Steroids for Strength Sports: The Disappointing Truth • Stronger by Science

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Stronger by Science

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By Greg Nuckols

Steroids for Strength Sports: The Disappointing Truth

steroids

What you’re getting yourself into:

~5,600 words, 18-37 minute read time

Key Points:

  1. Many people think steroids make a massive (several-fold) difference in terms of competitiveness in strength sports.  They are wrong.
  2. Other people (somehow) think that steroids don’t make much of a difference.  They are also wrong.
  3. Steroids DO help people gain muscle mass and absolute strength at a much faster rate, but the increase in muscle mass generally means you’re forced to move into a heavier weight class where you need to lift more in order to be equally competitive.
  4. When looking at world records, experimental evidence, and cross-sectional studies, the resulting picture shows that steroids increase your competitiveness in strength sports by about 10%.
This is the second article about steroids on the site, so I’m assuming most people reading this article will have at least a baseline understanding of how steroids function.  Make sure you check out the preceding article (The Science of Steroids) before diving in, so you don’t feel like you’re stepping into the middle of a conversation.

Edit, November 2016:  This article provides the theoretical framework for the article you’re about to read.  If you like math, and you want a baseline set of evidence-based expectations before diving into this discussion, you should check it out too.

 

This is a follow-up I’ve been planning ever since the Science of Steroids was published.  The outline has been collecting dust as a draft in the post editor for almost a year, and a recent round of discussions spurred by this article reminded me that this outline existed.

The section of that article people vehemently disagreed with:

When both drug-free AND drug-using lifters reach close to their body’s physiological peak (something like 10-15 years after they start training), they are pushing as hard as they can, which means that their training will actually be very similar in structure. The only big difference is that drug-using lifters will have their performance around 10% higher than drug-free lifters, if not a bit more.

It seems the prevailing notion is that steroids are literally a game changer in every aspect of training and performance; they allow (or require) you to train in a drastically different manner, and they improve performance dramatically.

That notion is dead wrong.  This article deals with why a 10% increase in performance is pretty much dead-on.

Performance

To start with, let’s peruse the all-time world records in powerlifting.  For this analysis, I’m using squats and totals without knee wraps (because most of the biggest drug-tested organizations don’t allow knee wraps), and bench presses performed in a full meet; this doesn’t change the outcome very much anyways.  And, for posterity’s sake, I’m using the numbers as they stand at the time of writing on August 27th, 2015.  All weights are in pounds.

Powerlifting World Records
Squat
Weight Class Drug-Tested Untested Difference
123 639 639 0%
132 551 551 0%
148 556 556 0%
165 553 610 9.34%
181 617 744 17.07%
198 750 766 2.09%
220 667 785 15.03%
242 727 826 11.99%
275 850 854 0.47%
308 859 914 6.02%
350 938 938 0%
5.64% overall
Bench Press
Weight Class Drug-Tested Untested Difference
123 391 391 0%
132 380 424 10.38%
148 402 440 8.64%
165 462 485 4.74%
181 468 556 15.83%
198 496 565 12.21%
220 518 582 11%
242 529 603 12.27%
275 585 650 10%
308 565 666 15.17%
350 710 710 0%
9.11% overall
Deadlift
Weight Class Drug-Tested Untested Difference
123 562 634 11.36%
132 600 628 4.46%
148 697 697 0%
165 684 717 4.6%
181 766 791 3.16%
198 825 870 5.17%
220 859 901 4.66%
242 804 893 9.97%
275 906 906 0%
308 939 939 0%
350 903 1015 11.03%
4.95% overall
Total
Weight Class Drug-Tested Untested Difference
123 1306 1339 2.46%
132 1457 1457 0%
148 1432 1482 3.37%
165 1560 1650 5.45%
181 1727 1840 6.14%
198 2015 2015 0%
220 1868 2099 11.01%
242 1912 2080 8.08%
275 2171 2226 2.47%
308 2102 2353 10.67%
350 2205 2298 4.05%
4.88% overall

Notice that the untested records are an average of 5.64% higher for the squat, 9.11% higher for the bench press, 4.95% higher for the deadlift, and 4.88% higher for the total.  Also notice that there are 11 instances where the difference between the tested and untested records is 0%. In those instances, someone lifted more in a drug-tested meet than anyone’s ever lifted in an untested meet.

There are some obvious issues with this data set I’ll address in a bit.

Turning to weightlifting records, I’ll be comparing the world records (it’s acknowledged that rampant steroid use takes place in most of the countries that regularly produce the world’s best weightlifters) to the American records.  All numbers are in kilograms.

Weightlifting Records
Snatch
Weight Class World Record American Record Difference
56 138 112 18.84%
62 154 123 20.13%
69 166 135 18.67%
77 176 157.5 10.51%
85 187 166 11.23%
94 188 169 10.11%
105 200 173 13.5%
160 214 197.5 7.71%
13.84% overall
Clean and Jerk
Weight Class World Record American Record Difference
56 170 135 20.59%
62 182 153 15.93%
69 198 174 12.12%
77 210 190 9.52%
85 218 203 6.88%
94 233 211 9.44%
105 242 220 9.09%
160 263 237.5 9.7%
11.66% overall
Total
Weight Class World Record American Record Difference
56 305 245 19.67%
62 332 272 18.07%
69 359 305 15.04%
77 380 342.5 9.87%
85 394 362 8.12%
94 418 372 11%
105 436 390 10.55%
160 472 430 8.9%
12.65% overall

Here, the world records are, on average, 13.84% higher in the snatch, 11.66% higher in the clean and jerk, and 12.65% higher for the total.

Now, there are some problems with both of these data sets.  Starting with powerlifting:

  1. There are people with drug-tested records who have failed drug tests and were almost certainly using steroids when they set their records; Sergey Fedosienko and Ed Coan come to mind.
  2. There are likely others who were on drugs when they set drug-tested records, because the drug tests are (or at least used to be) easy to beat.  Organizations affiliated with the IPF have started drug testing out of contest in recent years, which makes it more difficult to get away with steroid use (though it’s still far from impossible), but many of the records are from an era when drug testing only happened on the day of the meet, or were set in federations that still only do in-meet drug testing.  In that context, it’s just a matter of cycling off steroids far enough out from the meet that you pee clean – a simple matter of knowing the half lives of the compounds you’re taking.  Hardly rocket science.
  3. The IPF recently restructured its weight classes, so about a dozen of the drug-tested records are actually a bit lower than they should be.  For example, Krzysztof Wierzbicki’s world record total at 220 was actually set at a bodyweight of 207 – those extra 13lbs can make a big difference.
  4. Equipment and judging differences play a role as well.  In general, the major drug-tested organizations (the IPF and its affiliates) require deeper squats and aren’t as lenient on shaky deadlift lockouts.  There are exceptions (the Raw Unity meet, USPA meets, and major GPC meets don’t drug test and generally have very strict judging, and other organizations with a drug-tested division are a bit more lenient), but drug-tested records are generally set in meets with stricter judging standards.  Equipment plays a role as well.  Stiffer squat bars, thinner deadlift bars, and squatting out of a monolift help people lift a bit more weight, and are allowed in many untested meets, but aren’t allowed in the IPF and its affiliates.
  5. Weight cuts factor in.  Most of the untested records and a few of the drug-tested records were set in organizations that allow the lifter to weigh in the day before the meet.  This allows the lifter to make a lighter weight class by shedding water (often 5-10% of someone’s body weight), and gives them time to rehydrate before the meet.  The bulk of the drug-tested records were set in organizations that have weigh ins on the morning of the meet.  Lifters will often still cut 1-3kg (2-6lbs) of water weight, but they’re much closer to the actual weight class limit when they step on the platform.  Combine this with the restructured IPF weight classes, and you’ve got the potential for huge differences in body weights.  For example, Krzysztof Wierzbicki’s drug-tested 220 record of 1868 was set at a bodyweight around 207, and Dan Green’s 220 total record of 2099 was set at a bodyweight around 235 or 240 – a massive difference.
  6. Powerlifting isn’t a hugely competitive sport.  If you can make the assumption that the world records represent the people with the most elite genetics for a particular sport, then the majority of the variation between drug-tested and untested records should be explained by the effects of drugs (or at least the difference between the amount of drugs someone can take and still pass a drug test, and the “everything and the kitchen sink” approach to steroid use).  You can’t win an Olympic medal in powerlifting, and there are no strong financial incentives, so the sport just doesn’t attract the cream-of-the-crop talent you’d need for an accurate comparison.

On the whole, it appears that the drug-tested records in powerlifting are probably a little bit higher than they “should” be, if we assumed they were, in fact, all set without steroids, and that the records were all set under identical circumstances.  Some of the drug-tested records were doubtlessly set by people using steroids (meaning those records are inflated), but many were also set with stricter judging, less helpful equipment, at lighter body weights, and without the aid of massive water cuts (meaning those records are lower than they could/should be).  My supposition is that the advantage of drug use more than counterbalances those other disadvantages, but it’s impossible to say how large of an effect those opposing factors make.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the weightlifting records.  I’m assuming that almost every American record was set without drugs.  That’s a pretty safe assumption.  USADA (the American arm of the World Anti-Doping Agency) is pretty rabid about catching steroid users in weightlifting, and the culture of American weightlifting is militantly anti-steroid.  They test very frequently out of contest, meaning that American weightlifters on steroids would have to be very careful about microdosing (more on that in a later article), and generally resort to drugs and dosages that are 1) more expensive and 2) less helpful. USADA is also very good at what it does.  They got two samples from Pat Mendes that were positive for human growth hormone, which is remarkable because hGH has a half life of only 10-20 minutes.  If USADA suspects someone is using performance-enhancing drugs (essentially any high-level weightlifter), they pursue that person with a passion.

I’m also assuming that almost every world record was set with the use of drugs.  Many other countries’ testing agencies aren’t as rabid about catching drug users as USADA, and there are strong incentives to use (Olympic glory, and financial incentives for winning medals and setting records in many countries).

