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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
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2 1 - 0 3 - 2 0 0 5 Athletes aren't only source of steroid problem
March 21, 2005
Congresswoman Diane Watson of California held up a Sports Illustrated cover photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the mighty man looking tough and smoking a cigar. "My governor,'' she said derisively. This was midway through the House Committee on Government Reform hearing on baseball and steroids last Thursday in Washington. America needs to get a grip on steroid abuse among athletes and young people, Watson warned, "or our children will be impressed by this!'' Seems they already are. More than half a million high school students have tried steroids, triple the number from just a decade ago. Why do they use the illegal and often harmful muscle-building drugs? Lots of reasons, not the least of which would be because a bunch of their sporting heroes seem to have used something to get the caveman -- and cavewoman -- physiques and strength they have. And look what steroids have done for Ah-nold! Not only is he a multimillionaire, high-ranking public official, former bodybuilding champ and movie star, he is also the erstwhile chairman, during George H.W. Bush's term, of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sport. That he has admitted his own steroid use to achieve his success is a matter of record. So what should a kid think? Being like Arnie means being fit and strong and powerful (like a major-leaguer) and ... rich! As the hearings droned on, and the subpoenaed major-league baseball players and executives said little and apologized for less, the congressional members grew more and more frustrated. The root of the performance-enhancing drug problem twisted around all these big jocks, yes, but it also somehow came from the essence of modern culture. One of the representatives brought up the beauty and biceps and botox society we live in. How did it all fit?, he asked. It had to all fit. You would have thought the ballplayers had been asked about quark theory, their bulbs shined so dimly. But the connectedness lurked. The mixed messages kids get are pretty darned mixed. Current President Bush said in a State of the Union address that we need to stamp out steroid use. But he owned the Texas Rangers when the biggest juicer of all -- Jose Canseco -- was on his team. GW didn't seem to notice that. Then there was Schwarzenegger, the ambitious native Austrian who would like to see birth laws changed so he can be president. "I would love to see him here, to testify,'' Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings told me during a recess. "But he would never do it.'' Schwarzenegger's message carries on, however.
In this month's Muscle & Fitness magazine, with the typical shaved-bodied, grotesquely over-pumped musclehead on the cover -- a lantern-jawed freak
There was the executive's usual page-long editorial -- "by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger'' -- extolling "the Muscle & Fitness and Flex [the other Joe Weider mag] lifestyle.'' From the looks of the glossy rag, that lifestyle consists mainly of ingesting things like "THE ONLY 'REAL' BAD-ASS ANABOLIC STACK LEFT STANDING AFTER THE BAN,'' grimacing while lifting endless amounts of weights and trying to get rid of pesky body stubble. Metal goons with arms so oddly air-hosed that they could not touch a fly on their shoulder or scratch the backs of their necks leer obscenely at the camera like greased chicken parts. Everything in the magazine reeks of the very nearly illegal and the totally obsessed. Take Vitrix, screams a full-page ad, "the Natural Testosterone Stimulator.'' Or take "ON-Cycle,'' which is "guaranteed to blow your mind with endless growth of incredibly huge and shredded muscle mass!'' The supplement creates "Extreme STEROID receptor stimulation!'' The ads go on and on, and they are virtually indistinguishable from the editorial content, all of which is sanctioned by the Terminator himself. "If you have old copies of Muscle & Fitness or Flex,'' Schwarzenegger writes, "why not donate them to a local youth center?'' Why not? Get those young, insecure kids thinking that the magazines that "changed my life,'' will change theirs, too. The iron-pumping thing is so incestuous that old Joe Weider not only sponsors the awards that his photo creatures aspire to, he also provides their promotion. And there is, of course, the Muscle & Fitness philosophy, stated like a mantra in small print. "Muscle is the hallmark of health and fitness. ... Superior muscular development, along with its visual appeal, represents a high state of fat-free health. Fitness represents muscle in action, the physiology of exercise that helps reduce the multiple risk factors so prevalent in our modern world.'' I have never seen a study linking great muscle mass to health. But if Ah-nold says so, who are we to doubt? |
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