Is everyone at the Gym on steroids?

I was at the gym today and it just seems like there are way too many guys lifting enormous weights or looking huge and ripped at the same time. If I eat a ton and work out I make good gains but some of these guys seem to be gaining too easily. Years ago I knew guys that got huge quick and they admitted they were on steroids.

For those guys that are in with the gym crowd are steroids really common even among non competitive lifters? I’m wondering if I should even bother expecting major gains like that if I’m not. I’ve heard guys openly discuss taking steroids at the gym so I’m wondering if its just common nowadays.

It is.

No, it’s not that common. But it may be at your gym. If one guy gets into it, and all his lifting palse see the gains he’s making, they will be prone to follow suit. Why don’t you just ak someone if you’re curious about their possible intake of said substances, rather than speculating about it here? They may tell you yes, they may say no and offer you some helpful tweaks to your training regimen and/or nutrition. Either way, no one on these boards can tell you.

A lot of guys at my gym openly talk about it. What cycle they are on etc.. I’ve had friends that swore they weren’t on steroids and then later admitted, while drunk, that they were. I just wanted to see if other people had similar experiences. Or if I’m the gym equivalent of the guy who only has friends hung like a horse and thinks everyone is.

There is a difference: people tends to say they are hung even if they are not, people tends to deny they are on roids even if they are.

Not at my gym.

I don’t know maybe I’m wrong but I suspect that nowadays with the internet recreational use of steroids, generic viagra,and PE are more widespread yet not publicly spoken about.

My gym has the free weights room separate from the pin loaded machines and cardio machines. The guys in the free weights room are always talking about steroids, what cycle their on and how long they’ve been doing it for.

There was conversation between three guys talking about a fourth guy who has been on a 2 year-long cycle without any bad side effects.

Tonnes of guys in my town do it.

The other day when I left college there was a huge mother fucker in the parking lot strutting backwards and forwards in a shirt that looked 3 sizes too small for him. His arms were about as thick as my waist (31” waist) and his shoulders were massive but he had matchstick legs. All his muscle was on the upper third of his body. You can’t do that without roids.

I chuckled to myself seeing how out of proportion he is until I saw his girlfriend. :faint: I felt depressed and thought I should go on roids so I can get myself a hot piece of ass like that.

Maybe some guys play with fire & get away with it, but I always had the impression that no matter how careful a steroid user was, there was always an eventual price to pay in some kind of damage to the body, whether it was the liver, hair loss, screwed up testosterone whatever. I am familiar with PCT and I have known guys that do it, but it always seemed like a bad idea in the long run.

I know some guys use it for healing purposes because it’s cheaper than HGH, so maybe that’s not as big of a deal. I know a guy that had Meningitis & a very weak spine, then used roids to heal himself & recover. However, he got addicted & kept using more to get bigger & bigger.

I figure heavy users like the guy you mentioned eventually end up with some kind of damage to their body. Even if you could get away with it long term, I question whether its worth the risk of getting bitch tits, shrunken balls, hair on your forehead, or strange patches of acne… I know some types of roids are supposedly safer than others, but since they are illegal or quasi legal in so many places, guys probably never know if what they are getting is the real deal (unless they are lucky enough to get it as a prescription).

Isn’t creatine a more natural alternative to steriods?

I hear a lot of guys at the gym talk about it. Doesn’t it force your muscles to retain more water, and thus get bigger?

I had two steroid shots in my eye to cure a swolen retina. They didn’t help the retina nor did my eye get bigger.

No. But it is the most widely used and most researched supplement in history, so go ahead and google it and see what you can learn outside od Thunder’s. There is no shortage of information out there.

Creatine only helps you heal slightly faster when used alone—it’s marginal, but helpful when combined with other things like a good diet, EFAs, Whey Protein, L-Glutamine etc. In fact, I took pure creatine for the first time around 14 years ago when it was very new. Now you can get it with dextrose mixed in & supposedly you don’t need to cycle it anymore. With pure creatine you had to go through a loading phase & cycle on & off in 28 day cycles.

Adding Glutamine to the line-up helps me heal several times faster. Its pretty harmless (its just an amino acid). I have found that if I am really sore, I can take glutamine with water ever 3-6 hours and that helps me heal incredibly fast. I don’t know the physiology behind this, but it works.

Anyway, you can do a lot with natural body building, but I think some guys get impatient & want instant results, so they resort to steroids. Someone taking steroids would probably be using creatine, protein & other supplements as well (unless they really had no idea what they were doing).

If a guy really knows what he’s doing, adding roids probably gives ridiculously good results… those guys gain so fast they sometimes rip tendons (since the muscle tissue can grow so much faster than tendon strength can increase).

This is sort of a tangent, but I always wondered how power lifters could bench 600+lbs and not rip something…

Yes it is. I have dabbled in it, as have many of my friends. It is so obvious who is on and who is not. One exception is black guys. I have trouble determining if they are on or not.

I don’t get it, “yes it is” doesn’t make much sense. :)

On topic, well some probably do use steroids, but I would always take the natural route, you will gain more respect that way, for yourself at least.