Kelly Baggett:
Manufactured Strength Vs Natural Strength
Before I get into it I'd like to point out that no supplemental training method is perfect and has a perfect transfer to sport. The practice of adding strength and size thru weight training in an attempt to apply the benefits of that strength and size to a sport is effective but it won't ever be perfect. You're basically manufacturing something that wasn't there to begin with - You're allowing your body to adapt to one stimulus and then applying those adaptations to another area. It really is cheating in a way. The only thing that isn't cheating would be actually playing the sport and letting your body adapt naturally. However, we know there are limits to that. But this is one reason why people that have "natural" strength, size, and power will generally have a "functional" strength advantage over those who have to manufacture it. Reggie White, Lawrence Taylor, and Mike Tyson rarely if ever lifted a weight. Compare them to muscled up guys like Frank Bruno, Tony Mandarich, and Vernon Gholston. Manufacturing size and strength isn't perfect regardless of how you acquire it, but it beats the alternative and can allow you to compete at a level you wouldn't have.
I'm not the first to bring this up, but I still don't see much distinction between barbell use and steroid use.
I know that steroids are currently considered cheating and that they're illegal, but neither makes much sense. Steroids help you get stronger, but so do barbells. Steroid use can result in long-term health complications, but again so can barbells as can sports in general, especially contact sports like boxing and American football.
Again, I know that steroids are against the rules. I just don't think it makes any sort of sense. It's like drug prohibition in general. Alcohol is more destructive than just about any other drug that you go to prison for possessing, yet it's perfectly legal; alcohol destroys health, induces aggression, impairs judgment (and leads to horrible life-wrecking outcomes), yet we can buy it and consume as much of it as we want...but can't smoke weed or snort cocaine because they're "bad" for us...
I digress, but I hope the digression underscores the point.
In my own case, I've more than doubled my strength levels from where they were in my early twenties, at least by a couple of measures. I'm far more athletic than I was 15 years ago when I was in my "prime" because of barbell use, particularly the almighty barbell back squat. I've gone from 130 lbs to 180 lbs by taking my unequipped full squat from ~150 to ~350. I've sort of wrecked my knees in the pursuit of squat strength, but I can still do every physical activity better than my 18-20-year-old self could; my knees just hurt a lot more when I do it.
There are those who would argue that I used my "natural" or inherent chemistry in building up my strength. But the fact is I used the assistance of a very unnatural artifact of industrial civilization--the rotating collar barbell--to alter the structure and functioning of my body. I built strength that did not come naturally by "unnatural" means. In the past only natural athletes, those who were big, strong and fast just because that's how they were, had a chance of competing at any meaningful level. Barbell training changed that and gave the naturally small, weak and slow a way to make themselves bigger, stronger and faster than they would have been otherwise, even with diligent participation in their sport. Serious athletes nowadays go outside their sport to acquire strength with barbells (and with steroids) and then apply that new strength in their sport.
I would not have become so much bigger, stronger and faster just by running, swinging from trees and lifting rocks. It took very detailed programming of the use of man-made objects to get me where I am. The man-made objects in my case were the barbell, weight plates and a squat rack. Would it have really been so bad if I added chemical supplementation to that to take me even further?
Our culture is one steeped in myths about the wickedness of drugs (except alcohol, at least these days). It's not unlike the American South where there are cultural fears that black men are ticking white-women-rape bombs. Steroids are like the lurking Negroes of the world of S&C lily white womanhood in the Old South. Those who would protect the virtue of the S&C world gotta string up them damn steroids every chance they get.
Also, there's this pride in building strength "naturally" that makes me chuckle. I'm a guy who cheered when he got his first 135-lb back squat because that was a hug accomplishment to me when I was a 120-lb adult. I built my strength "naturally" up to a 365-lb squat recently (using loose knee wraps; I'm getting old). But how "natural" was that strength really? "Natural" strength would be the 200-lb 15-year-old who squats 315 deep for a few reps the first time he walks into a gym (I believe Andy Bolton worked up to 405 his first time under the bar).
I'm not writing this to convince anyone. My mind's made up and I'm sure yours is too. I just know that while I acknowledge that steroid-use is cheating under almost all current rules (except untested powerlifting feds), I think that policy is the outcome of hysteria and something like superstition.
Thanks for reading.
