Banned Substances

I'm curious if you guys think that steroids and or growth hormone would improve the performance of gymnasts, or would they lead to too much excess size?

Not that I would try either (for health reasons), just curious.

definitely!!!

More anabolic environment=more intense training.

About building muscles: For that is just training.

Do you mean that competitors in a cycling don't use steroids, hormones and other stuff???And they don't have much muscles....

I wouldn't be worried about excessive size, but the thing is steroids will not help you with joint preparation, and many of these skills are done over and over strength is there as a backup, muscling skills during a routine can lead to problems, steroids would higher the standards but I think not by much.

Too much hypertrophy for the rings can inhibit skills and flexibility for pommel horse. Generally as gymnasts and coaches, we are fighting hypertrophy not striving for it. Muscle hypertrophy is necessary to a point depending on event or apparatus but nowhere near bodybuilders.

Some gymnasts who do all around or pommel and rings will back off rings a bit so their pommel doesn't suffer by getting too big up top. If memory serves, Paul Hamm did or said something to this effect.

It's always why we pretty much see either rings or pommel horse specialists ( also due to the difficulty of the event ) besides tumbling or vaulting specialists and some high bar specialists. Different modalities to each event.

someone should have told this to yuri van gelder seriously though that guy is huge and a great ringman too!

I'm not sure about Yuri Van Gelder, he's big, but so is every other ring specialist, he's great at rings and works hard and you can certainly see that by the size of his arms and his lats.

kbryk said:

I'm not sure about Yuri Van Gelder, he's big, but so is every other ring specialist, he's great at rings and works hard and you can certainly see that by the size of his arms and his lats.

I always thought his arms are big, but when I saw him in person shirtless then you see how big lats he has.

Yea they are huge, my lats are alright sized too compared to all my friends I'm sort of a pull up/climber guy so they are all jealous; but I don't have a big puffy chest.

Yuris just a big guy, I'm sure somewhere in his past he floated around some stuff, creatine, maybe steroids.

creatine is not doping (amino acid in every living thing- you're eating it to by eating meat), other stuff I don't know and it's not that big to say: Yes was or it is doping.