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I think it’s rather obvious that he’s on steroids. It would be physiologically impossible to maintain that workload, body fat level, and strength level without steroids. As any strength athlete will tell you, the harder you train, the more your strength actually declines. When you look at any drug free athlete, or even athletes who are simply off cycle, when training volume increases you experience a large reduction in power output. This is just basic biochemistry as the body is overtaxed. Then, when you remove that stressor and recover, the body “overcompensates” (sorry to steal a term from Charles Poliquin), and you will peak.
The fact that Froning is able to perform so much work at near max weights year round, and still perform on game day should be enough to tell you that he’s juiced to the gills. The fact that he carries so much muscle mass for his height and frame with such low body fat year round is also unsustainable without the use of stimulants as well as steroids.
Even consider how much muscle mass he has gained since he first popped up on the CF radar. Khalipa is another prime example. An athlete who has been training for years simply cannot just pack on 20 pounds of muscle in a year without chemical assistance. It’s the law of diminishing returns. This is why it’s so much more fun to be a beginner. The changes come rapidly and consistently.
Why do think people are talking about “adrenal fatigue” so much within the CF community lately?
I think people are likely upset at the accusation that Froning uses steroids because they want to believe in the “magic” that is Crossfit. But they shouldn’t be upset. It would be naive to think that steroids haven’t found their way into every sport. The fact that no one tests positive, even a false positive, is a statistical impossibility. So, right there, it tells you that they’re not actually testing. You honestly believe that no one took a pre-workout with 1,3 dimeth in it? And why should they bother drug testing? The World’s Strongest Man competition doesn’t drug test. I’ve been arguing for the legitimization and legalization of steroid use in sports for years. It’s no different than smoking pot, if you ban it, people will still do it. It takes nothing away from Froning’s performance, he’s no less of an athlete for using every resource available to improve his game.
If it makes more sense, compare it to doing a Bulgarian weightlifting program. Froning’s training volume is absurd. If the only athletes who can actually stay on a Bulgarian program are those that are taking “restoratives,” why then would anyone assume that Froning is somehow genetically superior to all the Olympians and world record holders who used steroids in order to maintain their massive training loads?
Maybe Froning is 1 in 6 billion, that special snowflake. But the idea that the entire field of competitors all just happen to be superhuman freaks despite the fact that NONE of them had successful careers as professional athletes is unlikely.
I would like to make one thing clear, absolutely clear, I’m not criticizing Rich Froning. I am genuinely surprised by the reaction that people have over this. No one was freaking out over Klokov being accused of using steroids. It’s just accepted that he does, and no one really gets emotionally charged over it. If anything, I would actually say that he’s intelligent for using steroids properly. There is a large volume of research that shows that certain steroids (not nandrolone and stanozolol) can actually be beneficial to health. Testosterone has been shown to be effective for treating diabetes. Can we please look past the undeserved stigma that the media has put on steroids to have an intelligent discussion? I am making NO moral judgement here, purely scientific, and from a scientific standpoint, steroids improve healing, decrease injury rates, and even improve cholesterol and glucose levels.
You are free to believe whatever you like, and I’m not even trying to convince you whether or not he uses them, because honestly, I don’t actually care if he does, and in fact, if Crossfit wants to be a legitimate sport, then they should realize that steroid use is going to happen alot. Especially when there is good money to be won. I would do it. No question. You put a solid amount of prize money up, you better believe people will do anything to win it.
I never blame or criticize athletes for using steroids. Just put it in a different light and it’s easy to see why. If I work to support my family, and I’m making $12 million a year to play a sport, of course I’m going to take and do anything I can to ensure that I continue to make that income for as long as I can. Tell me honestly that you wouldn’t take steroids for a million dollars. There are alot worse things that people would do for a million bucks.
Drug testing proves nothing. Even in the Olympics. Look at the testing. For example, it looks at the ratio of epitestosterone to testosterone. A normal level is 1 to 1. Yet, drug testing allows up a 4 to 1 ratio. That’d be like the difference of having a 1,000 ng/dL T level vs. a 4,000 ng/dL T level, and you’d still be considered clean. There are also allowable levels of metabolites like nandrolone (deca durabolin) that are far beyond any level that someone could naturally have. Drug testing would prove nothing unfortunately.
