Bodybuilding:

A Sport That Encourages Illegal Behavior?

by Shiloe Steinmetz

Muscle magazines typically feature a select group of mass monsters who usually place the highest in the most publicized contests, such as the Mr. Olympia. Those mass monsters are glorified and promoted heavily in magazines. Images and ads that appear in magazines inspire some people to pursue bodybuilding as a career in hopes of achieving some type of celebrity status and wealth. Media exposure and perceived income through endorsements are what feed those hopes. Unfortunately, the images typically seen in widely circulated magazines are of physiques that can never be achieved without the use of drugs like anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (which are illegal to sell, buy, possess or use without a medical doctor’s prescription).

Unfortunately, many in the physique or supplement industry can make more money from displaying freakier sized athletes at events, or by having those athletes endorse products and appear in ads. Magazines, supplement companies and bodybuilding federations that don’t concern themselves with the use of illegal substances all get too much money from the sport to really address the problem with illegal drug use, so they turn a blind eye and ignore it altogether.

The folks who begin to bodybuild to obtain celebrity status and wealth eventually discover that in order to compete with the physiques they see in the magazines, they must take drugs. The ones who choose to do so end up breaking the law by buying, possessing, and using illegal drugs.

With bodybuilding federations that reward drug induced appearances, magazines that glorify those appearances, and supplement companies that reward those appearances with endorsement deals, the bodybuilding industry actually encourages illegal behavior rather than discourages it. What a shameful state for an industry to be in.

Shiloe Steinmetz R.Ph., C.P.T.
www.teamsteinmetz.com