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Glocal Fitness Doping
Abstract
Situated within a framework of a globalized gym and fitness culture, this chapter aims to investigate and compare how fitness doping can be understood in relation to, and how it is affected by, different national and local contexts. Representing different forms of welfare state regimes, the comparative analysis focuses on policy, practice, and prevention in the United States and Sweden. The findings indicate, among other things, how national level policy and implementation reflect local priorities, understandings, and values. Sweden’s choices form a pattern that reflects the priority of protecting the common good over individual pursuits. Conversely, the US does not do any policing outside formally governed competitions in sports or in criminal contexts. Further, US bodybuilders do not feel targeted for their appearance in the same ways, illustrating the priority of individual choice. The chapter also discusses how each country implements anti-doping in ways consistent with global policies, but is also informed by various local understandings and values. This interplay between supranational structures and locally diverse implementation is not only complex, but can seem contradictory, as each locality remains partly within a global system of anti-doping in sport, and operates partly outside this context.
... The vast majority of AAS users are regular gym and fitness center patrons, primarily men, who utilize these substances to improve their appearance rather than for competitive athletic purposes [5]. Commercial interests have driven the development of uncontrolled intake of various doping substances, particularly AAS, in the fitness industry [6]. Uncontrolled AAS intake can lead to serious health consequences, including cardiovascular problems, psychological issues, and hormonal imbalances [7]. ...
Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are synthetic variations of the male sex hormone testosterone. They mimic testosterone’s effects, primarily promoting muscle growth (anabolic effects) and enhancing male traits (androgenic effects). The misuse of AAS has extended beyond high-performance athletes and is now prevalent among the general population, particularly among fitness and gym enthusiasts. Epidemiological data highlight the widespread abuse of these substances, driven by the aspiration to enhance muscle mass, strength, and overall physical performance. The misuse of AAS in the fitness industry poses significant health risks and ethical concerns. This review highlights the prevalence, consequences, and prevention strategies related to AAS misuse in the fitness industry.
With the help of a variety of qualitative data collected both in Italy and in England for over a decade - ranging from ethnographic fieldwork to formal and informal interviews with clients, trainers and managers to expert discourse on fitness in the specialist press and exercise manuals - this book aims to offer a bottom-up access to keep-fit culture as developed in commercial fitness gyms. By actually getting into the world of training in the gym, it firstly deals with the local organisation of experience and then considers more closely the body ideals which are negotiated by fitness participants and fitness experts. The book thus aims to start from situated interaction to reach cultural values and social classification, placing gyms into the contemporary wider field of commercial body work (either transformative or sportive) and considering their particular cultural and institutional configuration in historical terms. The book thus opens by discussing the cultural relevance of fitness gyms as related to the history of the commercialisation of body discipline, the negotiation of gender identities and distinction dynamics within contemporary cultures of consumption. The book then unfolds as a journey through the ordinary world of training in the fitness gym by means of ethnographic research, interviews and discourse analysis. The second chapter examines what gives shape to the first impressions that clients may get when they enter the world of the gym: the spatial organisation of fitness centres with their differential interaction patterns. The third chapter deals with the relational aspects of gym environments. While fitness discourse is all about body objectives and body maintenance, fitness centres are also about the management of a variety of social relations, and in particular those between clients from different social backgrounds, and between trainers and clients. The role of trainers as experts, task and emotional leaders is underlined, as well as the continuous negotiation of expert knowledge on fitness. The fourth chapter looks at the fitness work-out as it happens in a variety of gym scenes, considering how expressive behaviour during physical activity is organised. In particular it looks at the motivational logic which fitness participants are invited to embrace and display, contributing to the triumph of self-competition. The fifth chapter deals with the local organisation of involvement in training, and at the framing of involvement as “fun”. It thereby considers the seriousness of fun experiences and explores how they get translated into articulated projects of body modification that offer second order satisfaction. Fitness enthusiasts in particular are studied and compared with novices and irregular participants in order to show how motivational narratives change in the course of fitness participation. The chapter reveals that motivations to join and motivations to stick with training may change greatly, stressing the transformational role of local practices. Considering body ideals more directly, the six chapter deals with the cultural value of the fit body on the backdrop of gender identities. Here, drawing on both expert discourse and gym-goers motivational narratives the notion of fitness as promoted by keep-fit exercises is explored as against health and beauty. The seventh chapter looks at how body-mind/self dualism is articulated within fitness culture on the backdrop of particular visions of urban, desk-bound patterns of work. In particular, its shows that the meanings of fitness are related to normative values about the body and naturalness as well as the self and authenticity which provide themes that can be deployed to legitimatize body transformation. The conclusion deals with how a bottom-up approach to keep-fit practices in the commercial gym may help us critically address consumer choice and global cultures of consumption.
