The Ol Cop Out

by: Pm - April 15th, 2008

We’ve heard it, seen it… even felt it. The people who so quickly diminish our hard-fought efforts to be lean, strong, big, and well proportioned. Often, our achievements are written off as “gifts” of good genetics. Sometimes, they’ll accuse us of using steroids or other performance enhancing drugs. Other times, they attempt to minimize our efforts as an addiction, or even a sickness. Naturally, these are the people who typically don’t workout and eat well because it cuts into their television and drinking time – and, because it requires that they get off of the couch and break a sweat once and a while.

Peter McGough wrote a great related piece about this phenomenon in this month’s (May ’08) FLEX magazine. In the article titled “FLEX DOESN’T PUBLICISE DRUGS – HERE’S WHY” McGough explains that while illegal performance enhancing drugs are, sadly, a part of every sport – from cycling, swimming & sprinting to team sports and bodybuilding – many in the media would have you think that hard work and intelligent eating were secondary to drugs.

Few will deny that drugs improve performance and alter the appearance of a person’s physique, but McGough is correct when he asserts that it took Dorian Yates more than a secret [illicit] combo to accumulate six consecutive Mr. O titles. He goes on to say that hard work, supreme tenacity, genetics, and drive are what separates the true champions like Ronnie Coleman from the self-proclaimed “gurus” like Dan Duchaine, who despite using “every steroid combo he could think of, never got to be more than 180 pounds.” McGough’s jab at the “in-house steroid advisors writing for the other bodybuilding magazines” is also dead on. Just how many of those guys have you ever seen collecting Sandows or magazine covers lately?

I wholeheartedly agree. While I’m proud to say that I’ve never used steroids or other drugs, I don’t dismiss the hard-work of athletes who choose to go this route either.

As McGough suggests, I read the magazines (including FLEX) for inspiration and to see what nutrition strategies and training techniques I can garner from the world-class athletes inside. Likewise, I’ve learned to take verbal and non-verbal signals, about what I do and how I look, as a compliment. If someone chooses to convince him or herself that I’m bigger, leaner, or stronger than them because I inject/swallow something that ends with “-sterone”, “hormone”, “-bol” or that I just had better parents, so be it. In the end, I know that I was simply more willing to learned what needed to be learned, eat (and not eat) what I needed to, and pay my dues at the gym. No Cop Outs Here.

…till next time.

Happy Heaving,

PM

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