Bejing Olympics seeing some volunteer handing him a milk carton.

Geb, after having a sizeable lead, finishes a down-and-out 15th and addresses the media despondently:

"Milk was a bad choice."

Eating enhances performance, as well as breathing and sleeping. F*** it, let's ban 'em all. So does living actually, maybe we should all drink Flavor-Aid with cyanide and call it a deal.

With shit running down his legs. Good one

there are many, many things that could be considered "performance enhancing," including gatorade, food, sleep, shoes, tracks, steroids, altitude tents, weight lifting, running, etc. the reality is that all of these things alter the way you body works and athletes use them to enhance their performance. certain among these have been arbitrarily defined as being illegal. why is the line drawn where it is? who knows. even if you narrow it down to "substances" that change body chemistry, that still includes sports drinks, food, etc. but illegal drugs are wrong, you say. they are harmful. well first of all i'm quite sure that most if not all of the current banned substances can be used in safe amounts to enhance performance.

as far as right and wrong go, you are deluding yourself if think there is anything inherently "immoral" about drugs. the word itself is merely semantics. it's like people who say "oh i don't do drugs" then go out to the bar and get wasted. guess what people, alcohol is a drug. if you're going to call a spade a spade, then everyone here who has ever had a drink is a drug user. and "vitamins"? "supplements"? again, arbitrary distinctions. it is ridiculous to segregate and condemn "drugs" from the rest of the multitude of substances and activities that alter body and brain chemistry. at the most basic level, every thought we have and every action we make is nothing more than electrochemical reactions in the neurons. why should it make a difference how those changes are affected? my favorite is the ageless argument: "drugs are illegal because they are wrong" well why are they wrong? "because they're illegal, of course" true, some drugs can be quite dangerous if abused, and it is a tragic irony that the two biggest killers, alcohol and tobacco, are the legal ones, while something like marijuana - which has to date resulted in exactly 0 fatalities - is illegal and the focus of millions upon millions of dollars of tax money and government resources spent in the "war against drugs". not to mention the costs of the legal process and the vast amount of prison space taken up by small-time pot offenders, who have had their lives ruined because they enjoyed relaxing with a completely harmless plant. but i digress....

let me not be mistaken as condoning cheating. i most certainly do not. as long as something is against the rules in sport, it is not fair for some people to gain an advantage that those who choose to follow the rules don't have. but it seems to me that if you are going to be completely objective and rational about it, performance enhancing drugs are in essence no different than performance enhancing anything else, save for the fact that they are against the rules. maybe the rules should change, but it's not up to me to make that decision. and i hate the righteous, morally superior attitude that is so often displayed on the front page of this site. yes, cheating is wrong, but come on. stuff like "drug cheat dennis mitchell banned from coaching thanks to letsrun," is just ludicrous. yeah the guy took a performance enhancer. he and probably 80% of the guys out there. he did his time, let it go. apparently no one has ever heard of second chances.

i am all for a level playing field, whether it means that everyone is "clean" (stupid term if you ask me, and honestly, does anyone see that actually happening?), or performance enhancers are allowed. i just wish that people would stop pulling the morality card on the inherent wrongness of certain substances based upon arbitrary standards. maybe it's time to reexamine exactly why it should be illegal to enhance your performance in some ways but not others.

Food and water and sleep and all these other things allow a person to replenish what they have lost (like putting gas in a car when the tank is empty). In essence, they allow you to return to normal. Steriods allow a person to exceed this normalcy. That's why they're wrong.

Sport is about seeing what the combination of hard work and talent can do. That is destroyed when competition is reduced to a contest between pharmacists.

i find food enhances my performances. wada should ban food also!

so what about training, weight lifting? do they merely replenish what you have lost? or do they allow you to exceed what you were capable of before?

you think that elite athletes who use performance enhancing substances don't have talent and don't work hard??? you are kidding yourself. face it, drugs are just another way making your body better than it used to be.

slim shady wrote:

so what about training, weight lifting? do they merely replenish what you have lost? or do they allow you to exceed what you were capable of before?

you think that elite athletes who use performance enhancing substances don't have talent and don't work hard??? you are kidding yourself. face it, drugs are just another way making your body better than it used to be.

You misread and misinterpreted what I wrote. I referred to food and water as replenishers to show that they are not performance ENHANCERS so you can't compare them to steriods. They don't do the same thing.

Training and weight lifting are the hard work in my equation. Hard work allows you to reach your natural potential. Steriods allow you to exceed that. Elites are talented and do work hard but steriods add an additional aspect. As I said, when steriods are involved that means it is now a competition between pharmacists and sport ceases to exist.

Steriod use is unethical because it gives an advantage to an athlete over his competitors that is not the result of either hard work or talent alone. If we were to legalize all steriods and allow anyone to use them then that advantage would disappear and steriod use would no longer be unethical. It also wouldn't be sport though.