Steroids and drug tests: how much they help and why testing misses them

The Short Version

Across these five conversations, nobody claims that drugs turn an ordinary athlete into a champion, and nobody claims that a clean result proves a clean athlete in every sport. Derek of More Plates More Dates argues that testing usually lags behind the methods used to beat it, and lists specific gaps: microdosed EPO, testosterone made to pass isotope tests, samples that are never stored, and drugs that are not looked for at all [1]. The B-Team grapplers say steroids will not rescue a bad grappler but will make a good one much better, mainly by letting them recover and train more [2]. Sprint coach Stuart McMillan is the dissenting voice on how dirty elite sport is: he says doping is now rare at the top of sprinting because the testing is so stringent [3]. Devon Larratt and Terry Bradshaw add two ends of the timeline: an untested professional league today, and a 1970s NFL where a quarterback says he did not even know what steroids were [4][5].

Table of contents

What They Said

Derek: the test is always a step behind

Derek's part of the conversation with Joe Rogan is the most detailed account of testing in these sources, and it starts with the testers themselves. He walks through a WADA press release alleging that USADA allowed at least three athletes who had committed serious doping violations to keep competing for years while acting as undercover informants, even at the Olympic level, and that it asked WADA not to publish the outcomes [1]. Rogan's reaction is that this is "so dirty" and contrary to the whole reason the agency exists [1].

Derek then turns to what was and was not being tested in the UFC. He says USADA publicly implied the UFC would allow steroids once the two split, but that the UFC's new provider, Drug Free Sport, has essentially identical rules [1]. He goes further and claims the new testing is more thorough, because USADA was rarely doing EPO, growth hormone or isotope ratio testing [1]. That is his claim, and the summary presents it as such; the point he draws from it is that a programme's reputation and the tests it actually runs are two separate things [1].

From there he lists the ways cheaters stay ahead:

• Microdosed EPO. Derek says it is hard to catch, and that recent studies found up to about half of participants on microdose protocols still passed [1].
• Testosterone built to pass the isotope test. Synthetic testosterone is made from compounds in wild yams and soy, and carbon isotope testing looks for signatures that differ from what the body makes itself [1]. Derek says sophisticated labs may be able to produce testosterone that mimics an athlete's natural signature, which the summary calls "CIR-proof" testosterone [1]. Note the wording: he says they may be able to, not that it is routine [1].
• Pre-testing. Some athletes, he says, pay corrupt labs abroad to test their samples in advance, so they know what would show [1].
• No stored samples. Most sports do not keep samples, while the Olympics have since 2004 [1]. Derek cites research by a contact in the testing world suggesting about 75% of Olympic medalists who tested positive were caught retroactively, years later [1]. Read the other way round, that means most of those medalists passed on the day.
• Blood doping as a weight cut. Derek describes removing blood before a weigh-in and reinfusing it afterward, which he says is detectable mainly through abnormal biological passport readings [1].

His conclusion is the line the summary gives as his core point: testing usually lags behind the methods used to beat it [1].

Derek: the drugs nobody is looking for

The second half of Derek's argument is about substances that fall outside the usual picture of steroids. He highlights trimetazidine, a heart medication that shifts the body toward burning glucose over fat, so it uses less oxygen per unit of energy [1]. He notes that a group of Chinese swimmers tested positive for it before the Tokyo Olympics, blamed food contamination, and that several later competed in Paris, and that a teenage Russian figure skater was also caught with it [1].

Beta blockers such as propranolol come up as a drug for nerves, in archery or public speaking [1]. Rogan says his doctor offered to get him some for bowhunting and that he declined, because managing your own mind is the point: "I don't want it to be easier." [1] Andrew Huberman makes a related point in his conversation with McMillan when he widens the definition: performance-enhancing drugs can be drugs that lower the heart rate for biathletes, and there are, in his words, all sorts of banned drugs that have nothing to do with raising androgens [3].

Derek also mentions cerebrolysin, which he says some fighters use to counter brain damage and which is not tested for, while noting that it is still experimental [1]. Rogan supplies the reason fighters might reach for such things: even light sparring means dozens of subconcussive hits a week for years, and he believes this drives some fighters toward drugs just to feel normal [1].

