Does steriods really help hit homeruns?

Question

if u have a long answer i will pick u

Answer 1

The use of anabolic steroids among athletes has been widely discussed in the press and the medical literature. Sports organizations generally condemn steroid use in the interest of fair competition, while sports physicians often focus on the dangerous side effects and health risks. Anabolic steroids or their breakdown products have been detected in athletes for many years, and black-market steroids are distributed to athletes at all levels of competition. This brief review describes how and why these agents are used by athletes, their effects on body size and athletic performance, and their known side effects.

Misuse of anabolic steroids, growth hormone and other ergogenic aids is a complex problem. General solutions include education and motivation of athletes to avoid these drugs, state and federal regulations to limit their production and distribution, and unannounced drug testing of competitors.

Definition of Anabolic Steroids

Anabolic steroids are more precisely characterized as anabolic-androgenic steroids. They include testosterone, the primary male sex hormone, and all chemically altered derivatives of testosterone that have anabolic (tissue-building) and androgenic (masculinizing) properties. Synthetic anabolic steroids have greater anabolic activity than androgenic activity when compared with testosterone; in large quantities, however, the synthetic steroids also have strong androgenic effects. Anabolic steroids have medical indications in the treatment of refractory anemias, hereditary angioedema, certain breast cancers, hypogonadism and starvation states.

Athletes use anabolic steroids in the belief that these drugs increase body mass, muscle tissue, strength and aggressiveness. Testosterone and the synthetic anabolic steroids combine with an androgen receptor in skeletal muscles and other organs. This steroid/receptor complex stimulates production of RNA/DNA, which in turn leads to increased protein synthesis (Table 2). In muscle, increased amounts of actin and myosin are produced under the influence of anabolic steroids. These force-producing contractile proteins result in increased strength. Anabolic steroids have more dramatic effects on nitrogen retention and muscular development in females, in boys and in men who have been castrated or are otherwise deficient in natural androgens. Anabolic steroids may also exert positive effects on the growth of skeletal muscle by antagonizing protein breakdown.

In addition, anabolic steroids may produce an effect that is regulated through the central nervous system. Athletes commonly say that they are far more aggressive, experience less fatigue and recover more quickly from weight-training workouts when they are using steroids. Since minimal increments in muscular performance or psychologic benefit may constitute the difference between winning and losing, athletes may perceive these small, difficult-to-measure changes as crucial to their overall performance. Athletes often feel that they can perform weight-training workouts at a higher intensity and for longer periods under the influence of anabolic steroids. The more intensive training program leads to increased muscle mass development and improvement in strength and power. However, little or no scientific evidence supports this notion.

In athletes who do not use steroids, a strength stimulus (lifting) and an adequate diet will result in increased passage of amino acids into muscle cells and a subsequent increase in protein synthesis. Strength training without steroids will increase the number of steroid receptor sites in muscle. Strength-training programs, especially when combined with anabolic steroid use, cause not only an increase in steroid receptor sites but also saturation of these receptor sites. This results in increased protein synthesis and prevention of protein breakdown.

To date, most studies that have shown significant gains in muscle mass and strength with steroids have utilized the following criteria: (1) a previous strength-training program without the use of steroids; (2) a continuous strength-training program during steroid use; (3) adequate dietary protein intake, and (4) measurement of strength gains using free weights, as opposed to most isometric weight-training devices.

Most studies not using these criteria have failed to show gains in strength from anabolic steroid use. In roughly two-thirds of reviewed studies using these criteria, gains in body weight during weight training were significantly greater in subjects taking steroids than in control subjects receiving a placebo. Weight increases of 19 kg or more during steroid treatment have been claimed, but the typical response is much smaller. How much of the weight gain involves lean muscle mass is unclear. It should be noted that muscle mass increases include highly variable retention of body water, a common side effect of most anabolic steroid preparations.

Study results regarding the effects of steroids on strength are difficult to interpret because there is no suitable placebo for anabolic steroids. Most subjects are able to accurately identify themselves as being in a steroid or control group by the degree of aggressiveness and fatigue they experience. Moreover, since it is unethical to administer large doses of anabolic steroids to healthy persons, studies of steroid use in athletics have involved much smaller doses of these substances than are often used by athletes. When positive effects of steroid treatment have been reported in the literature, the differences between the steroid and placebo groups after three to 12 weeks of training typically have been about 8 kg for maximal lifts in the bench press and 11 kg in the squat. Greater improvements in squats and leg extensions have been shown in a study by Alen and associates.

Scientific studies evaluating anabolic steroid use and its effects on muscular strength are evenly divided between those with positive results and those with negative results. Most conclude that anabolic steroids have a potential for improving strength performance in some individuals, but not in all users.Individual differences in response to steroid treatment are well recognized in the literature.

Finally, anabolic steroids do not improve aerobic capacity more than would be expected from aerobic training that can occur during weight-training programs. There are no published studies on the effects of steroid use on increasing agility, flexibility or running speed.