And like I also pointed out, the fact that NONE of the CF athletes tested positive for anything including 1,3 dimeth (methylhexamine) pretty much says that they didn’t test at all because 0.00% is a statistical impossibility. You would expect to have at least a certain percentage of false positives even. But this has already been proven by much more intelligent people than myself. The idea of 100% or perfect is not a reality, even with the highest quality drug testing, nothing is 100% accurate even on clean athletes.
… When the workload and training volume reaches a point of supraphysiological levels, it only makes sense to accept that there is another “variable” in play.
I’ll give you an experiment to try. Attempt to match Froning’s training volume. See how long you can sustain it for, and see how long it takes before your performance levels start going backwards. I’m not challenging you to prove you wrong, I’m just encouraging you to try it and find out for yourself if it is sustainable without any “assistance.”
Again, I’m not passing a moral judgement, and it takes NOTHING away from him. I mean, steroids in sports do not make the athlete. You could take all the steroids in the world, and you’d never outrun Usain Bolt or out perform Barry Bonds. Steroids do not make you talented. They just allow you to train more volume and more often. Whether or not an athlete uses steroids takes nothing away from their accomplishments. So, again, I’m sorry if this is making you question your beliefs, and I’m truly surprised that people are taking it so personally. I was actually just discounting how casually another commenter just put “steroids” as a response, as if it even needed to be said.
Sure, there is a possibility that Froning is an absolute genetic outlier. I would never say that there is no chance whatsoever. I was 24 once too. I did many things that I could not do now. However, there is a limit to human physiology, and I’m just basing my educated guess off of 20 years of working with athletes. I work very closely with endocrinologists. There is a general acceptance in the medical field that when working with athletes (serious athletes mind you) they’ve all used steroids at some point in time. Could Froning be that rare exception? I suppose anything is possible, but I’ve worked with pro athletes, primarily NFL and MLB, and I’ve never seen even a 22 year old with that kind of work capacity year round.
Consider other athletes’ training for comparison. The guys at Westside Barbell don’t lift as much volume as Froning, and they openly admit to using steroids. You will never hear Louie Simmons boast about being drug free. Powerlifters just accept that steroid use is part of the sport. They have a very progressive stance on drug use. But the point I’m getting at here is that it’s a little hard to believe that Rich Froning is somehow genetically superior to so many great athletes. I mean, just look at all the amazing athletes who have popped positive for steroids. Their training programs, even when augmented with performance enhancing drugs, still don’t match the volume of Froning’s training. So, Froning is so genetically superior that he has an even larger work capacity than professional athletes using PEDs? Why isn’t Froning a Navy SEAL or something?
Just for argument’s sake, if Froning is truly this incredible athlete, why isn’t he competing in a real sport where he could make far more money? I mean, an athlete with his level of ability should easily be able to pick up a sport and go pro. He could do bobsled, play running back, track and field, weightlifting. I mean, if he has the capacity to train that much, he could pass Donny Shankle up in no time.
If he’s not using “restoratives” (I like that term better than steroids to be honest), then he’s lying about his workouts. Which actually seems the most likely explanation. I mean, let’s consider this, they’re going to come and do an interview where they tape you and put this out there for everyone to see. You want to make yourself look as good as possible, so you go all out, do as many crazy hard workouts as you can in a day, and show everyone how tough you are. When in reality, you don’t train like that every single day.
That would be the most sensible explanation if we were going to assume that he does not use steroids.
Flip side, forget the workload and the improbability of being able to recover from that much work all the time, and let’s forget the physiology. Let’s just look at body comp. I’ll leave it to someone else to better explain it:2010 - Leangains… Basically, after people reach a certain level of muscle mass, you would need some “chemical assistance” to overcome the body’s myostatin and resistance to gaining muscle. Further, you would be hard pressed to maintain that bodyfat level year round drug free as well. Pat Sherwood talked alot of sense when he discussed “The Idiot Suit.”
