Steroid Use In The Fitness Industry | ft. Will Tennyson

**Derek** (0:00)
I kind of wanted to talk to you about common, I guess I'm gonna call them common excuses that people give for going on steroids. The first one is, which I heard a lot is, I've hit my natural limit. So the next step is just obviously, I'm just gonna go on. So what percentage of people do you think actually have achieved that natural limit?

**Will Tennyson** (0:21)
I think that's tough because I guess if you want to say the actual natural limit, I think pretty much everyone can incrementally eke out progress by further optimizing. So I would say it's pretty close to zero. But I would say with the context of probably what you're actually asking, which is like 95 to 99% and what people actually would consider their ceiling, I would still say it's like single digit percentage, probably. And a lot of people, when they think they've reached their limit, it's often coming from a naive point of view whereby they have not actually optimized training diet, especially sleep hygiene. Like I see a lot of people talking on the internet about training and diet, which is critical, obviously. But sleep often goes heavily neglected to a point that it leads to hypercortisolemia, low testosterone or lower testosterone, inhibited fat loss, body comp, just not as good as it could be by a significant margin. So yeah, I think a lot of people are leaving a bit, a fair bit on the table before they go the enhanced route. And I'm guilty of that as well. I started earlier than I should have.

**Derek** (1:34)
It's just like the prime example of impatience, I would assume. Just assuming that you already max out the natty.

**Will Tennyson** (1:40)
It's tough because for some people who are competitive, if you're actually stepping on stage, you only have so many years that you can actually have high resilience to the drugs as well. So there is absolutely an aspect of when you are younger, you can tolerate drugs better than if you are, somebody deciding to gain a bunch of muscle and take a bunch of steroids at 40 something years old, probably not going to get away with it as unscathed as somebody who is 21 So there's absolutely an argument to be made that if you're going to try and compete or do something at a level that essentially requires it, the youth component is a big factor in favor potentially.
But to that same token, again, there's a lot of people that are getting on it for recreational purposes or even for competitive that are often deluding themselves or otherwise trying to convince themselves why it's justified to take it when maybe they haven't, like you said, impatience is a huge factor for sure.

**Derek** (2:38)
Right. The next one I wanted to touch on was a lot of people have been going like, oh, I'm just I'm doing it safely. So is it actually possible to ever do steroids safely?

**Will Tennyson** (2:50)
The question presumably is based on if you're going to do like a cycle or push past what you can naturally produce. Because in a medical context, you know, there's definitely ROI that is probably safer than the alternative of not doing it. If you're hypogonadal, low T, or even menopausal women, like estrogen is a steroid too, if you don't do that, you could argue you're in heightened cognitive decline territory, heart risk, et cetera. But for people who are like, I'm a high functioning, healthy, otherwise like dialed, high vitality guy, is there a way to push my test levels to 3000 nanograms per deciliter and have it be completely risk free? No, it's impossible, unfortunately. Otherwise, I think a lot more people would be doing it for sure. So at some degree, there is impossible to avoid neurotoxicity, which is not very often talked about. So literal cognitive decline that is accelerated through androgen exposure, cardiovascular risk, the laundry list of side effects that, I'm assuming you guys who are watching are all pretty familiar with. It's impossible to avoid entirely to some magnitude though, because you can have people who smoke and live to 100 plus.
There is a big, unfortunately, genetic predisposition factor here, whereby if you are in a highly, if you're highly resilient as an individual, you could argue it's essentially risk-free from a drug response standpoint, because maybe you blasting tons of stuff still outlives a guy who does everything perfectly naturally. That's certainly possible. It's just unlikely that you're that guy.

**Derek** (4:39)
Yeah.

**Will Tennyson** (4:40)
So, yeah.

**Derek** (4:42)
Yeah. I also think when it comes to doing things like, quote unquote, safely, people solely just talk about the dose. And does a low dose necessarily mean it's safer? Or is there still equal risk even with the higher doses?