Derek: what the drugs actually do, and what they cost

On the drugs themselves, Derek is specific about trenbolone. He describes it as extremely effective at building strength and at preserving muscle during weight cuts without adding water weight, which is why it shows up in weight-class sports [1]. He also says it can cause night sweats, wrecked sleep, paranoia and aggression in some users [1]. He describes "tren cough", the coughing fit when an injection hits a vein [1].

He says the hardest part of steroid use is often psychological: people who start from body-image insecurity struggle when they lose the size [1]. He contrasts Dorian Yates, who is at peace with being smaller, with the physical toll on Ronnie Coleman [1]. He explains that women's bodybuilding categories above bikini generally require male-level hormones [1]. And he does not pretend the top end is safe: "if you're going full board it's impossible to be healthy and safe." [1]

Derek also has a view about why the options are what they are. He claims Joe Biden spearheaded the scheduling of anabolic steroids after the Ben Johnson scandal, and he believes that froze drug development in the 1980s, so research that might have produced safer compounds stalled [1]. Rogan argues most substances should be legal with education, and Derek notes the risks of unrestricted access [1].

The B-Team: a multiplier, not a substitute

Lex Fridman asks Craig Jones, Nicky Rod and Nicky Ryan directly whether most top grapplers are on steroids. The answer from the table is that it is hard to say: some people look terrible and are on steroids, and "Some people look excellent and they're not on steroids." [2] Lex worries about witch hunts against successful athletes on the strength of how they look [2].

On how much the drugs help, Lex asks whether it is possible that steroids are not a huge help in grappling. The reply from one of the guests (the transcript passage has no speaker labels) is the clearest statement of the question in all five conversations: "I think if you're bad at jujitsu and you do steroids, you're going to continue to be bad at jujitsu." [2] But for someone who is already great at grappling, the same speaker says, it will enhance what they are already good at and make them much better [2].

The summary records where the group thinks the enhancement comes from. It is not mainly a single stronger squeeze. It is faster recovery, which allows many more training sessions per week and more leeway on sleep and diet [2]. They also note that gaining 50 or 60 pounds of muscle is a huge advantage [2]. One guest gives a concrete picture of what strength changes on the mat: take a person with good mechanics, put them on a leg, and the difference is between them finishing with a heel hook and breaking your leg with it [2].

Craig Jones adds the counterweight. He has seen athletes start relying on strength instead of technique after going on steroids, and then gas out in competition [2]. So even inside the group that thinks the drugs help a great deal, the help has a price in the sport's own terms.

On the ethics, Craig says it is cheating whether or not a sport tests for it [2]. He describes doping as an arms race in which athletes who take more reap short-term rewards at a real cost to their health, and he doubts that a cabinet of medals would feel worth dying early at 40 [2]. Lex argues the other side, that there is something beautiful about sacrificing everything for a medal [2]. Asked about himself, Craig jokes that he is over 30, so it is just TRT [2].

The conversation also shows how accusations work in a sport without a referee for them. Nicky Rod explains that he only said Gordon Ryan was on steroids after Gordon accused him of greasing, which he denies: "I was checked multiple times before and after our grappling event." [2] He adds that he did not think the claim should be that big a deal, because in his telling Gordon had more or less admitted it previously [2]. Nicky Rod also says he took a blood panel arranged through More Plates More Dates a few days before the recording, with results due out shortly [2]. Why do athletes and coaches not talk about it? One guest says they probably do within the team, and that it is shadier depending on whether your sport is tested, while grappling is, in the passage's words, "kind of in the wild west" [2].

Stuart McMillan: sprinting is cleaner than people assume

McMillan, who has coached more than 70 Olympians across nine Olympic Games, gives the view that pushes hardest against the others [3]. Asked how common testosterone derivatives are among elite sprinters now, he answers that they are not common at all, and that he does not know of any elite sprinter he could point to and say that person is dirty [3]. He gives a decade-by-decade account: "60s and 70s, extremely common." The 1980s were very, very common; the 1990s, when testing started becoming a bit better, much less common [3]. Of today he says: "I'm very, very confident that the top people in all of the events are doing it clean." [3]

His reasoning has three parts. The first is the testing itself, which he calls pretty stringent now and really, really hard to get around [3]. The second is personal knowledge of the people around the athletes: he says he knows those people well, has been in the sport a long time, and would not know what to take or who to get it from [3]. The third is what speed is made of. Teenagers like Trayvon Bromell and Usain Bolt running world-class times show, in his view, that speed comes from talent and training, and he puts it bluntly: "You don't take drugs to get fast." [3] Elsewhere in the conversation he explains that faster people tend to have more fast-twitch fibers, tighter joints, and long tendons with small muscle bellies, and that strength has diminishing returns in sprinting: Andre De Grasse could barely squat his body weight and won three Olympic medals 18 months into his sprinting career, while Ben Johnson squatted around 600 pounds [3].