There are fewer issues with this data set, but there are several notable ones:

  1. There are almost certainly lifts that exceed the American records that have been done without steroids.  Other countries (Canada, Australia, much of Northern and Western Europe) test their athletes just as rigorously as USADA tests American lifters.  Quite frankly, I’m too lazy to research every country’s testing procedures and compare all the records across all those countries.
  2. At least in the US, it’s almost certain that the people most gifted for weightlifting aren’t participating in the sport.  They’re playing in the NFL, making millions of dollars per year.  Weightlifting is a niche sport that not many Americans know about (though CrossFit is rapidly changing that), and it just doesn’t have as many incentives as other sports.  There are exceptions, of course.  The most obvious is CJ Cummings, who was already breaking senior national records at the ripe old age of 14.  It’s likely that the weightlifters who hold the world records represent a pool of athletes more suited for the sport, due to 1) increased interest/visibility/incentives increasing the athlete pool 2) national talent identification programs 3) lack of American football (the major sport in the US is largely power-dependent.  Soccer, the dominant sport in the rest of the world, is to some degree, but not nearly to the same degree as American football).
  3. Again, any test can be beaten.  There’s no guarantee that none of the American records were set by people on steroids.  There’s also no guarantee that none of the world records were set by people who don’t use drugs.  However, this problem does not plague this data set to nearly the same degree as the data set in powerlifting.

So, on the whole, the world records in weightlifting likely approximate the true limits of performance with the aid of drugs, and the American records are somewhat below the true limits of performance without the aid of drugs.

Put all of that together, and you can assume the effect of drugs on powerlifting performance is likely a bit larger than the 4.88-9.11% observed when comparing drug-tested and untested world records, and the effect of drugs on weightlifting performance is likely a bit smaller than the 11.66-13.85% observed when comparing the world records to the American records.

Or, in other words, a 10% difference is pretty reasonable.

In fact, that’s about what you should expect.  The reasons why are the topic of the next article.

If a comparison of world records doesn’t cut it for you, we can look at experimental evidence instead.

First, we’ll look at Bashin’s 1996 study I referenced back in The Science of Steroids:

Bashin, 1996
Drug-free 600mg Test per week
Before After Increase Before After Increase
Body Mass (kg) 85.5 86.4 1.05% 76 82 7.89%
Bench (kg) 109 119 9.17% 97 119 22.68%
Squat (kg) 126 151 19.84% 102 140 37.25%
Triceps area (mm^2) 4052 4105 1.31% 3483 3984 14.38%
Quadriceps area (mm^2) 9920 10454 5.38% 8550 9724 13.73%
KG fat free mass per cm 0.407 0.418 2.7% 0.372 0.407 9.41%
Bench Wilks 71.53 77.62 8.51% 68.49 80.02 16.83%
Squat Wilks 82.68 98.5 19.13% 72.2 94.14 30.39%
BP+SQ Wilks 154.21 176.12 14.21% 140.69 174.16 23.79%

Here, again, steroids helped the participants gain more muscle, faster, but Wilks Score only improved by 9.58% more for the steroid users.  The Wilks Score is based on a formula that was developed to accurately compare powerlifting performances, since neither absolute strength nor a simple strength/bodyweight ratio give an entirely fair comparison (more on that in the next installment of this series).  Put another way, the drug-free lifters were 8.77% better lifters at the start of the study (154.21 vs. 140.69), and only 1.11% better lifters by the end (176.12 vs. 174.16).

Next, we’ll look at data from Bashin’s 2001 study:

Bashin, 2001
125mg Test per week 300 or 600mg Test per week
Before After Increase Before After Increase
Body Mass (kg) 75.3 78.3 3.98% 73.45 79.01 7.56%
Leg press (kg) 419.2 444.6 6.06% 435.7 516.8 18.61%
KG fat free mass per cm 0.338 0.354 4.73% 0.3305 0.371 12.25%
Thigh muscle volume (cm^3) 890 966 8.54% 825.5 930.5 12.72%
Quadriceps volume (cm^3) 508 546 7.48% 484.5 540 11.46%
Leg Press Wilks 297.88 307.75 3.31% 315.24 355.655 12.82%

Here I compared the group getting 125mg of Testosterone per week (keeping them with basically the same Test levels they started with) to the two groups receiving supraphysiological doses (the 125mg group’s test levels were about 10% lower than they were at the start of the study, while the 300mg group’s were elevated roughly two-fold, and the 600mg group’s were elevated roughly four-fold).

Again, the two groups with elevated Testosterone gained a lot more muscle and fat free mass than the group with normal Test levels, but the Wilks Score tells the same story as the previous study (I’m sure the powerlifting gods are frowning on me for using Wilks to compare leg press performance, but YOLO).  The two groups with elevated Test increased their Wilks Scores by 40.4 points (12.82%), vs. 9.87 points (3.31%) for the group with normal levels, meaning the groups with elevated Test got a 9.51% advantage.  That sounds eerily similar to the ~10% spread in the world records, and the 9.58% advantage from the other Bashin study, now doesn’t it?

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “But aren’t those pretty low doses?  People in the real world use more Test than that (250-500mg/week is a pretty standard ‘first cycle,’ generally adding more Test and other anabolic compounds for subsequent cycles), and these studies were only 10 and 20 weeks long.  Maybe higher doses for longer periods of time would yield a larger advantage.”

I understand that line of thought, but there’s not currently any reason to think it does.  In fact, the opposite may be true.

For starters, grouping the 300mg and the 600mg groups together in the 2001 Bashin study actually did a favor for the group taking the higher dose of 600mg per week.  Their Wilks Score only improved by about 10%, versus about 15% for the 300mg group.  The 600mg group DID gain more muscle and overall mass, but they only gained about the same amount of strength (a bit less, actually), so their performance relative to their size – which is what matters for Wilks Score – didn’t increase as much as the 300mg group’s did.

We also have another study to take into consideration:

Yu, 2014
Steroids Drug-Free Difference (positive means higher for Drug-Free)
Body Mass (kg) 108 110 1.85%
Fat Free Mass (kg) 89.8 74.6 -16.93%
Squat PR (kg) 254 265 4.33%
Squat Wilks 150.34 155.95 3.73%
Squat/FFM 2.83 3.55 25.59%
Bench PR (kg) 205 190 -7.32%
Bench Wilks 121.34 111.81 -7.85%
Bench/FFM 2.28 2.55 11.57%
Deadlift PR (kg) 257 269 4.67%
Deadlift Wilks 152.12 158.31 4.07%
Deadlift/FFM 2.86 3.61 26%
Total 716 724 1.12%
Total Wilks 423.8 426.07 0.54%
Total/FFM 7.97 9.71 21.72%

This study didn’t involve an intervention, so we can’t infer cause and effect, but it still supplies some interesting data.

The researchers compared folks who had been using steroids for 5+ years to people who had never used.  Of course, we can’t be sure the drug-free group had, in fact, never used steroids but, from the study: “Clean subjects had signed a contract with their local clubs and the Swedish Power Lifting Federation, committing them to never use any drugs, under severe monetary punishment. The subjects have been continuously doping-tested with negative results.”

Another key limitation was that all the drug-free subjects were powerlifters, and the subjects on steroids were a mix of powerlifters, bodybuilders, and strongmen, so assessing strength via the squat, bench press, and deadlift favored the drug-free lifters (and probably hints that training specificity matters more than drugs do).  However, they also assessed strength via maximal isometric force in the squat with the knees at a 105-degree angle (above parallel); presumably the strongmen were squatting heavy in their training, and even if the bodybuilders squatted high in training, the position they measured from was basically a half squat, so that should be a pretty fair comparison.  In that test, the drug-free lifters clobbered the guys on steroids.  Maximum squat force was 36.7% higher in absolute terms (3302N vs 2416N), maximum squat force per kg of lean body mass was 68.8% higher (49.8N/kg vs. 29.5N/kg), and maximum squat force per kg of lean leg mass was 47.7% higher (130N/kg vs. 88N/kg).

Then, looking at squat, bench, and deadlift, the drug-free lifters’ overall Wilks Score was slightly higher, and their absolute performance (at roughly the same body weight) was better for both squat and deadlift.  The bench PRs for the steroid users were higher, as you’d expect, both from the powerlifting world records (with a larger spread in the bench press than in the squat or deadlift) and because steroids generally affect the muscles of the shoulder girdle moreso than the muscles of the rest of the body.

And, if you think the problem with Bashin’s study was low doses, check out the cycles of the guys in Yu’s study:

journal.pone.0105330.t001

Here’s the article in a single graph (click the image to enlarge it):

image-2

When you look at the data from these five sources (the best I could find), the overall average advantage afforded by steroids is 6.73%.  That jumps to 9.22% if you disregard the data from Yu, due to the training differences between the groups, and 10.97% if you toss out the powerlifting world records due to the heterogeneity of the data set.  In other words, steroids give you a ~10% advantage in strength sports.  They give you a larger boost in absolute performance, but with the extra muscle mass comes the expectation of being able to lift more, in order to be equally competitive.

So, here’s a quick recap to wrap things up:

  1. Steroids help you get bigger and stronger, faster.
  2. Both observational evidence (comparing records in powerlifters and weightlifters) and experimental evidence suggest that the advantage you get from steroids is quite large in terms of absolute measures (total muscle and strength gained), but that they only confer a ~10% advantage in terms of how competitive you’ll be in strength sports.  As you gain more muscle mass, you’re expected to lift more to be equally competitive in your sport.  When taking into account both gains in strength and muscle mass, the performance edge they give you is about 10%.
  3. Higher doses for longer periods of time don’t seem to provide an increasingly larger advantage.  The relative performance improvement in Bashin’s 20-week study was identical to the performance improvement in his 10-week study.  Additionally, in his 20-week study, the group using 300mg of Test per week actually improved their Wilks Score more than the group using 600mg of Test per week.  Furthermore, in Yu’s study comparing drug-free lifters to lifters who had been using much higher doses for 5+ years, the advantage of steroid use for improving relative performance disappeared entirely, though there were some important drawbacks to that study.
  4. The advantage steroids give you is likely larger for tests of upper body strength, such as the bench press.  Though Bashin’s 1996 study actually found a larger advantage in the squat than the bench press, the world records in powerlifting, Yu’s study, and insights into the muscle groups most affected by steroid use all seem to suggest that the bench is the lift that benefits the most from steroid use.

Practical takeaway:  If you want to compare the performance of someone who uses steroids to someone who doesn’t, a 10% adjustment will give you a pretty accurate comparison.  In other words, if two lifters are in the same weight class, and the one on steroids totals 10% more than the one who’s drug-free, the steroids likely explain the gap in performance, and those two lifters would be pretty evenly matched if they both used steroids or they were both drug-free.  If two lifters are in different weight classes, you can make the same comparison using Wilks or Sinclair scores with a 10% adjustment.  If the gap is smaller than 10%, the drug-free lifter would likely be the better lifter if both used steroids or if both were drug-free, and if the gap is larger than 10%, the lifter on steroids would likely still perform better if both athletes used steroids or if both athletes were drug-free.