Or, if you prefer biochem, Eric Auciello explained:"This type of hard effort training primarily uses the glycolytic anaerobic system, where muscle glycogen and lactate is used to produce fuel. An unfortunate byproduct of this type of exercise is the accumulation of hydrogen ionic waste, which leads to toxic acidosis and the systemic micro trauma of tissues.
These failures cause cellular damage (DOMS anyone?) making it extremely difficult to recover from the anaerobic training stimulus, possibly costing the athlete a valuable training session. This activity is really sub-maximal when we consider glycolytic energy production only produces two ATP per each molecule of glucose.(1)
This leads back to my original point: the hard effort crowd is not training their fat-burning engines. Their daily efforts are constantly using and replenishing the easily accessed glycogen stores and blood glucose, not fat.
This is a problem because when our blood glucose levels drop, we crash. The human body senses an overwhelming fatigue and begins attempting to top off the tank by shunting blood from the gut to our limbs, often leading to unpleasant side effects like vomiting. This is one of the many unhealthy aspects of hard-effort training."
It would be “unlikely” that someone could train like that year round. So, either he uses something to overcome the physiology that accompanies this style of training OR he doesn’t actually train like he says he does. Let me share something random with you. A doctor at the University of Pittsburgh did blood testing on candidates of the Army’s Ranger School. What he found was that for 100% of the candidates, their testosterone was so low from the excessive training that they would be declared clinically hypogonadal. This is not a bunch of lazy, sit on the couch, Call of Duty warriors here. These are some of the fittest men in America, and if none of them can train all day without suffering negative effects and a drop in performance, then how does Froning do it drug free?
Is it possible that he truly is just that much better than everyone else? Sure, it’s possible, but it’s not very probable. One would assume that if he is truly that genetically superior, then he was a stand-out athlete in high school, played for a D1 school, and went pro after college. I’ve seen the genetic freaks. They lettered in every sport they played, and often had offers to multiple colleges for multiple sports.
Again, I’m genuinely shocked by how much people want to believe that he is drug free. I didn’t realize how popular he is. I’m not trying to convince anyone, if you want to believe he’s drug free, well, keep on believing it. I was just defending my position, a position which I am confident in.
As for him being Christian, I don’t see why that would stop him from using steroids. It’s not a sin to use steroids. And like I said earlier, and it’s worth reiterating, judicious use of steroids is not only beneficial to an athlete, but also intelligent. The research supports it.
If you can look past the media bias that has been given to steroids for a moment, consider Floyd Landis. He had to have hip surgery. They resurfaced his hip, and just a couple months later, he wins the Tour de France. Now, that’s superhuman. Most people take at least 6 months to recover from a surgery like that. If he comes back to win the Tour de France just a couple months later, how long was his layoff before getting back to training? A week? And that’s a good thing. I’m tired of seeing steroids painted in a negative light and their dangers being grossly overstated and exaggerated.
Steroids carry the potential to not only help injuries heal, but to heal better. Why would you not use every resource available to improve the quality of life for people? Why should Floyd Landis be the only person who benefits from steroid use following hip surgery? Why not my grandfather? But I digress.
You state that you think that Lance Armstrong used steroids because there was a sudden change in his performance, well, then by that logic, most of the CF Games competitors would be guilty of steroid use as well. Look how many people just blew up and arrived on scene. And their performance is constantly improving by leaps and bounds. Just look at how much Annie Sakamoto blew up. That is not the same girl from all the old CF videos.
Ask yourself this question, what was Rich Froning doing before becoming Crossfit royalty?
I have a solution to all this. Crossfit, which has more than enough money to do this, could be the first organization to actually instate a real drug testing policy. Not one of those flimsy ones where you can get away some use, but a real policy where you can’t get away with anything. No more margins of epitestosterone to testosterone. Enough with the urine testing that everyone has long since figured out how to pass. Blood testing is the way to go. Make it random, but make it consistent. Each athlete gets tested quarterly, the date and time is random. And then at the Games, everyone gives a sample before the Games start, and then a second sample immediately after finishing the last event. Easy. And it would create an indisputable argument for “drug free competition” that even the Olympics does not come close to. Remember, they allow you to have up to 4 times the normal levels in your system before considering your sample to be positive. It’s a joke to anyone who works in endocrinology for a living.[/quote]
Thanks for that info, great read.