Steroid Use in Athletics

A brief history of anabolic steroids in sports is summarized in Table 3. Conclusions about the extent of steroid use by athletes and nonathletes are based largely on hearsay and the results of relatively few surveys of selected groups. In a survey of track and field athletes at the 1972 Olympic games, 68 percent of athletes participating in field events, sprints and middle-distance running reported they had taken anabolic steroids. Evidence suggests that anabolic steroids and other drugs are used by 100 percent of athletes involved in body building, national and international weight lifting, power lifting and field events such as the shotput and discus throw. It is evident that a substantial number of female athletes, especially those in body building and power lifting, are also using anabolic steroids.

Surveys of athletes participating at lower levels of competition indicate that anabolic steroid use is less extensive in these groups. Pope and colleagues reported that 17 to 20 percent of intercollegiate athletes responding to their survey used anabolic steroids. More recent surveys by Buckley and associates indicate a 6.6 percent usage rate (up to 500,000 users) among male high school seniors. A 1988 study conducted by Anderson and co-workers [22] for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) revealed anabolic steroid use among about 5 percent of Division I, II and III intercollegiate athletes.

This is a great article, so I think you really should be doing your own fuquing homework!!

Testosterone is produced naturally by the testes in adult men at a rate of 4 to 10 mg per day (Table 4). Weight-trained athletes, however, use 10 to 40 times the therapeutic dose of most steroid products. Although methandrostenolone (Dianabol) and other oral drugs have been the steroids most commonly used by athletes, injectable testosterone esters (testosterone enanthate and testosterone cypionate) are becoming more prevalent, because they are associated with less toxicity and are considered more difficult to detect during urine testing programs. Most anabolic steroids used by athletes are not prescribed by physicians; 80 percent of these drugs are obtained on the black market-often from Mexico, which is the largest source of anabolic steroids for the United States.

In an attempt to maximize the effects of anabolic steroids while minimizing health risks and the likelihood of detection, athletes have developed several patterns of taking these agents(Table 5). No scientific evidence suggests that the concomitant use of two or more anabolic steroids in high doses ("stacking") is more effective and less harmful than a single-agent regimen. The various drugs used by athletes taking anabolic steroids may interact with one another and pose an increased risk of adverse side effects.

Answer 2

It helps a person to heal from injuries faster. It shortens the time it takes to build muscle mass (shorter workouts, you can get the same results with better work outs.) With that extra muscle comes the ability to hit a ball harder. The result is if the ball is hit harder it will travel further; thus more Home Runs.

The reality is that it will only help if you are too lazy to put in the work needed to get the same physical results. Steroids don't help to hit the ball, that takes good eye-hand coordination. A .200 hitter will just strike out faster on steroids.

Barry Bonds is the best example of this in action. He never needed to juice up. Before the time he was reported to be on juice Bonds already had well over 400 homers. In the time he was on steroids Bonds only had 300 or so.

In contrast Jose Conseco could crush the ball as well, but never in the way he did after he started to shoot up. Conseco is an example of just plain being too lazy to work out for hours on end.

In the end steroids alone don't help to hit more homers, they only help to build more muscle by taking a deadly shortcut. If a player can't hit a baseball, no matter how much muscle he puts on, he still wont hit a baseball.

Answer 3

HR are a combination of bat speed, timing, hitting the ball right and power.

A kid could have great bad speed, and hit it perfectly, but he will not hit in 400feet. Power and strength matters too.

It will not make a huge difference, between 10 and 70. But you could easily add 10-20 over a whole season.

Think of the amount of times you see a power guy hit a HR when you think it will stay in the park - this is the power factor.

Answer 4

If there is a 180 lb guy that bulks up to 220 due to steroids, of course he will. Stop the denial stuff.

If it didn't help them, then why did over half of the MLB players take it. To shrink their pee pee? They took it for more home runs.

Barry Bonds hits 72 homers and he's never even hit 50 in any other year. Of course it helps you hit homers. No brainer.

Answer 5

Yes to an extent. First you have to understand how to hit a long ball. The greatest benefit to steroid use is recovery. Look at McGwire whether or not it was steroids or andro they both could have helped him hitting 70 by recovery purposes. Look at how long he has been on the DL every year for a bruised heel.

Answer 6

heck no man you gotta have practice to hit homeruns just cuz you strong doesn't make you better at baseball. you gotta see the ball before you hit a homerun. But if you can see the ball yeah itll make it go farther

Answer 7

Ask Barry Bonds. How does he explain away the fact that his power increased after he passed his prime. That his batting average went up after another steroid user in Mark McGwire passed Roger Maris's HR record.

Answer 8

Not as to strength, but as to bat speed to the ball. You still have to have the skill and hand-eye cordination to hit the ball at the correct point to get the proper lift out of the ball park...

Just taking the steroid itself is not going to help you hit home runs....you still need to practice, and practice and practice!!!!!

Answer 9

I dont care how big and strong you are you still have to hit the ball. It would help those who know how to hit the ball a long way already,but overall no

Answer 10

No No No! Steroids help build endurance and build muscle, but it mainly gives the players the ability to have much more effective workouts, and weightlifting, etc.

Answer 11

pick me, i dont have a long answer, but are you really gonna read that ENTIRE ANSWER