Steroids do help someone become a more competitive lifter, but it’s not a night and day difference.  A 10% advantage is huge when you’re talking about elite-level competition (if someone runs 10.7 100m sprint when Usain Bolt is winning the meet at 9.7, they got destroyed).  However, drugs aren’t the difference between, say, a 1500 total and a 2000 total in the same weight class in powerlifting.  They’ll make a decent lifter an above average lifter, an above average lifter a good lifter, a good lifter a great lifter, and a great lifter one of the best in the world.  But they aren’t going to a magically turn a 300 Wilks into a 500 Wilks.   The next article will discuss why you should expect the difference to be relatively small.  Give this article a share, and stay tuned.  The next installment should be out within the next week or two.

Just to put these numbers in perspective, here’s a case study, based off the real results of someone I know:

Cycle 1: He started at 180lbs, and got up to 195lbs.  His bench increased from 250 to 300 in the process.
Cycle 2: He started at 188ish (dropped weight between cycles) and got up to 203.  His bench made it up to 325 by the end of this cycle. Both cycles were 12 weeks long, with 4 weeks between.

Start of cycle 1: bench Wilks of 76.44
End of cycle 1: bench Wilks of 87.66
End of cycle 2: bench Wilks of 93.05

Assuming he wouldn’t have used steroids and put on about 5lbs over the same 28 weeks, he’d have needed to increase his bench from 250 to 275-280 for a Wilks of 83-84 to end up with 10% lower relative performance than he wound up with on gear. That’s entirely realistic.

The absolute differences are huge – 4.6x the mass gain, 2.5-3x the strength gain.  But the increase in relative performance would be about 10% greater than what he could have reasonably expected without drugs.  That 10% gap would likely hold steady over time, as people see the biggest benefits from their first cycle or two.  The absolute gap would widen over time – maybe he eventually tops out at a 450lbs bench at a body weight 240lbs with drugs, whereas he’d have otherwise topped out at a 375 bench at 200 without drugs.  That would represent the same 10% spread in relative performance (120 vs. 108 Wilks), along with a huge difference in absolute performance and hypertrophy.

Edit:  Based on some of the questions and feedback this article is getting, it’s worth adding/clarifying a few things.

The absolute difference in strength and muscularity with and without steroids is much larger than 10%

You can see the difference in the Bashin studies – 100-700% greater total mass gain, 50-1,000% greater increases in muscle thickness or muscle area, and 100-200% greater absolute strength gains in the same time period.  You can see the difference in Yu’s cross-sectional study – 17% higher fat-free mass after 5+ years of steroid use.  You can see the difference comparing modern bodybuilders to pre-steroid era bodybuilders (often a difference in stage weight of 50+lbs, with the modern BBers being shorter than their pre-steroid era counterparts).

If you simply care about absolute gains in muscle or absolute gains in strength, the difference is much larger than 10%.  However, this article was written for strength athletes competing in sports with weight classes.  In that context, increases in relative performance (Wilks or Sinclair score) are what matter.  And for relative performance, steroids seem to give you a roughly 10% advantage.

Steroids speed up the time scale

It’s possible to gain a substantial amount of muscle when you start using steroids – potentially even multiple years’ worth of muscle.  Steroids will help you get to the limits you would have reached as a drug-free lifter much sooner, and go past those limits.  However, again, this article was about relative performance.  In the short-term, it seems that the advantage they give you is roughly 10% (looking at both of Bashin’s studies, running 10-20 weeks), and that 10% advantage seems to hold in the long-run as well (looking at the differences between records).

In other words, if you’re been lifting for 5 years, and you’re 5 years away from your drug-free muscle and strength potential, you may be able to reach those levels in 6 months or a year instead of 5 years, and exceed those numbers dramatically in absolute terms.  However, if your drug-free limit in muscle and strength would have coincided with a 400 Wilks Score, in all likelihood your limit on drugs will be around a 440 Wilks Score, though in a higher weight class, and you’ll likely reach that limit sooner.

Other drugs, higher dosages, and differing effects

A few savvy readers mentioned that many steroid users are on anabolics other than just testosterone (which is all that Bashin’s studies examined), and that other compounds are purported to have differing effects on strength and muscle mass.  Some are supposed to increase muscle mass considerably without huge jumps in strength, and others are supposed to cause big strength improvements without increasing body weight very much, with halotestin (fluoxymesterone) being a popular example.

This could very well be the case.  Unfortunately, almost no research has been carried out to identify how large such an effect could be.

There are two basic ways to get stronger: either via the muscles themselves (when the muscles get bigger, they can contract harder – muscular force is directly proportional to muscle cross-sectional area), or via the nervous system (via greater mastery of a movement, or by simply getting the muscles themselves to contract harder via increased motor unit recruitment or increased rate coding).

I maintain that steroids’ effect of increasing muscle size is the primary way they increase strength, and with more muscle, your weight goes up, so you’re expected to lift more to be equally competitive.  However, it is certainly possible that steroids affect the nervous system to allow for enhanced performance as well.  Whether that manifests itself in the research is unclear.  In Yu’s study, the opposite seems to be the case.  In Bashin’s 1996 study, squat strength relative to quadriceps CSA increased by 13.7% in the drug-free groups, and by 20.7% in the group on 600mg/week of testosterone.  In Bashin’s 2001 study, leg press strength per unit volume of the thigh muscles decreased by 2.3%, and leg press strength per unit volume of the quadriceps decreased by 1.3% in the group with normal test levels, and increased by 5.2% and 6.4% in the groups on 300mg or 600mg per week.  Basically, Bashin’s research is in favor of that idea, and Yu’s research is strongly against it.

Androgens DO affect the nervous system in a variety of ways, but whether those effect directly lead to more forceful muscle contractions is unclear.  As for whether specific androgens (like halotestin) cause greater effects – that’s even murkier.

I think it’s most likely that the main benefit they have for strength is increased aggression and decreased inhibition.  Fear and insufficient arousal can both negatively impact performance, and the specific anabolic compounds people tout for their ability to boost strength tend to be the ones on which people report the largest increases in aggression.  However, if they had as large of an effect as some claim, it should be imminently obvious in the drug-tested vs. untested powerlifting records – and it’s not.  Though it’s possible to use steroids in the offseason and still pass a drug test on the day of the contest, you can’t use halotestin on the day of a powerlifting meet for a boost in aggression and still pass a drug test.

It’s also worth noting, expectancy also factors in, as I detailed in The Science of Steroids.  Simply expecting a boost in strength from steroids can increase acute performance by 4-5%, and increase rate of strength gain by roughly 7-fold.

Ultimately, it’s hard to say whether the direct effect of anabolics on the nervous system makes a meaningful difference in strength, much less whether specific compounds enhance that effect beyond simply increasing aggression and decreasing inhibition (which you could potentially do to the same degree without steroids).  Also, when people claim that specific compounds increase their strength dramatically without an increase in bodyweight, it’s important to keep the effects of expectancy in mind – they were taking that compound with the expectation of a big strength boost, so it’s impossible to say how much of the resultant effect came from the drug itself and how much came from the expectation of a sizable benefit.

Outside of steroids, there are also issues with other anabolic hormones that need to be taken into account (like growth hormone, IGF-1, and insulin), but that’s another huge can of worms.  They’ll be addressed in a later article.

Is there enough data to write this article in the first place?

I think there is.

For starters, approaching the question “how much do steroids increase relative strength?” from a Bayesian perspective, your starting assumption should be an advantage somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% because of how steroids work.  They help your muscles get bigger.  Bigger muscles have the potential to be stronger muscles (since force of contraction is directly related to cross-sectional area), and success in powerlifting has been found to correlate with muscle thickness, muscle girths relative to body height, and muscle mass per unit of height.  But bigger muscles also mean increased weight.  Additionally, strength doesn’t increase linearly with body size.  For example, Lamar Gant deadlifted over 5x his bodyweight weighing 123lbs and 132lbs.  I doubt you’ll see a 350lb super heavyweight deadlift 1750lbs any time soon.  This is known as allometric scaling, and it’s what formulas like Wilks (for powerlifting) and Sinclair (for weightlifting) try to account for.  That’s the major effect the next article in this series will deal with.  Because of these factors, your starting assumption should be a ~10% boost in relative performance.

On top of that, we have a comparison of records (which is, admittedly, flawed), well-controlled experimental research, and cross-sectional research.  Though the available evidence doesn’t necessarily represent a massive body of research, and even though it has its flaws, it converges on the effect size one should expect from steroids.

Additionally, the question of utility is also salient.  Before I write something, I ask myself, “will the strength community be better off or not due to the information in this article?”  I personally think that this is useful information for lifters to be aware of.

For starters, it negates the radical positions on both sides, ranging from “bro, steroids don’t actually help very much.  They just let you recover faster so that you can train harder,” to “if you bench 315 or squat 500, it necessarily means you’re juiced to the gills.”  All of the available data makes it clear that steroids do, in fact, offer a very clear and notable advantage.  However, the data also makes it clear that drug-free lifters are capable of very impressive feats of strength.

Second, this article deals with a topics people already seem to be interested in.  Though the available data can’t give us a crystal-clear, 100% accurate answer (never mind that science doesn’t work like that in the first place), I do think it’s valuable to have a resource that attempts to address the advantage steroids give you as objectively as possible, with recourse to the best data available.  No, it’s not perfect, but it’s much better than an uninformed position based solely on anecdote, or even just a comparison of the records.

If the 10% figure sounds like too solid of a difference, not afforded by the available evidence, I have no problem putting a confidence interval on it.  Looking at the records, the smallest spread we see is 0%, and the largest we see is 20%.  I’m 99.9% sure the true difference doesn’t fall outside of those numbers (drug-free lifters actually having the relative advantage, or drugs giving a relative advantage larger than 20%), and I’m 95% sure the true figure is between 5-15%.  The advantage they’ll give a particular individual likely depends on a variety of factors, including the lift they’re training, their training age, the compounds they’re using, potentially their height, and how well they respond to the drugs, but a relative advantage (increases in Wilks or Sinclair Score) smaller than 5% or larger than 15% for the vast majority of individuals in the vast majority of circumstances seems highly unlikely.

What about other sports?

This article deals strictly with strength sports that are governed by weight classes, where success depends on relative strength (not absolute strength and muscularity).  It doesn’t address bodybuilding, track and field, team sports, or endurance sports.  The impact that anabolics (or banned substances in general) make depends heavily on the demands of the sport, and that’s too broad of a topic to address right now.  It’ll be addressed in part 6 of this series.

