I have been playing sports since I was a little child. I started skiing when I was three, playing baseball when I was five and have tried a wide variety of different sports. As I got older, the competition of these sports increased at incredible rates and with this added level of competition the pressure to become as fast and strong as possible increased as well. I played sports in high school to have fun and to pass the time so I was never too competitive. However, this made me start thinking about how easily kids could be pressured into thinking about using performance enhancing drugs, or PEDs.
Lately on the news I have seen numerous cases of athletes being penalized for using PEDs or other banned substances to improve their athletic performance in all different types of sports. Just a couple examples are the three superstars in Major League Baseball who were caught using steroids; Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez. Although both Clemens and Bonds denied using PEDs, Rodriguez confessed to using them. He claimed that he used anabolic steroids to recover quicker from an injury. In an article in the Scientific American, it says, “Anabolic steroids promote tissue growth, and, in particular, muscle generation – which is why they have become so popular in athletics.”
There are various short term benefits that steroids have on the human body that give an advantage to athletes. Taking anabolic steroids can increase your muscle and size without even lifting weights, but it is best used to help athletes work harder and then recover faster after their workout. They will then be able to train again the next day with less soreness and more productivity (Scientific American).
The results of testing steroid use in uncontrolled experiments have shown some jaw dropping effects on athletes. “Weight gains of thirty or forty pounds, coupled with thirty percent increases in strength, are not unusual. Such case studies lack credibility because of the absence of scientific controls. However, it would be foolish to completely disregard such observations because the “subjects” have been highly trained and motivated athletes” (Encyclopedia of Sports Medicine and Science). This shows that even though the experiments were not controlled, the results were astounding and showed that an athlete could gain such a large amount of weight and strength because of steroid use.
In a sport like baseball, upper body strength is a key component to both batters and pitchers. Players, like Rodriguez, need upper body strength to hit baseballs farther and hit more home runs. During the time that Rodriguez took anabolic steroids, he hit more home runs but his batting average did not increase (Scientific American). This was because batting average is normally associated with hand eye coordination and not brute strength. This would still definitely give him an advantage over his opponents.
So specifically for baseball, using PEDs or anabolic steroids will help you to a certain extent with your strength and size but not for your reactions and hand eye coordination. With this being said, it is similar to all other sports. For the sports that strength is needed PEDs would help your athletic performance, however they are banned in almost every sporting event around the world.
Sources:
Ever since I was a kid I have been somewhat annoyed with the fact that PEDs exist and are used. The thing that annoys me is not that they increase performance but that it creates inconsistencies within the league because some athletes are getting away with it while others aren’t doing it. This creates an uneven edge and for this reason it almost makes sense to just legalize them within sports. There are many analysts and organizations that argue this same thing, here is one for example.