They do and they don't. I've known friends who have taken steroids in jail and not worked out, they got fat! People think that a feather-fisted guy is going to starting punching like Tyson in his prime, but it doesn't do that. Recovery seem's to be the main reason why people take it.
From what I have read, things are exactly as you say. The results are intermittent. I guess though, the further up the PED 'food' chain you go, the better the cycling plan outlined for the athlete, and the greater chance of it having an impact. I'm also guessing the greater the athletic potential of an individual the greater the chance PEDs will have a positive impact on performance, because the athletic ability is already high and mainly limited by the capacity to train. And in that respect PEDs work for athletes as their training window is widened. I do agree there might be a placebo effect, or a motivation to take them driven by looking at a successful rival and assuming they dope and deciding to beat them you must also dope. But for me, the bottom line is for athletes PEDs must, in the main, boost performance. They risk a lot to try shortcut to success - endorsement contracts have clauses, I'm sure - and they wouldn't take that risk unless it was a verifiable and viable strategy. And if an athlete started taking PEDs and noticed no improvement over and above the curve, they'd stop, surely?
In sports like football, players for the top teams are monitored throughout a season to gauge fitness level and figure out how they should train (if they are in danger of overtraining for example), so in that aspect scientific advances should be of help. But I don't know if pro boxers use them to the same extent. And when it comes to diet and nutrition new stuff are coming out the whole time, but the scientific base is generally quite thin. The things that are generally supported by science is mostly common sense like don't eat candy and sweets, don't drink soda or alcohol, don't smoke or do drugs etc. Legal supplements seem to have only marginal effect, so if you just stay away from things that have been known to be unhealthy for a long time (like alcohol, tobacco, candy, ice cream etc) you should be fine overall. And a lot seems to be very individual, so you have to figure out what works best for you. In summary, maybe supplements can give a small edge, but in terms of diet and nutrition most of the important knowledge has been around for a long time. Use of modern technology to consistently check your fitness levels should help you especially with not overtraining, but I don't know how much boxers today make use of that.
Read or watch what Mike Tyson thought of Dempsey's boxing skills. Might be enlightening. Tyson, at his best was a real student of the game.
PEDs potentiate your potential. However I can assure you without PEDs Joshua and Klitschko would be much slimmer. Still muscular by normal standards because of their genetics, but just not the same level of conditioning. Any boxer who is not using at least a therapeutic dosage of HGH is purposely setting their own careers back, when it's obvious everyone else is using. It's constantly spouted in boxing gyms that whoever works the hardest will likely win the fight. What allows a person to work harder with less needed time for recovery?
Your input to the conversation. Please don't be a hypocrite and ask for "respect" when you are saying to a knowledgeable poster "it's just word salad".
Much slimmer? Both men are GIANTS, because they were born to be so big. I know HW's "wow" some people to the point of "nah, nobody is that big!", but we can't all be 135lbs and 5'4", can we?
Think of the workload of a Boxer. Training 2-3 times a day. Cardio in the am, S&C in the pm, Sparring & Pads in the PM. To recover from that, and do that day in and day out, you NEED to recover as quick as you can. PEDS help that. I think people think that, on a scale of 1-10, if a guy hits at say 8 (for power), he instantly goes to 12 if he takes PEDS. Very doubtful.
I agree with you. My own anecdotal evidence for what its worth is I believe I punched just as hard if not harder at 75 kgs pre weights and doing a lot of manual labour. Im now 100 kgs post heavy weight training regime and am less flexible, not as fast,and would gas 3 times as quickly.