How big of a difference is 10%?

That depends who you are.

For a top-level weightlifter in a country with very stringent drug testing, 10% is frustratingly huge.  10% is often the difference between winning an international meet and not qualifying, and almost certainly the difference between winning a medal and placing outside the top 10.  10% would be the difference between the US having multiple world record holders, and multiple world-champions and medalists every year or every Olympiad, versus the reality of no American male winning an Olympic medal since 1984 and no American female winning an Olympic medal since 1992.

However, 10% is also not the difference between an average lifter and a world champion.

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About Greg Nuckols

Greg Nuckols has over a decade of experience under the bar, a BS in Exercise and Sports Science, and a Master's in Exercise Physiology. He’s held 3 all-time world records in powerlifting in the 220 and 242 classes.
 
He’s trained hundreds of athletes and regular folks, both online and in-person. He’s written for many of the major magazines and websites in the fitness industry, including Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Bodybuilding.com, T-Nation, and Schwarzenegger.com. Furthermore, he’s had the opportunity to work with and learn from numerous record holders, champion athletes, and collegiate and professional strength and conditioning coaches through his previous job as Chief Content Director for Juggernaut Training Systems and current full-time work here on Stronger By Science.
 
His passions are making complex information easily understandable for athletes, coaches, and fitness enthusiasts, helping people reach their strength and fitness goals, and drinking great beer.
 
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Comments

  1. Teddy Willsey says

    Seems dubious. The USAPL’s standard for “drug-free” lifters is 3 years clean. That’s not clean. I’d like to see better physiological studies on steroids before I draw this 10% conclusion.

    Sorry to troll. 🙂

    Reply

    • Greg Webb says

      Yeah, comparing tested records against untested records is like comparing the number of accidents in alcoholics vs non-drinkers at 11AM on a Tuesday. The guys who are setting these records know their bodies and how they handle cycles and when to cut it off in time for a tested meet. Keep in mind the IFBB is a tested federation…

      Reply

  2. Benjamin says

    The statistics are terrible. Why do you try to prove that steroids don’t help that much with statistics, when in the statistics we can clearly see that for example snatch is way higher than squat. There are wayyyyy too many factors that you could base it on that. What if there are ten times as mine contestants in the tested fedrations as in counter to untested? What if the athletes in the tested federationsa are on gear? Corruption? It’s just terribly wrong to prove some this biological with weak statistics.

    Reply

  3. Pete says

    Fine article, Greg! I’d only like to add to your your first statement:
    “Many people think steroids make a massive difference in terms of competitiveness in strength sports.”
    I agree that the difference is not as much as most people seem to think, but I’d say the (assumed) 10% DO make a massive difference in terms of competitiveness, at least in a competitive sport with high performance density. Just as an example, I’ve looked at the weightlifing totals from the last Olympic Games for a few weight classes, and those 10% make the difference between the Olympic Champion and someone who wouldn’t have placed in the top 10.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      I definitely agree. When comparing top performers, 10% is huge. But it seems like people also have this idea that drugs are the difference between a 350 Wilks and a 500+ Wilks, which just isn’t the case. And even being 10% off the WRs, though it’s massive in terms of head-to-head competition, still puts you in the top tier of performers.

      Reply

  4. Lyle McDonald says

    So 14% in one study. Only a little? Christ.

    Confirmation bias much? Because this stuff is always just justification by drug users that it’s not the drugs.

    So Greg, if steroids only impact on strength a little, why do athletes bother using them?

    Do they just like wasting money?

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      I added this about 15 minutes ago to make this point more clear, but it may not be showing up yet because of caching:

      “Steroids do help someone become a more competitive lifter, but it’s not a night and day difference. A 10% advantage is huge when you’re talking about elite-level competition (if someone runs 10.7 100m sprint when Usain Bolt is winning the meet at 9.7, they got destroyed). However, drugs aren’t the difference between, say, a 1500 total and a 2000 total in the same weight class in powerlifting. They’re make a decent lifter an above average lifter, an above average lifter a good lifter, a good lifter a great lifter, and a great lifter one of the best in the world. But they aren’t going to a magically turn a 300 Wilks into a 500 Wilks.”

      How large you see 10% is a matter of perspective. Hitting an 1800 total instead of a 2000 total in a particular weight class is a big difference, but people seem to have the idea that the difference is substantially larger than that (i.e. maybe 100 Wilks points).

      And there’s really not confirmation bias here. I’m just interested in accurately representing how large of a difference they make since there’s a lot of users who say they don’t make a difference (“they just let you train harder and recover better,” which is crazy), and a lot of people with the opposite opinion that drugs are the difference between an average lifter and a great lifter, which is equally off.

      As for why people use, I guess it’s just a matter of balancing the incentives (or perceived incentives, for people who think they’ll make a bigger difference than they actually do) of improved absolute and relative performance vs. the disincentives of side effects and the risk of getting caught. I personally think risk/reward ratio is ludicrously skewed toward the risks (performance in a niche sport with minimal financial incentives vs. potential jail time), but I suppose not everyone sees it that way.

      Reply

  5. Sergio Benvenuti says

    Just a small comment.
    If you are running fast, your speed goes like the square root of the horizontal strength you are able to put down (this is a standard hydrodynamics fact). So a 10% strength increase results in a ~5% speed increase, and decreases 100m times by ~4-5%, which yes is still a lot for a competitive sprinter.
    (I’m a physicist and an ex sprinter 🙂 )

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      haha good point. I was just using that as an illustration of how big a 10% difference in performance could be for elite sports. I think that 10% strength boost would, if make less than a 4-5% difference for sprint times because velocity of contraction comes into play as well. It would need to be a 10% increase in force output at contraction velocities similar to sprinting, which would generally necessitate much larger than a 10% increase in strength. That’s illustrated pretty well here: http://www.strengtheory.com/speed-kills-2x-the-intended-bar-speed-yields-2x-the-bench-press-gains/

      An increase in strength of 10-18% only led to a 4-12% increase in loads that could be moved faster than .8m/sec. Presumably, at the velocities in sprinting, the carryover would be even less direct. When it’s all said and told, a 10% increase in strength may be a 4% increase in force at the contraction velocities of sprinting, and 2% increase in actual speed.

      Reply

    • Danish Dynamite says

      Well, I think that while most of what is written in this article is pretty accurate, the whole assumption is wrong. What makes you more competitive in any strength sport is more muscle mass per inch of height. So it may seem that steroids don’t make you gain strength quicker but they allow you to gain muscle much quicker and far beyond your natural limit. And that’s what matter most. A natural lifter will never be 85kg lean at 160cm for example. And a 160cm 85kg lifter will likely beat a 175cm 85kg lifter. (Don’t get too attached to exact numbers, that’s just an example). So in the long run the difference will be much greater than 10% because drug free lifters will plateau sooner (strength- and mass- wise). And comparing records is just stupid. There is a lot more going on there.

      Reply

      • Greg Nuckols says

        You can actually see how big of a difference that will make.

        You can play with the calculator here: http://www.strengtheory.com/which-weight-class-is-best-for-you/

        The first two articles in that series discuss that relationship between weight lifted and FFM/cm: http://www.strengtheory.com/your-drug-free-muscle-and-strength-potential-part-1/ and http://www.strengtheory.com/your-drug-free-muscle-and-strength-potential-part-2/

        And if you’re wondering about allometric scaling score (which is the way to scale relative strength built into that calculator), that’s discussed here: http://www.strengtheory.com/whos-the-most-impressive-powerlifter/

        You could do the calculations yourself for Wilks score if you’d prefer; the formula was just too long for the plugin I’m using, so it freaked out when I tried to use Wilks instead of allometric scaling.

        In hindsight, I actually should have written that article series first, because that’s what actually tipped me off to see how much of a different steroids make in the first place. I assumed that it would be larger than 10%, but when you actually look to see how much someone’s total improves when they add a given amount of FFM/cm (based on data on elite powerlifters), it’s not nearly as much as you may think. It largely depends on your starting weight, but most people would need to add somewhere between 20-35kg while keeping the same body composition to increase their relative strength by more than 10% (it would be 20 for someone who’s currently 60kg, and 35 for someone who’s currently 100kg). Those numbers may be slightly high because most people can also hold a lower body fat percentage when the go on gear, but it puts you in the right ballpark.

        Reply

        • Danish Dynamite says

          Well, I have read these articles before and they are certainly very interesting and more importantly thorough. Great work, Greg, honestly. That being said, I still have to disagree here with that 10%, I know we have to base our assumptions on something and studies are certainly a great source, but they are flawed. The fact that subjects improve only slightly better with steroids or the fact that records don’t differ that much don’t mean shit. That may sound like a heresy but even looking at record lifts in the IPF or non-tested division we can objectvely say that techinique and balance of these top lifters leaves a lot of room for improvement. You can see weightlifters squat more than these record holders with much more consistency, ease and depth.
          What I tried to say before is that having supra-natural levels of muscle mass at a lower height gives a tremendous leverage and hell of a lot room for improvement. Now, to what degree will you be able to perfect technique and neural efficiency is a different matter entirely. That’s why I wouldn’t be suprised if some of the top “drug-free” (you never know) surpass the roided ones.
          Most importantly I don’t mean to knock everything you’ve written here, it is quite an insight. People exaggerate the benefits of steroids in strength sport just as often as they downplay it. This makes you ponder that maybe it is possible to be in that top 1% naturally if you really work hard and smart. I doubt it though 🙂

          Reply

  6. StrengthReader says

    Greg, I have tremendous respect for you, and I learned a lot from the articles in this website.
    However, I think you have trudged onto a very difficult and dangerous field to write about.

    First, there aren’t that much public info with clean data. Most of your world record data require tremendous amounts of conjectures and assumptions, which will lead to a subconscious confirmation bias. You may be right, but for most readers, it will just feel like you are making convenient conjectures to fit your argument. That’s what data with lots of variables that require much assumptions do to readers. It simply doesn’t give them confidence.

    Second, 10% is a gigantic difference in elite competitive field as you have mentioned. And we don’t even know if 10% is really the difference based on your data because there are so much assumptions. When there are that much assumptions, you simply can’t just average them and declaratively say it’s 10%.
    Yes, I do know that there are some people who believe that steroids alone can make someone a beast, but those people are ignorant people. You can’t target an article to them. Most people who are familiar with this industry knows that steroids alone won’t give you an edge. You also have to train hard and eat well with sound theory behind. However, steroids will definitely take you to places where you can’t never get to pure natty. And THAT”S A BIG DIFFERENCE.

