Steroid Testing

If you're a performance athlete that supplements with anabolic steroids, you always have to concern yourself with steroid testing. It's no secret, when it comes to athletics steroid testing is a major part of the game, but what surprise many is how many athletes supplement with anabolic steroids and beat the steroid testing each and every time. Of course, as you know some athletes still fail the test, as is evident by what we hear and see in the news. However, many athletes are never tested quite as you think they might be in many professional sports, for if they were we could guarantee you more than half would fail. So how do they do it, if steroid testing is as ardent as we're led to believe how are so many athletes skating by? Luckily for you, we have the answers you crave.

Standard Steroid Testing:

 When various sporting organizations test for anabolic steroids, the most common and basic practice is measuring testosterone levels. If testosterone levels are far higher than what a man can naturally make, then the tested subject fails. To perform such a test, the athlete's testosterone and epitestosterone levels are measured, and if the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone is out of accepted ranges the subject fails. As you may have guessed, this type of steroid testing is extremely easy to beat by simply ensuring your epitestosterone levels increase along with your testosterone levels. Many athletes who are aware of this have in years past supplemented with steroids that increase both levels; BALCO, the infamous sports doping outfit out of California perfected this method before it was shut down.

Specific Steroid Testing:

While the standard steroid testing procedure has in recent years been deemed largely ineffective, many sporting organizations have begun testing for specific hormones directly. This is an extraordinarily expensive process, and one that is not easily affordable. Most athletes realize this, and if they are tested in such a manner it is only performed once or twice a year in many cases. At any rate, it is still fairly easy to beat this test, although not as easy as standard steroid testing. First and foremost, using only anabolic steroids that have a short detection time is the athlete's best friend, but there are also some products that will clear or mask the steroids in any test. Below we have provided a chart listing the most commonly used anabolic androgenic steroids, along with their half-life and detection time; each steroid is listed by hormonal compound and popular trade name where it applies:

Failing but Beating:

In the world of professional sports, many fail to realize or accept most athletes are supplementing with anabolic steroids. No, contrary to news reports, anabolic steroid users among professional athletes is not a miniscule number, it is the majority, and if all were taken out of sports there'd be no sports left. Of course, we all know steroid testing is a big part of professional sports, so how is it so many are skating by if so many are supplementing? To start, we've already discussed one way it's done, but that doesn't fit here; here, there is a broader answer. Every now and then someone is given up, every now and then the pressure on the organization becomes so great many are given up, i.e. the MLB in the early to mid 2000's. However, the main reason so many beat steroid testing is that the organizations recognize that without anabolic steroid use their sports would fall to the wayside. There's a reason players get bigger, stronger and faster each year, and it has nothing to do with human evolution. It has to do with understanding better ways to supplement with anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, and the sooner the general public can recognize this the sooner the hysteria around steroid testing can end.