McMillan does not say the sport is spotless. He acknowledges state-sponsored doping in Russia, saying that an elite Russian athlete almost certainly was taking drugs and did not have a choice [3]. He cites some 150 to 160 positive cases out of Kenya over the past decade, mostly in distance running [3]. And he says there will be pockets: a few dirty coaches, a few dirty managers, a few people doing dirty things [3].

He is also the only expert here who explains the decision from the athlete's side. Picture an 18-year-old Kenyan with some talent. An agent offers $50,000 and two years of support, says this is what everyone does anyway, and holds out a house and food for the family [3]. "That's a hard calculation for a kid to make." [3] He extends the logic to baseball's steroid era: if nobody is testing you, he says, it is almost logical to take drugs at that point [3].

Finally, he raises the cost of a system that assumes guilt. He recounts bobsledder Pavle Jovanovic, who tested positive in 2001 from a contaminated supplement, lost his career and later took his own life [3]. In the transcript he says a group of athletes who all tested positive sued one company, which simply declared bankruptcy [3]. People on the outside, he says, see just another athlete on drugs, when in his estimate "99.9% of people are trying to do this right." [3]

Devon Larratt: tested sport and open gates, side by side

Arm wrestling, as Larratt describes it, runs both systems at once. East vs. West, the league he calls the UFC of arm wrestling, has no drug testing, which he compares to Formula 1, while the government-linked World Armwrestling Federation is tested [4]. Larratt says he believes in tested sport but also in opening the gates [4].

The drug talk in this episode is brief and mostly Rogan's. Rogan points to Vitor Belfort's TRT era as an example of an older fighter with a young athlete's body, and wonders what sports would look like if enhancement were open to everyone [4]. He also says the Enhanced Games did not deliver the freakish results people hoped for, because real strength gains take years [4]. In the transcript, the remark that what is pushing athletic ages upward in regular sports is performance-enhancing drugs, testosterone and steroids among them, sits alongside the observation that peptides and stem cells are less performance drugs than injury treatments [4].

What Larratt contributes more of is the rest of the picture: what else explains freakish strength. He helps a geneticist friend study elite performers to find favorable mutations, says they have scanned Brian Shaw and Levan Saginashvili, and suggests Shaw has an unusual growth hormone mutation [4]. He describes his own results as the product of extreme specialization, around 100-rep sets with very light loads, and decades at the table [4]. He says someone with four or five years of practice will beat almost anyone untrained [4]. And of a huge, lean Australian strongman they discuss, the transcript has the comment that people have asked and say he is not using, followed by an honest shrug: nobody at the table knows [4].

Terry Bradshaw: the era before anyone asked

Bradshaw started in the NFL in 1970 and played 14 seasons [5]. On steroids, he says he did not even know what they were in the 1970s [5]. He passes on Howie Long's story of lining up as a rookie across from a stunningly muscular tight end, while stressing that he is not accusing anyone [5]. That is the whole of his testimony on steroids, and it is worth being exact about it: he recalls an era, he does not describe use.

What he does describe in detail is a different kind of drug culture. Players were injected before games as a matter of course [5]. When he tore an oblique he was injected before the game and again at halftime, and he says he did not ask what it was, only whether he could play [5]. Before one game in Cincinnati there was a line of players waiting outside a room to be shot up [5]. The steroids Bradshaw has taken that he talks about are medical: the ones used to control his rheumatoid arthritis pain, which made him ravenous and put about 60 pounds on him [5].

Rogan fills in the performance side in this episode. He describes the UFC moving from no testing, to athletic commission tests, to random testing by USADA, and says that is when physiques really changed [5]. He gives his view that steroids build muscle faster than tendons can adapt, because tendons have a poor blood supply, so athletes blow them out [5]. Both men enjoyed baseball's home-run era with Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds, and Rogan argues that great players like Bonds did not need steroids to deserve the Hall of Fame [5].