    I just feel like this was a very dangerous and difficult topic to write about because there simply aren’t enough public data to back up whatever the case is.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      The issue is, though, that it IS still a conversation people try to have. And typically they have it very poorly. People on one side will say, “steroids don’t actually help very much. They just let you train harder, and the harder training is all the make the difference,” while people on the other side think that a 315 bench automatically means a gram and a half per week, and that people on steroids have maybe a 2-fold edge over people who are clean.

      I wouldn’t say for sure that it’s exactly 10%. My guess is that it depends strongly on the size of the athlete, their individual response to drugs, and the lift they’re performing. If I was putting a 95% confidence interval on it, maybe 5-15%.

      But the point is that since this is a discussion/argument people are already having, it’s valuable at at least TRY to ground it in whatever data is available. The WRs aren’t great data sets, as I acknowledged in the article. However, trials with a drug-free control group (using different dosages over different amounts of time) also arrive at a number that’s very similar to the spread in records, which I think is telling. And approaching this problem from a Bayesian perspective, my initial assumption would be a difference of around 10-15% because the primary way steroids work is by increasing muscle mass, which both increases strength, but also means competing in a higher weight class. Toss in the effect of allometric scaling (strength/bodyweight increases logarithmically instead of linearly, which is why lightweight lifters have higher strength/bodyweight ratios than heavyweights), and a difference in competitiveness of around 10-15% is about what you’d expect.

      Reply

  8. Jay C says

    Greg,

    Love the site – keep it up. I’ve read all of your articles. You and Lyndsey are excellent.

    I think that you’ve done a very good job at compiling the most relevant statistics on the topic and fairly disclosing the issues with each group of statistics. Yes, I do agree with the conclusions you’ve come to based on the provided information and I think that you’ve done the best you can with what you’ve got…..but I think that there are too many flaws to definitively say that steroids ‘only’ provide a 5-10% competitive advantage. Realistically, it may be more, or it may be less. I think that there are a ton of factors that go into and results that come out of steroid usage that are divorced from solely a minor competitive advantage over drug-free lifters. I’m pretty sure that if I were to start taking dat dere Celltech that my Wilks, as a novice powerlifter, would go up way more than 10% in a very short period of time.

    Who knows – I’m not going to find out. I appreciate the honesty and transparency, and I’m not sure why people are throwing around the confirmation bias. As a natty lifter, wouldn’t you want to prove that cyclists are getting a huge advantage over you? Either way – great stuff Greg.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      I agree that it’s not for sure exactly 10%. Size, individual response to the drugs, the compounds you’re running, and what lift you’re talking about probably all contribute. If I were putting a 95% confidence interval on it, I’d say maybe 5-15%. I haven’t seen anything to suggest it’s smaller than that (except for Yu, but training differences are too large of a confounder), nor larger than that. 10% is just the average that seems to emerge from the data, and can serve as a handy rule of thumb.

      Reply

  9. Ethan says

    Great article. While I generally agree with your observations, I think your article could use some elaboration on what you mean by competitiveness. And this is my reasoning for doing so:

    I think much of the factual information to be said about strength sports needs disclaimers, because often times people misread and misinterpret the information because it is often summed up to vaguely, thus exacerbating what we generally call bro-science. I think there is a lot of misinformation in our sport, and because that, it is our duty to be as responsible as we can about dissemination of information. For example, takeaways by some less analytically inclined readers could be: “steroids do barely anything,” when the reality is steroids provide a lot more than a competitive total, or that “if I take steroids, my 315 squat will go up 30 pounds in 10 weeks.”

    Wouldn’t you agree that steroids provide recovery and mass needed to be competitive as well? I’m also curious as to the speed in which mass and competitive totals are gained. Could a 10 year drug free athlete be rivaled by a 3, 4 or 5 year drug assisted athlete? Adequate responsible steroid use could allow an athlete to fast forward many years of training, no? Because if an athlete can hit a competitive body weight and push higher numbers sooner, then ideally skill (obtained by more frequent training) will lead them to advance much faster. I assume this is especially true in weightlifting, a skill-based strength sport.

    So when you compare drug free athlete A and steroid athlete B, you have to compare more than simply their competitive totals. And though this may be difficult to quantify, I think an article like this would be a great place for information regarding the speed of recovery induced by steroids and what that means for an athlete.

    Side note; I also thought Yu’s study was almost unusable? There are too many disclaimers and outlier information that make it hard to really use in a real world setting. However I imagine scientific information on steroid use is difficult to find.

    Thanks again for the compilation though; nice to see quantifiable evidence strung together through research so that I don’t have to do it 🙂

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      I perhaps could have been more clear about this, but what I meant by competitiveness was Wilks or Sinclair scores. In both Bashin studies, steroids gave a ~10% advantage in Wilks scores, and that same spread seems to hold all the way up to the WRs. And yep, they definitely speed up the timeline for adaptations, potentially meaning they’re hitting their strength peak at a younger age.

      Reply

  10. Bill says

    HHi Greg, long time lurker first time commenter here. Great site!

    What do you think the absolute advantage would be for long term use or is this going to be covered in the subsequent articles? (team sports where absolute numbers are all that matter?)

    Say taking ed coan as an example, he started out as a 181 with a 2045lb total then gradually increased dosages till he was a muscular 242 lifter with a 2463 total. So if we say he was moderately juiced as a 181 lifter he probably would have been good for about 1850 natty (which is still huge!) I also think its pretty fair to assume a 5’5 man is not going to get near 242 lbs at a moderate level of body fat natural and so he probably would have naturally been competitive at around a 181. So he increased his total by about 34% from what he could have naturally achieved without being a fatass?

    Or what if you compared the average weight and total of people in drug tested vs untested federations? There will be a lot more 220 and 242lb guys in the non drug tested and the average total will probably be significantly more than 10% higher. This would also explain why there is less difference in the powerlifting records at lower weight classes, anyone can be jacked at 148lbs without steroids, very few people can be jacked at 220 without help and nobody can be at 242.

    So if you look at it in absolute terms there would be a much bigger difference. Also explains anecdotally why you see lots of guys bench over 225 for reps at the gym but if someone relatively lean is benching 315 then nine times out of ten they are on (at a regular gym, different at a powerlifting gym obviously). Its a lot easier to bench 315 if you are a jacked 225 than a doughy 190!

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      Absolute advantage will be covered later in the series. However, you can get a pretty decent idea of it from the tables in this article, and looking at how bodybuilding stage weights have progressed.

      I like that you brought up Coan. 2045 at 181 is a 623.25 Wilks, which is absolutely absurd. At 220 (probably his best class), he totaled 2402, for a 663 Wilks. Then at 242 (keeping in mind that he couldn’t pull sumo any more), his 2463 total gives him a Wilks of 657.92. So that ~660 Wilks seems to have been his ceiling in his best weight classes (if you’re too light or too heavy, Wilks suffers). Without drugs, your best weight class will likely be one or two lighter. I think it’s entirely realistic that he could have cranked out a 600 Wilks at 181-198 drug-free (1970 at 181, or 2070 at 198). But, like you brought up, even with a 10% relative difference, the absolute difference is considerably larger.

      Reply

  11. Francis Holway says

    Hi Greg,

    Fantastic analysis and article, congratulations! I agree with your data and interpretation of results, also with the fact that steroids seem to improve upper body strength more than legs. I do have a few questions.
    1. Would you expect different results if you analyze what happens to average athletes? I remember an Australian researcher tell me in 2000 that EPO turned the average cyclist into a Peloton competitor, whereas the elite, outlier cyclist did not get that much improvement. While strength is a different field, could it be that gifted, outlier strength athletes do not benefit as much from steroids as the average lifter would?
    2. What about the type of steroid used? Apparently some stimulate more muscle hypertrophy than strength, and others the opposite. If this were the case, then the strength-per-weight ratio would be affected.
    3. What about the Law of Diminishing Returns curve? At record-breaking levels of strength a 5% improvement is of a much larger magnitude than a 5% improvement at, say, halfway up the strength-improvement curve. Should we use a different effect-size statistic or allometric normalization tool to assess improvement at this top level? Perhaps logarithms, like the Richter scale for earthquakes? If we don’t, a 6.73% improvement does not seem like a lot.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      1) my knee-jerk response is “yes.” However, I’m not sure you can get that out of the data. In both Bashin studies (moderately trained lifters), a 10% gap in Wilks was opened up in 10 weeks. That same 10% gap was there after 20 weeks in the other study. And that same 10% gap still seems to be hanging around all the way up to the world records. With EPO, you get positives with no negatives (well, except for dying if your blood gets too viscous. But if all goes well). With steroids, the strength just doesn’t come without the size as well.

      2) From what I’ve seen (and I may be missing something here), the strength/size dichotomy relates mostly to how much they increase aggression. In other words, I think they could help someone more mild-mannered get way stronger, faster by decreasing their fear of the weights. I know androgens have direct interactions with the nervous system as well, so there may be something there. I’m trying to find research directly relating androgen usage to muscle activation now (I’m finding a lot of spatial reasoning and general kinesthetic abilities, but not muscle activation or force output).

      3) Maybe, but I don’t think there’s enough data to calibrate something like that.

      Reply

  12. Mbasic says

    Needs to address some of body builders use of drugs maybe way off from the modest 600ml test studies….those guys are pushing insane amount of many different kinds of drugs, and hence incredible hulk like bodies….and this >>>>10% “gains” over natty

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      Definitely larger than a 10% difference in absolute “gains” (total muscle and strength increases), but there’s just no evidence that they increase Wilks or Sinclair by much more than 10%. Higher doses –> more muscle –> higher weight class you’re competing in.

      Reply

  14. Jason says

    Clearly some of this can be explained by the fact that the relationship between size and strength is non-linear (hence the idea of relative strength, which is usually higher at lower sizes; think: ant-elephant). I assume this is leading to much of the public disbelief over what Greg has quantified here, as this is not necessarily an intuitive thought (“but these steroid guys are huge – their look/weight/muscle size, etc. is significantly more than 10% greater than mine”). Look/size does not equal performance in a 1:1 ratio. As we know (thanks, Greg), strength (performance) is multi-factorial, with size being only one factor.

    Reply

    • Art says

      “..relationship between size and strength is non-linear ..”

