James Harrison....weightlifting animal....

[slashsteel]

just remember as much as it is a chance in your mind he takes these performance enhancing drugs, there is a equal chance he doesn't.

For how hard Harrison works out as was mentioned by another poster. I would tend to think why would he take a risk when he obviously has the crazy work ethic to be able to avoid them.

This has been a interesting debate one that will end with either party not knowing.

 

[Wingman]

Exactly Del!! and consider this. A large percent of NFL players comes from impoverished backgrounds. Now a very small percentage of players actually makes the NFL out of the large numbers in NCAA. So if your choice was to go back to difficult financial prospects or reach just a little farther, What would you do?

So I guess you guys are saying the cheatriots are likely cheating in more ways than we thought. And based on this logic they have been deflating footballs since the fumbles stopped.

 

[Wingman]

Boy, that's the head in the sand opinion of performance enhancing drugs.

The NFL loves fans like you.

The "testing" you seem to say is so stringent and catches everyone is a joke. Has been forever. Not even close to Olympic standards and those aren't really where they should be (if you think there is no PED's in the Olympics because they "test" you aren't paying attention).

There is only ONE way to really do effective drug testing and that is to take blood from a person who is perfectly clean (and how/when we do that is up to debate) for about 3-4 months on a regular schedule and create a baseline of what that person's "blood" looks like and then every test after that has to be close to that baseline. It has to be blood tests.

The current urine test is known to have a wide range, so the test requires an absurd "out of range" testosterone level to trigger a positive test. Something like FOUR times the normal testosterone ratio for your normal everyday 25 year old.

The truth is, there is no reason for an athlete NOT to try and monitor and increase his testosterone on a small scale (even twice the testosterone would provide a significant increase in muscle production and recovery). Plus the use of HGH (which is not being tested for) works best when combined with some form of low-level increases in testosterone.

I suspect over 50% of all NFL athletes are doing some type of low level testosterone boosters along with some type of growth hormone. It's all such a perfect science now that cocktails of creams, testosterone boosters, HGH, supplements and diet can yield HUGE results. And there are nefarious individuals and companies that hide behind the supplement industry (with no oversight) and are basically just human chemists that know exactly what really works and can get past the tests.

Again if what you say is in any way accurate your love of statistics should result in more of them being caught than are. The testing has been accurate enough to catch guys with trace elements of drugs from over the counter supplements in the past. Testing for these compounds will show chemicals in the body that are not naturally occurring. I watched a documentary on it in sports in general last night actually. It is surprising to see how different sports would need different combinations and amounts of these artificial supplements to produce different results. It might surprise you but the small amounts you seem to think would be beneficial would not likely do much for the type of things football players would like to achieve, they might help distance runners or bicyclists. One of the things discussed was the fact that in some cases these guys would be having their levels of hormone increased by more than 100 times the amount normally seen. These numbers were provided by past heavy juicers and medical doctors who went into detail about how all this stuff works.

 

[SteelerSask2]

When you look at baseball home runs, Lance Armstrong, Many and I mean many Olympians, if you don't get very skeptical of improvements in human performance, I think it is very naive.

 

[Wingman]

When you look at baseball home runs, Lance Armstrong, Many and I mean many Olympians, if you don't get very skeptical of improvements in human performance, I think it is very naive.

Guys and gals get caught and banned. In the video I watched another bicyclist got caught in the tour de France. I thought they were supposed to do it in a panzer. Two Olympic athletes were mentioned and they lost their medals and were banned. Now those are just the ones they talked about in the video. Not all that long ago a coach was suspended for using HGH and it is very likely he was taking a very small amount compared to what a professional athlete would need. Masking agents get suspensions in football. Having coached some youngsters for a short time it is very easy to see some massive differences in kids in the sport of football and their natural abilities. Some kids are just very strong naturally. When these kids really apply themselves they quickly reach high levels of performance. Some stay lazy and they don't get very far past what they have naturally. If you look at the professional athlete these men and women are already an anomaly compared to the general population so out of a group that is far less than one percent of the population and selected based on some very unusual genetic traits it is not to hard to expect some performance that does not look like it is possible to be attained by most people.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

Here is why I disagree. Tony Manderich played 24- 12 years ago. He was a complete juice monster. His brother played in the CFL and was called John the Juice. His brother died in his early 30's of cancer linked to Steroid use. Now guys are ROUTINELY Tony Manderich's size in the NFL. You can talk all you want about modern training and nutrition. And again it isn't steroids. Its modern PED's in many forms and supplements that do a hell of a lot more than the old steroids did.

Maderich was on 'roids in college. He had to stop or do less in the NFL because they tested at the time but college didn't. That's why he was a monster in college but was never better than average in the NFL.

 

[SteelerSask2]

Point is this Ron. Manderich was a complete juice monster. But if he played now he wouldn't stand out at all in terms of size. So like I said it's kind of hard to believe these guys are just all natural.