Bradshaw's numbers on size are a useful footnote, though he does not tie them to drugs. His 1970s offensive line averaged maybe 260 pounds; Joe Greene made the Hall of Fame at 275 and Jack Lambert at 218 [5]. He believes receivers, quarterbacks and running backs from his era could play today, but linemen could not [5].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

They agree that drugs sit on top of talent and skill. The B-Team guest's line about bad jiu-jitsu staying bad [2], McMillan's "genetics gets you in the room" and his point about teenage sprinters [3], Rogan's argument that Bonds was a Hall of Fame player anyway [5], and Larratt's emphasis on genetics and years of specialized work [4] all point the same way.

They agree that where nobody tests, people use. McMillan says it is almost logical to take drugs when you are not being tested [3]. The grapplers call their sport a kind of wild west [2]. Larratt's main league has no testing at all [4]. Bradshaw's NFL injected players without telling them what was in the needle [5].

They agree the health cost is real. Derek says going full board cannot be healthy and safe [1]. Craig Jones doubts medals are worth dying at 40 [2]. Rogan describes blown tendons [5]. Huberman warns that young men taking testosterone they do not need can shut down sperm production and may do lasting harm [3].

They disagree about how much gets past the testers. This is the real debate. Derek's position is that testing lags, that microdoses pass, that most caught Olympic medalists were only caught years later, and that whole categories of drugs go unexamined [1]. McMillan's position is that in elite sprinting today the testing is so stringent that the top athletes are clean [3].

Each has reasons. Derek reasons from the chemistry and from the testing data he cites: if up to about half of microdosers pass, and if stored samples catch people years on, then a negative test on the day is weak evidence [1]. He is also talking mostly about combat sports and the Olympics as a whole, including sports where EPO, isotope and growth hormone tests were, by his account, rarely run [1]. McMillan reasons from proximity: he knows the athletes and the people around them, he sees no route by which they would be doing it, and he believes sprint speed is something drugs do not create [3]. He is talking about one event group in one of the most heavily tested sports, and he himself says testing in the NFL and baseball is significantly more relaxed [3].

The two views are not fully reconcilable. Derek's retroactive-testing figure covers Olympic medalists, which includes track [1]. McMillan's own exceptions, Russia and Kenya, are large [3]. But they are also not as far apart as they look, because both tie the amount of doping to the strictness and breadth of the testing.

They disagree about what speed and strength owe to drugs. McMillan says you do not take drugs to get fast [3]. The grapplers say 50 or 60 pounds of muscle and far more training sessions are a huge advantage [2], and Derek says trenbolone is extremely effective at building strength [1]. Part of this is the sport: McMillan's own account of sprinting stresses elastic tendons and diminishing returns from strength [3], while grappling and weight-class fighting reward strength at a given weight [1][2].

They disagree about whether to allow it. Craig Jones calls it cheating, tested or not [2]. Larratt believes in tested sport and in opening the gates [4]. Rogan leans toward legality with education, and Derek cautions about unrestricted access [1]. Lex sees something beautiful in total sacrifice [2].

Why It Works

The sources give mechanisms for both halves of the title.

Why the drugs help. The grapplers' explanation is recovery: more sessions per week, with more leeway on sleep and diet [2]. Huberman says the same of his own low-dose testosterone, taken since age 45 with HCG to maintain fertility: it mainly helps recovery [3]. Derek's account of trenbolone adds strength and muscle retention during a weight cut without water weight [1]. Trimetazidine, as Derek explains it, shifts the body toward glucose so it uses less oxygen per unit of energy [1]. Beta blockers calm nerves [1], and Huberman notes heart-rate-lowering drugs in biathlon [3].

Why the help has limits. Rogan's tendon argument is that muscle outgrows what poorly supplied tendons can bear [5]. Craig Jones's observation is that added strength tempts athletes away from technique and they gas out [2]. Rogan says real strength gains take years, which is his explanation for the Enhanced Games' results [4], and he adds that even gaining muscle throws off fine motor skills, such as his pool game [1].