      Actually it is pretty much linear, given constant muscle length, not accounting for neural adaptations.
      When you gain muscle mass it’s volume increases by the same factor, but given the same muscle length(that’s assuming you’ve done growing in height) the only way to increase muscle volume is by increasing its cross-sectional area. That means that cross-sectional area also increases by the same factor as muscle mass – and we all now that strength is linearly proportional to muscle cross-sectional area -> the square-cube law does not apply given the same muscle length.
      Muscle strength ∝ Muscle mass

      Simple physics, not accounting for biological factors.

      Reply

      • Greg Nuckols says

        I’m somewhat torn about that, because theoretically yes, you’re 100% right. On the other hand, allometric scaling also tends to work fantastically well for normalizing performance relative to FFM.

        Reply

      • Jason says

        First of all, it is hard to take you seriously, with all of your grammatical errors. “When you gain muscle mass it’s (sic) volume increases by the same factor…” What does this even mean? Congrats, you circularly defined muscle mass with your brilliant analysis. However, your assertion is full of mathematical holes. Go ahead and plot the data Greg presents above, with size as your x variable and lifting total as your y, and then prove that the resulting function can be defined linearly. You can’t, genius. Way to completely bastardize a theory you learned in community college exercise science 101. Unfortunately, you choose to precisely define mass (MV/fiber length), where the practical application and discussion above does not demand such rigor, as Greg correctly points out. I wrote “size,” not “CSA given a constant fiber length.”

        Reply

        • Jason says

          By the way, I saved you the trouble – a sixth order polynomial function has a much higher r-squared value for the powerlifting data than a linear function. Mind you, I also wrote that the perception was likely closer to 1:1, but that it was more complicated. I do agree that size is a great predictor of absolute strength, which is what you are poorly trying to argue.

          Reply

        • Art says

          It looks like you took this as a personal attack.
          First of all I was talking about purely theoretical muscle model, not gathering data and doing a regression analysis. And my point was that muscle specific tension doesn’t change with size growth. Adding that (Muscle Mass)/(Body Mass) changes. And the higher that ratio, the more relative strength you have.

          “mathematical holes”
          Where?

          “By the way, I saved you the trouble – a sixth order polynomial function has a much higher r-squared value for the powerlifting data than a linear function.”
          Congratulations, you proved that strength grows as a sixth order polynomial in reference to size. Be right back, increasing my muscle mass by 20% and having 3 times the strength.
          I bet that a 100th order polynomial would have gotten you even a higher r-squared value.

          Reply

  15. Tony Arakkal says

    Hey Greg,

    I am a long time stalker of your beard.

    There is talk that while many federations are drug tested they may not necessarily be drug free. I remember reading a post by Mike Tuchscherer about how open Eastern European lifters were about their drug use and how they maneuvered around tests. It shocked him because he was competing in drug free powerlifting.

    I found the excerpt from an ESPN article pretty interesting:

    “”For all weight classes, world records in bench press, squat and dead lift are, on average, 7.9, 6.0 and 6.4 percent heavier, respectively, when the competition doesn’t test for PEDs. Raw Unity lifters outdo IPF competitors by about 3 to 4 percent and USAPL competitors by 17 to 18 percent. What gives?

    Gaynor said lifters at the IPF event have been more likely to get around drug tests, take PEDs leading up to the competition or have a history of PED use. “Most guys at the USAPL meet, on the other hand, tend to not do steroids,” he said. “The events just bring in two different powerlifting cultures.” IPF did not return requests for comment.”

    This is the article: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-powerlifting-tells-us-about-the-effects-of-peds/

    I think it is also interesting that IPF has only a three year ban of PED use whereas WDFPF has a lifetime ban for getting caught.

    Once again from the article I found this interesting as well:

    “So, even if drugs aren’t in an athlete’s system, he might be lifting heavier because he used PEDs a few years ago. He’s laid down a base of muscle that doesn’t just dry up when the drugs do. It may linger and help him kick ass for years to come.”

    and the press release found within the article:

    “The researchers found that several years after anabolic steroid withdrawal, and with no or low current strength-training, the muscle fiber area intensity, the number of nuclei per fiber in the quadriceps was still comparable to that of athletes that were currently performing high intensity strength-training. They also discovered that the shoulder-neck fiber areas were comparable to high-intensity trained athletes and the number of nuclei per fiber was even higher than found in the current steroid-using group.”

    direct link to the press release: http://www.the-aps.org/mm/hp/Audiences/Public-Press/Archive/08/30.html

    Reply

  16. Masa says

    Greg, this is only accurate if the records were made by the SAME lifter.

    Lifter A vs Lifter B on steroids is hardly a benchmark when they are genetically different and probably have different training backgrounds.

    If you made Lifter A into Lifter A+ with steroids and take the results, it is quite a guess at 10%.

    Appreciate the article but it is flawed.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      “Greg, this is only accurate if the records were made by the SAME lifter” – that’s not entirely true. The whole idea behind RCTs is that if you run two similar groups through different interventions (or one through an intervention with one as a control group), the resultant average difference between the groups is largely due to the effect of the intervention.

      Obviously the WRs aren’t an RCT, but the fact that they were set by different people isn’t particularly problematic. The only assumption you have to make is that the only major difference between the two groups is the steroid usage. That may not be 100% the case here (Especially with the WL records, I think it’s fair to assume the WRs were set by athletes who are, on the whole, more gifted for the sport than the athletes who hold the ARs due to increased incentives and talent identification programs. And with the powerlifting records, confounding factors include weight class differences, equipment and judging differences, and 2- vs. 24-hour weigh-ins and the water cuts they allow), but those things are all discussed in the article.

      If it was a comparison of a single lifter’s record in one lift to another lifter’s record in one lift, then yes – that would be very problematic. But group averages largely negate that issue, if you can assume the groups are similar enough to start with. The dissimilarities between the groups are a bigger issue than not using the same individuals.

      Reply

  17. shaunn phillips says

    Great article and site altogether Greg! I can’t help but believe 10% is understated based on personal experience and anecdote (I know this part doesn’t count for much but let me explain).I think there’s another piece that’s missing but it’d have been impossible to fit this in or quantify . However, I think with natural lifters especially the elite, you will often find that they train lifts multiple times a week and have to do so continue to produce adaptations. In fact I’ve noticed/witnessed many debates going on in regards to training frequency and usually I find that the drug free side usually pushes high frequency while those that use usually disagree. Many of the using individuals that are elite train with a once a week frequency when you have guys like Blaine Sumner or Layne Norton who are squatting 4 and 5xs a week in order to hit records. Basically the point I’m trying to convey is the efforts to become elite we cant quantify but speaking from experience i think the natural has to work harder for less. For example, say it takes both a drug free and open user 10 yrs to become elite and say break a bench press record (the natty hits 500lbs. the user 550lbs. to keep the 10% difference) but the natty guy has to bench 4-5 times a week and the user benches once a week that’s a big difference that isn’t being captured. I don’t think this is always the case but I find it common for the drug free guys to train pretty frequently as opposed to the other side.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      In general I agree with you (plus it makes sense mechanistically – steroids lead to longer elevations in MPS post-training, so you don’t need to train as frequently to stay in “growth mode”).

      However, there are also counter-examples. Louie’s guys at westside only have two main upper workouts and two main lower body workouts per week, but he also recommends doing smaller workouts every day, multiple times per day. Sheiko’s elite lifters are handling crazy volume (up 10 sessions per week split over 5 days, benching 5 days per week, squatting 3 days per week, and pulling twice per week, if memory serves). Then, in weightlifting, the REAL Bulgarian Method is also insane. 2-3 workouts per day, working up to true maxes (from talking to people who trained under Abadjiev, the “daily max” idea most people – including me – work with now wasn’t a part of the original system. Daily max meant literally the heaviest you could lift for the day, and often involved working up until you got buried, even with squat and front squats).

      What I’m going to argue in a later article is that the way steroids work is basically by widening the range of effective training. “Optimal” training is still “optimal,” you just get better results from it. You can also still benefit from increased training that would bury someone without drugs. And you can also still get benefit from training where the volume/frequency would be too low to make progress without drugs.

      Reply

  18. Joe says

    Hi Greg,

    Another cool article

    I have a question – Do you plan on also examining the effects of coming off ? I think this would be a great topic. If not, can you at least post links to relevant studies ?

    Thanks

    Reply

  20. Steve Thresher says

    Greg,

    Wouldn’t PED’s be a huge advantage when it comes to dropping body fat while retaining muscle mass? Trading a few kilos of fat for muscle would make you way more competitive.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      Maybe. However, I also think that the fear of losing muscle when cutting drug-free is exaggerated (example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21558571). I would say that drugs probably give you more leeway when cutting – you could cut “too fast”, or screw up your diet in some other way and still be able to preserve your LBM. Also, stuff like clen kills your appetite, increases your metabolic rate AND exerts an anti-catabolic effect on muscle tissue, so cutting with drugs is likely a bit easier psychologically as well.

      Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      Going from single ply to multiply is also a big issue, though. Also the 2-hr weigh-ins. Matt was famous for cutting from 250+ to make weight at 220. He weighed more competing as a 220 in the WPO than he did competing as a 242 in the USAPL.

      Reply

  23. bill doggs says

    anyone who trained natural for more than 6 months and then started PEDs would know this article is a total joke. it’s basically a fluff job to all the guys who started roids way too soon and want to pretend that steroids only helped 10%, and the rest is their hard work, motivation, discipline, intelligent training etc. when in reality it’s mostly the drugs. my wilks went up more than 10% just after my first 12 week cycle. and a rough calculation shows it’s over 30% from when i started a couple years ago. i’m 6’3″ so they might help me more to fill out my frame, but still to think it’s 10% is just laughable.

    Reply

  24. Sebbo says

    Excellent article. I think Greg took a brave jump to write this, and yes it has to be flawed somewhat.Still, great job from greg imo.

    Here are list of my friend’s bench records (all lifts are well confirmed, many are on tape still, quite well known amateur bodybuilder). Well, people can draw their own conclusions about the results =D he does not claim natty =D

    1992 – 50kg – 55kg
    1993 – 60kg – 80kg
    1994 – 67kg – 95kg
    1995 – 68kg – 100kg
    1996 – 62kg – 105kg (Military service)
    1997 – 67kg – 110kg
    1998 – 70kg – 110kg
    1999 – 68kg – 160kg (x3)
    2000 – 74kg – 165kg
    2001 – 71kg – 170kg (Military Bencn national Silver)
    2002 – 72kg – 180kg(x4) (Military Bench national gold)
    2003 – 77kg – 170kg (Bodybuilding national silver)
    2004 – 86kg – 170kg
    2005 – 76kg – 165kg (Bodybuilding Nordics Gold)
    2006 – 75kg – 170kg (Bodybuilding Helsinki GP 4th)
    2007 – 74kg – 170kg (Bodybuilding Oslo GP Gold.)
    2008 – 80kg – 170kg
    2009 – 82kg – 175kg
    2010 – 84kg – 170kg
    2011 – 82kg – 175kg
    2012 – 84kg – ??

