As a 35 year fitness veteran I have worked with thousands of athletes, some of them using steroids.
Many of these athletes believe that this is the only way to get results.
The fact is that intelligent training can closely match the results of steroid use without the side effects.
There is a wealth of information available in the area of sports science explaining how to naturally optimize the body's ability to produce testosterone, estrogen, and growth hormone and how to train more effectively.
Unfortunately athletes are still not tapping into this knowledge as is evident by the pervading paradigm amongst serious athletes, recreational athletes, and the general population of fitness enthusiasts that the more they train, the better they will perform.
This mentality can eventually lead to decrements in performance through overtraining syndrome (OTS) which is very prevalent in sports today and unfortunately also very common in young athletes, where it tends to manifest in the form of increased injury rates.
I believe this need to recover from overtraining and pressure to perform invites steroid use.
Understanding that exercise even slightly in excess of our adaptive capacity will result in overtraining prompted me to experiment with programs that would optimize results and performance by enhancing the recovery ability of the body.
A new training system I developed (3 Cycle Training) embraces quality over quantity.
This program explains how to create a metabolic stimulus to the body (the catabolic phase) with less volume of work.
This allows for a more effective recovery cycle (anabolic phase) as you are not overtaxing the body's ability to adapt.
If an athlete is getting results because he or she is not in a catabolic state all the time, the need for steroids is eliminated.
In my book 2-Days to Fitness I redefine what effective exercise is.
In fact I go so far as to say that most every thing you know about exercise is wrong!