Why tests miss. Derek gives the reasons one by one: small doses fall below what a test catches [1]; the isotope test works by spotting a signature different from the body's own, so a product that mimics that signature would defeat it [1]; athletes can pre-test with corrupt labs [1]; most sports keep no samples for later, better tests [1]; some programmes rarely run the more specialised tests [1]; and some substances are simply not on the list being checked [1]. Blood manipulation shows up mainly as an abnormal biological passport reading rather than as a substance [1].

Why tests also hit the wrong people. McMillan's account of the contaminated supplement that ended Pavle Jovanovic's career is the mechanism for a false accusation: a positive test that says nothing about intent [3].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

The claims here are tied to particular sports, and should stay there. McMillan's confidence is about top-level sprinting and track and field, where he says testing is far stricter than in the NFL or baseball [3]. It does not transfer to untested grappling [2] or to East vs. West arm wrestling [4]. Derek's list of gaps comes mostly from the UFC and Olympic testing he discusses [1], and several items are hedged in the source: labs "may" be able to mimic a natural testosterone signature, and the 75% figure is research he attributes to a contact [1].

Bradshaw's recollection covers pain-killing injections in the 1970s NFL, not steroid use; he says he did not know what steroids were [5]. Nothing in these sources supports naming any individual as a user beyond what the speakers themselves say, and the grapplers and Lex both warn against judging by appearance [2].

The advantages described also depend on the sport. Recovery and added muscle matter a great deal in grappling [2]; McMillan argues strength has diminishing returns in sprinting [3]; Larratt treats technique and years of connective-tissue work as decisive in arm wrestling [4].

For ordinary people, the relevant parts are narrower. Huberman's testosterone use began at 45, and he warns specifically about young men [3]. Rogan says he knows many men who feel dramatically better on TRT and none who have had problems [1], which is one man's acquaintances, not a study. Anyone considering hormones or any of the substances named here should talk to a doctor first, and competitive athletes should check with their sport's governing body, as Huberman advises [3].

What To Do With It

1. Treat a passed test as partial evidence. Derek's figures on microdosing and on medalists caught years later are the reason [1]. Before trusting a result, ask what the programme actually tests for and whether samples are stored [1].
2. Do not judge by physique. The grapplers say looks mislead in both directions, and Lex warns about witch hunts [2].
3. Do not assume everyone is dirty, either. McMillan's point is that blanket suspicion lands on people doing it right, and that positives can come from contaminated supplements [3].
4. If you compete in a tested sport, be careful with supplements and check with your governing body. Jovanovic's case is the warning, and Huberman's advice is explicit [3].
5. Put skill, sleep, nutrition and organized training first. McMillan and Huberman agree these matter far more than any drug [3], and the B-Team's view is that drugs only amplify skill that is already there [2].
6. If you are young, leave testosterone alone unless a doctor says you need it. Huberman warns it can shut down sperm production and may do lasting harm [3].
7. Count the full cost before admiring the results. Derek on trenbolone's side effects and the psychology of losing size [1], Craig Jones on dying early [2], and Rogan on tendons [5] describe what the trophy cabinet does not show.
8. Watch for strength replacing technique. Craig Jones's observation about athletes who gas out applies to anyone who gets stronger quickly, by any means [2].
9. Consider creatine as the legal baseline. Derek calls it underused and suggests trying 10 grams if your stomach tolerates it, noting monohydrate is the best studied [1]; Rogan calls it "a very beneficial supplement that everybody should take" [5]. Check with a professional if you have a health condition.
10. When you follow a sport, find out which rules it runs under. Tested federation, untested league, or no rules at all are three different contests, as Larratt's sport shows [4].

Sources

1. 2239 - · The Joe Rogan Experience
2. B-Team Jiu Jitsu: Craig Jones, Nicky Rod and Nicky Ryan on Rivalries, Training and Competition · Lex Fridman Podcast
3. Stuart McMillan on Skipping, Striding and Sprinting for Speed, Mobility and Longevity · Huberman Lab
4. Devon Larratt on Arm Wrestling at 51, Specialized Training, Special Forces and Chasing Levan (JRE #2510) · The Joe Rogan Experience
5. Terry Bradshaw on Bourbon, Old-School Football, Friendship and 43 Years of Speeches · The Joe Rogan Experience