    Reply

    • Ben says

      Don’t know if this point was already posted but the tested lifters that set these records how do we know they’ve never juiced at some point in their life? I bet they’re all on juice and beating tests. Get USADA testing these guys, put them in a pool where they get randomly selected for testing in and out of comp. You’ll see guys popping steady who espoused natural lifting. It happened in MMA.

      Reply

  25. Tony Arakkal says

    Greg,

    I pulled this from the ESPN article again:

    “Bridges (Mike Bridges) weighed just 173 pounds, but at the 1983 U.S. Powerlifting Federation’s (USPF) national championships, he bench pressed, squatted and dead lifted1 a combined 2,011 pounds. But when Bridges took the stage later that year at the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF) championships in Gotenborg, Sweden, and fired off the three lifts, his typical strength wasn’t there. He totaled just 1,780 pounds — 231 pounds, or 11.5 percent, less than he’d lifted four months before. What’s more, nearly every powerlifter who competed at the U.S. competition and went on to the IPF event saw a significant drop.

    What happened? In 1983, the IPF began to test athletes for performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs).”

    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-powerlifting-tells-us-about-the-effects-of-peds/

    My question is that since Mike Bridges lost 11.5% off his total by simply cycling off, does this not show that there is a greater than 10% advantage gained by doing steroids. Clearly, he is still receiving a benefit from steroids. It has been shown that competitors may still receive a benefit long since they stopped using.

    http://www.the-aps.org/mm/hp/Audiences/Public-Press/Archive/08/30.html

    Reply

  26. mark says

    Greg what difference would steroids make in a sport like heavyweight strongman? I don’t fully understand the difference between the absolute and relative effects. Could a natural trainee reach within 10% of the best lifts of the competitors in world’s strongest man or would he be way off due to the accumulated differences in muscle mass?

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      In theory, there should be a much bigger difference between SHWs with and without drugs. The records don’t seem to bear that out, though. It COULD be that, at that level of strength, something else is limiting performance (perhaps bone mass, or tendon strength via negative feedback from things like the golgi tendon organ)

      Reply

  28. Sam says

    Greg,

    Another great article. After reading through the comments section, I think the original point of your article is clearly appropriate. Most of the community is highly polarized on the subject and, like you, I suspect the reality is somewhere in the middle.

    No doubt, PEDs help stratify elite level competition, but the single greatest factor is and will always be genetics. As you later added, “they’ll make a decent lifter an above average lifter, an above average lifter a good lifter, a good lifter a great lifter, and a great lifter one of the best in the world.” For most people, that is a very hard truth to accept, especially if they are coming from a society which wants to believe that the underdog can just work really hard and be the best.

    PEDs are a convenient way to rectify this for all the underdogs who haven’t become the best, no matter how hard they work. Your article gives a much better picture of the reality.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      Thanks man. I made the mistake of writing this article before the next two. One’s about relative strength (and why Wilks scores are kind of BS in the first place), and one’s based on a bit of research about the gain in strength you can expect from a given gain in FFM or FFM/cm. The tl;dr of the second one is that a 10kg gain in muscle mass can be expected to increase your Wilks about 5-6%, and a gain in muscle mass can be expected to increase your Wilks by about 10-12%.

      I already knew that going into writing this article, so when all the numbers shook down around 10%, I was like “hey, this is pretty sweet that the data works out how it’s ‘supposed to’!” When I mentioned Bayesian priors, that’s what I had in mind.

      Reply

  29. Erik says

    Logic and experience would tell me that a natural lifter with a 300lbs bench and 400lbs squat would bench more than 330lbs and squat more than 440lbs if he was on steroids for a significant period of time. I don’t believe that all the tested lifters are actually drug free. If you were able to remove the steroid users that pass the tests, maybe the averaged out differences would be more like 15-20%. When it comes to world record natural lifters, maybe these guys are just outliers and the genetic 0.1%. Maybe a person with average genetics would increase their strength 25% or more with steroids. It’s more realistic for me to believe that a natural 300lbs bencher and 400lbs squatter would bench 400lbs and squat 550lbs if on steroids for a significant period of time. This opinion is not statistically backed in any way, just common sense and what I’ve seen in gyms for 35 years. Also, I don’t think steroids are as vital to performance in strength athletes under 181lbs than athletes over 242lbs. I assume if you removed the lower weight classes from the equation the 10% difference would be significantly higher. The 10% difference gotten from tested versus untested world record holders is basically comparing the 0.1% to the 0.1%. I’d be more interested in seeing the differences in more average non-steroid lifters versus more average steroid lifters. I wouldn’t be surprised if the differences were 20-25%.

    Reply

        • Greg Nuckols says

          It depends how much you take and ultimately how much extra muscle they allow you to build. In the article after the next one, I’ll go through how I arrived at this formula, but they difference they make in maximal strength (PL total) is roughly predicted by the formula 1607*(extra muscle built)/(height in cm).

          So, if you assume you can build, say, an extra 10kg of muscle with the use of steroids, and you’re 175cm tall, the absolute difference would be about 1607*10/175, or a roughly 92kg increase in the total.

          It’s impossible to say they make exactly an x% increase in maximum strength, but basically, the more muscle you gain, the larger the increase is, and the taller you are, the smaller the increase is.

          Reply

  30. Pete says

    Unless the “drug free” lifters have been drug free for their entire lives, this is completely meaningless. Once someone does even one cycle of steroids they have altered their physiology and your data set is invalid.

    Reply

      • Pete says

        No, I can’t, that’s my point. The comparison is pointless because the appropriate data set doesn’t exist. Any conclusion you come to will be skewed to appear that the benefit of steroids is much less than it really is, because almost all (if not all) of the people posting the “drug free” records have used steroids at some point in their lives.

        The only way to really know would be by taking a group of truly natural lifters (people who have never, ever used any steroids of any kind) who have reached their genetic limits, and then put them on steroids to see how much stronger they get.

        Reply

        • Greg Nuckols says

          I wrote this article series in the wrong order. There’s some research concerning the amount of strength you should expect to gain with a given increase in muscle mass (based on fat free mass per cm). I briefly mentioned prior assumptions in this article, and that research is where my prior assumptions come from. Basically, with a gain of 20kg of muscle, most people should expect their total to increase around 150kg (330lbs) if they’re already lifting at a pretty high level, but with the extra 20kg of FFM factored in, their Wilks improves (depending on how much they weighed to start with) anywhere from 7-12%. In other words, the WRs aren’t a perfect data set, but they DO actually demonstrate the type of spread you’d expect, unless steroids help people gain significantly more tan 20kg of FFM – they certainly may in some cases, but not most.

          Reply

  31. Chris M says

    Great article again, Greg. Data ofc is flawed (which isnt?) – but it so nicely evens out to 10% again and again (liked the Bayesian remark) – you gotta love it! Unfortunately, obviously even the (so I hope) above average readers of your blog dont get the difference “absolute STRENGTH gains” vs “relative STRENGTH gains”. Nor some other concepts as well. You were already pondering that – have you found a better order for the series? As I view your articles more as reference articles than news/blog posts, I think its worth giving thoughts about a good order, even if that means retracting this article and publishing it later. Or editing it even more. Your articles could stand for a couple of years given the scarcity of good ones about that topic – so probably worth it. 🙂

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      I think my next article will clear up the confusion. I shouldn’t have mentioned my priors without talking about why I have those priors in the first place.

      Basically, there’s a pretty linear relationship between FFM/cm and how much you can lift. So, we can pretty easily calculate how much you’d someone’s total to increase with a given increase in FFM, and then see how that would affect their Wilks score. If we assume steroids let you gain an extra 10kg of muscle (which is pretty realistic for people on fairly reasonable doses), then the resultant increase in FFM would boost your Wilks by about 3-6%. If we assume steroids let you gain an extra 20kg of muscle, then you’d get a 8-12% boost in Wilks.

      ^I should have laid all that out before writing this article. Oh well. No big deal in the grand scheme of things.

      Reply

  32. Brandon G says

    Don’t you think these numbers could be a bit off. Drug Tested doesn’t necessarily mean someone isn’t on drugs. A lot of lifters have the ability to pass these tests, even while still on drugs. All they have to do is take enough time off a certain drug, so that which ever drugs are tested for in that particular meet won’t show up on the test. But either way, because of that, these are probably going to be the best numbers you can get.

    Just wondering your thoughts on this observation.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      I definitely agree. That’s acknowledged in the article.

      Unfortunately, I wrote a couple articles in the wrong order. I’m working on one now that models expected strength increases based on a given increase in muscle, which supplies the theoretical support for the predictions in this article. I should have gotten that one out in the world first.

      Reply

      • Brandon G says

        Yeah I went through it again and saw what you’re talking about. Also saw you were barraged with my type of comments, sorry about that, hadn’t read the comments. Either way, not a bad article. There are statistical methods of asking someone a question they don’t want to give true answer to, like if they are on steroids while in a drug tested federation.

        Example.

        I ask 100 drug tested lifters if they are on steroids. I tell them to go into a room and flip a coin. If they get heads answer the question by writing the answer on a piece of paper. If they get tails, just write “yes” on the paper.

        Let’s say when the testing is over, all 100 athletes have flipped the coin and answered.

        We have 23 No’s and 77 Yes’s

        We take 50 of the 77 Yes’s out of our final total, because we assume half the time we would get tails(I.E. .5×100 = 50) and half of 100 is 50.

        So we are left with 23 No’s and 27 Yes’s.(Made up Sample, not insinuating anything so people don’t blow me up). So that would mean approximately 27/50, or 54%, of drug tested lifters are on steroids.

        Obviously you would want more than 100 if possible, but it would still be close. Wish someone would do this that had enough connections to ask enough people.

        Look forward to the new article!

        Reply

  33. Bill says

    10% is a joke.

    I understand that you can only work off the data you have, and you already acknowledged the flaws and assumptions, so why bother writing this article? Does this make drugged up lifters happy? Do they truly believe it’s their advanced genetics and meal prep?

    The muscular maturity on some of these young record setting, allegledy natty lifters is crazy. Most have already filled out there weight class while being very lean. Impossible for a just a few years of training.

