Sports And Steroids

Most young athletes can attest to the fact that the competitive drive to win is fierce. Besides the glory of bragging rights and the satisfaction of personal gain, often young athletes compete in the pursuit of greater dreams Ð'-- a college scholarship or a place on a professional team. For a growing number of athletes, winning at all costs includes taking illegal performance-enhancing drugs or another name for those - steroids. I have been in sports field for 16 years already and don't think that tennis players do not take those drugs. I have seen professionals being disqualified from major league tournaments, young and talented tennis players being dismissed from participating in any type of tournament up to one year. And I believe that this is one of the very important issues in fitness and sports field that needs to be addressed. I am not talking here about bodybuilders and wrestlers and boxers etc. Those taking steroids are too obvious and no one seems to get surprised when it's being discovered. But when it comes to athletes such as tennis players, swimmer, gymnasts, and ice skaters the story is totally different.

In most amateur and professional sports, the athletes who win are those with the greatest strength, speed or endurance. Each sport requires specific skills such as powerful biceps to hit great serves in tennis or have strong legs to run on the soccer field for hours. Sheer strength is determined by two factors: amount of muscle and the ability of nerves to stimulate muscle contraction. Some elite athletes perform special exercises specific to their sports to improve the neural stimulation of their muscles, and many do weight training to build more muscle. Some, especially professional athletes, also take hormones, supplements and man-made drugs to induce their body to build even more muscle. Over the last decade ceatine has become one of the most popular nutritional supplements in sports, including tennis. Short-term supplementation has been shown to improve power output during various modes of short all-out sprint exercise, repeated jumping and various types of resistance exercises. Furthermore, some findings suggest that the performance benefits are greatest during short maximal intermittent exercise bouts, of the type which feature in tennis.

I will set all my examples on tennis players, since this is my field. Most common steroid drugs being used by professional tennis players are creatine and stimulants. Creatine helps muscles make and circulate more adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is used for quick, explosive bursts of activity, as in weightlifting or sprinting. Creatine also reduces energy waste products Ð'-- such as lactic acid Ð'-- that can cause muscle fatigue. As a result, creatine is purported to enhance performance and decrease fatigue. But there's no evidence that creatine enhances performance in aerobic or endurance sports. Creatine monohydrate is a compound produced by your body that helps release energy in your muscles (Mediline Plus). Creatine is also a naturally occurring compound Ð'-- you can ingest creatine from protein-rich foods such as meat or fish, so why do they have to take the additional pills and overdose themselves when they can combine it with their daily food menu and do it legally? Although it might sound like create is a big help in the athletic performance, it can set a lot of negative side effects, which might decrease athletic performance. Those side effects include stomach and muscle cramps, vomiting and nausea as well as diarrhea. Now how much fun is when you get any of those side effects in the