    In preparation for the “where is your data?” retort, I present you with Lance Armstrong.

    Lance was the most drug tested person in the world for many years, in a sport that has not only advanced and frequent testing, but drug use is the norm.

    If a bunch of skinny guys on a bike are skirting international drug testing, do you really believe some little piss test after a meet is effective?

    I have friends who live the bodybuilder lifestyle: they bring meals with them to family and social events. They tell me about their drug use, yet they are constantly publicly claiming that it’s hard work and having nutrition on point to get those gains.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      The problem is, on top of the available data, there’s also a strong theoretical basis for only expecting it to be about 10%.

      Also, keep in mind (since you bring up bodybuilding), this article is about RELATIVE strength, not absolute strength. More on that here: http://www.strengtheory.com/whos-the-most-impressive-powerlifter/ I prefer allometric scaling for comparing relative strength, but Wilks works as well.

      There’s a pretty strong linear relationship between LBM per unit of height and how much someone can total (check out these two articles if you haven’t already: http://www.strengtheory.com/your-drug-free-muscle-and-strength-potential-part-1/ and http://www.strengtheory.com/your-drug-free-muscle-and-strength-potential-part-2/). Go ahead and play with those calculators all you want. In general, the only way you can get a predicted maximum allometric scaling score to increase more than 10% is by a huge gain in LBM (20kg or more) or a huge decrease in body fat. So yes, steroids definitely help you gain more muscle, and they may help you stay at a lower body fat level without compromising strength, but while they DO many a huge difference in terms of absolute strength, it takes someone who’s hyper-responsive to steroids to gain enough muscle that it makes a difference much larger than 10% in terms of relative strength.

      Reply

  35. James S H says

    The main issue with this article is that, if you believe the other articles on this site, none of those ‘tested’ athletes are actually drug-free. To have the wilks scores with those totals, they would have to be at or around the height/weight parameters outlined in the Nuckols article “Which Weight Class is Best for You.” If you compare those numbers to the article “Your Drug-Free Muscle and Strength Potential”, all of those competitive powerlifting bodies are outside the potential given there.

    tl;dr, according to other articles on this site, you can’t have a wilks of 550 at 181 lbs without being 5’4″, and being a lean 181 at 5’4″ is not possible naturally – barring a few genetic freaks maybe, and that could be the biggest variable in competitiveness at the end of the day.

    Just trying to spark debate, love the site and all the articles.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      Those were just meant to be rough guides. If I remember correctly, I said that you should expect to wind up round those numbers, plus or minus 15% or so. Personally, I know my height and lean mass, and my best total is about 10% higher than would be predicted.

      You can actually play around with the calculator in the weight class article to get an idea of how much you’d expect steroids to help you. Just put in your current height, weight, and body fat percentage, and total, and tell it how much weight you’d like to gain while keeping the same body composition. There, you can just make assumptions about how much steroids will help you out. If you say 10kg (which is, realistically, about what most people get out of them with pretty modest cycles), you wind up with an expected increase in relative strength of about 3-5%, depending on how much you weigh initially. If you assume 20kg (which is quite a lot; that’s about how much people get out of pretty aggressive steroid usage, but not IFBB level), then you’ll start getting close to 10%. If you assume 30kg (30kg over most peoples’ natty potential would make them pretty competitive at the pro level in BB), then you’re talking about increases up to about 15% if you’re pretty light to start with, or around 10% if you’re heavier to start with.

      Reply

  36. Robbie says

    So thinking aloud here, but how would you account for lifters like stan efferding and laura sweat, who have went from soccer/marathon runners to putting up all time records? Neither seemed genetically gifted in wilks but then end up totalling huge wilks points. I doubt someone would was said to be too skinny to play soccer (although possible if he had never lifted weights I guess) had a 500+ wilks total in him without gear to then add the 10-15%

    Also loving the series, I cant wait for the rest to come out!

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      I was small before I started lifting (basketball – my first meet I weighed in at around 155) and Layne Norton was a pretty small a middle distance runner if memory serves. I’ve put up a 515 Wilks, and I think he’s had a Wilks near or just over 500 as well. Josh Hancott is still pretty skinny, but he was super skinny before he started lifting, and I think he’s put up a Wilks in the high 400s or low 500s as well.

      Some people just have an easier time gaining muscle than others, and starting point doesn’t seem to be overly predictive. For example, this study found that high responders, as a group, were about the same size and strength when they started lifting as low responders: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21030674

      Reply

      • Robbie says

        Interesting thanks and makes sense!

        I though it may be possible that the more weight categories you go up the possibility for a higher percentage gain in wilks. But as you have mentioned above with Ed Coan this doesn’t seem the case! I also checked all on Amit Sapir’s squats current world record squats based off the max bodyweight possible for a wilks percentage and they are all basically the exact same wilks with only a 0.14 variance, which is crazy!!

        Reply

  37. Richard B says

    It is not strictly relevant to your excellent article but it maybe worth mentioning the short term and long term health risks to the user and bystanders of steroid users. These progress from trivial all the way up to sudden death. There is also the debasement of sporting excellence in the publics eye.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      I’ll definitely address that in a later article. The part that’s scariest to me (at least) is that in the past 3-5 years researchers are finding that they increase the rate of neurodegeneration pretty substantially.

      Reply

  38. Danny says

    I’ve started blasting and TRT/cruising now that I’m middle aged. I’m stronger in absolute terms, but I’m almost equally crappy in terms of my competitiveness as I climb up in weight classes as the blast and cruise pushes me further beyond my genetic limit.

    From my personal experience with anabolic aids in the year since this article came out, I have to agree with the premise: My overall competitiveness has only increased a tiny bit. My lifts-to-bodyweight ratio increases are still outstripping my bodyweight increases, but only by a bit.

    Reply

  39. Zharoon says

    You can’t compare world records in tested federations vs untested. There are waaaay more competitors in tested federations in general, also a good part of the world records in the tested federations have been set by roiders.
    Steroids users could also spend much more time peaking, keep more muscle while being injured, progress while dealoding, etc… There are way too many factors that you don’t include. I find it funny how I see several roid users like and share this article.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      “Also a good part of the world records in the tested federations have been set by roiders.”

      That’s entirely possible, as addressed in the article. However, for what it’s worth, when I exclude all of the records except those set by people I personally know well enough to be 99%+ sure they’re truly drug-free, it doesn’t meaningfully change things.

      “There are waaaay more competitors in tested federations in general”

      That’s not true historically. Until pretty recently, the majority of lifters competed untested – the IPF and its affiliates have just exploded in recent years. Furthermore, you have to account for selection pressure. There’s a higher barrier to entry for untested PL (i.e. willingness to use illegal and potentially harmful substances), and there are higher incentives (i.e. meets with substantial payouts), so I’d assume the average talent is somewhat higher in untested PL, which somewhat compensates for it’s smaller athlete pool (at least in contemporary PL).

      “Steroids users could also spend much more time peaking”

      Spending too long tapering negatively affects just about everyone. What’s more likely is that they’re stronger so they NEED to spend more time peaking.

      “keep more muscle while being injured”

      Unless you’re talking about full muscle ruptures or something of that nature, low-load training to work around injuries is a strong hypertrophic stimulus for natties as well.

      “progress while dealoding”

      If you NEED a deload, you should come back stronger after it, regardless of drug usage.

      “There are way too many factors that you don’t include.”

      All of those factors fundamentally relate to muscle mass – how effectively can you build/maintain/retain muscle in various contexts. Which is…well…what steroids are for.

      “I find it funny how I see several roid users like and share this article.”

      They’re the ones who’d have the most first-hand context for how accurate it is, no?

      Reply

  40. Zharoon says

    0% difference in bench press between tested and untested in 350 class? Please give me the name of a single person that has benched over 650 pounds tested. Spoto had done 722 pounds when this was written.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      Whether or not you believe his drug-free status, James Henderson held the all-time WR for a while. He competed in the IPF and (to the best of my knowledge) never failed a drug test.

      You may be right about missing Spoto. I was just going by the WRs in PLwatch, so maybe they hadn’t updated it yet (sometimes they can be really slow). Regardless, that would be a 1.7% difference, bumping the average gap for bench up to 9.26% from 9.11%, not materially affecting things.

      Reply

  42. TrenHardEatClen says

    Well, the most popular steroid used by Athletes is Winsrol.

    This contradicts everything you say in your article. Ben Johnson smashed the World Record 100m using Winstrol.

    It’s the favourite of Athletes because it gives explosive strength, kills fat, gives speed and doesn’t make them bigger.

    Other steroids like Trenbolone, a user can be lifting over 100Ibs more within 6 weeks and continue getting stronger by the week.

    This also destroys your article. Everybody who does steroids or has done know they give tremendous strength and stamina. TREMENDOUS. This is how they make people grow, by allowing people to lift heavier weight for more reps. This leads to superior volume, time under tension and recruits the most muscle fibre.

    Reply

      • Chris says

        And additionally, I´m seeing a “Have you read let alone understood the article at all?” here. 🙂
        I think we have different ways of understanding what is evidence and how to use it. My experience is that discussions with people who have such different epistemological premises are not very fruitful – but lets see.

        Reply

  43. Dimitar says

    Hi, Greg,

    I really love reading your articles so I decided to put my comment here.
    You are comparing people that use steroids with people that do not use them. But you don’t take into account what type of steroids they are using and what dosages, for how long, etc. I think that this could make a serious difference

    Reply

  44. chet says

    This is not science. There is no sample size. There is no controlled variable. There is no margin of error. I could go on, but I’m sure you already know what is lacking from this. At best, this is bro-science; pseudo-science. This article you call “research of available data” is for what purpose? To inform us that steroid users are stronger than naturals? To convince us that, based on largely flawed data and misinformation, steroids don’t give as much of an edge as is commonly thought?
    I know this is an old article, but to anyone reading, there is a big difference between a B.S. and a PhD. This paper was most likely written for steroid users to defend their positions, as well as help the author charge more per hour for his training because it gives the unsuspecting believers hope in their pursuit to achieve world powerlifting records naturally. Basically, it’s an 21st century infomercial to sell you books, videos, training guides and possible some supplements.

    Reply

    • Greg Nuckols says

      Hey Chet, you’ll notice that I went out of my way to discuss the drawbacks and limitations of all of the available data. I also never claimed that this article was a work of science; at best, it’s a synthesis of the available research and real-world data.

      If you’re aware of any research that counters my perspective here, I’d be happy to see it. I think dialogue about the evidence would be more productive than unfounded accusations about motives.

      Reply

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