This article analyses self-portrayals and gender constructions among Swedish male bodybuilders who are engaged in fitness doping. The empirical material comes from a larger ethnographic investigation into gym culture. The results show that there is a strong propensity to conform with particular gender fantasies that rests heavily on a binary understanding of gendered, doped bodies. However, this storyline does not apprehend the entire self-presentation of the analysed drug users. Negotiations and inclusive subversions of traditional gender norms are also expressed. For example, the narratives show how the use of performance-enhancing substances makes it possible for (heterosexual) men to approach, touch and express feelings of desire towards other men and their bodies. As such, this practice can be viewed as a contestation of hegemonic gender values, in which masculinity and fitness doping are detached from a quite heterosexist understanding, and turned into a symbolic world of homoerotic pleasure.
The aim of the article is to evaluate the contribution of bilateralism to global anti-doping policy. The article begins with an assessment of contemporary challenges facing the World Anti-Doping Agency in attempting to strengthen compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code and notes the weaknesses in compliance. The analytical framework for the article is derived from regime theory, neo-institutionalism and the concept of isomorphism. This is followed by a discussion of the nature of the anti-doping global policy regime and the part that bilateralism might play in the various stages of regime development. The development of bilateral collaboration is traced, and the leading role played by Norway in its development is examined. The central section of the article utilises neo-institutionalist theory and the concept of isomorphism to explore the case of Norway’s bilateral links with China and identifies the outputs of the collaboration and also the motives of both partners. The article concludes with an analysis of the factors that contributed to the longevity and success of the Norway-China collaboration and the extent to which this success could be replicated.
This article contributes to the existing literature on neoliberalism as an ideological hegemonic project by addressing how the image of social reality it advances normalizes the medicalization of human life. Because success, virtue, and happiness in a neoliberal market society are often associated with material wealth, prestige, and “coming out on top,” it follows that normalcy itself is typically conceived along these reified objectives. Acquiring services and/or products that might aid people to meet these results is thus viewed as benevolent and perhaps even indispensable in the pursuit of a fulfilling and productive life. What this also suggests is that integration, mental health, and human well-being become largely functions of consumerism. We address how an emphasis on medicalization, particularly the use of psychotropic drugs, can be traced to the psychopharmacological revolution of the mid-twentieth century and its obsession with situating illness within the individual. We then address how this obsession with medicalization and the tendency to treat “mental illness” as a problem within the individual continues to be supported within the prevailing neoliberal logic that downplays the social realm, treats individuals as self-contained agents, and pathologizes thoughts and behaviors that deviate from what the market defines as functional, productive, or desirable.
Background:
There is a growing body of empirical evidence on demographic and psychosocial predictors of doping intentions and behaviors utilizing a variety of variables and conceptual models. However, to date there has been no attempt to quantitatively synthesize the available evidence and identify the strongest predictors of doping.
Objectives:
Using meta-analysis, we aimed to (i) determine effect sizes of psychological (e.g. attitudes) and social-contextual factors (e.g. social norms), and demographic (e.g. sex and age) variables on doping intentions and use; (ii) examine variables that moderate such effect sizes; and (iii) test a path analysis model, using the meta-analyzed effect sizes, based on variables from the theory of planned behavior (TPB).
Data sources:
Articles were identified from online databases, by contacting experts in the field, and searching the World Anti-Doping Agency website.
Study eligibility criteria and participants:
Studies that measured doping behaviors and/or doping intentions, and at least one other demographic, psychological, or social-contextual variable were included. We identified 63 independent datasets.
Study appraisal and synthesis method:
Study information was extracted by using predefined data fields and taking into account study quality indicators. A random effects meta-analysis was carried out, correcting for sampling and measurement error, and identifying moderator variables. Path analysis was conducted on a subset of studies that utilized the TPB.
Results:
Use of legal supplements, perceived social norms, and positive attitudes towards doping were the strongest positive correlates of doping intentions and behaviors. In contrast, morality and self-efficacy to refrain from doping had the strongest negative association with doping intentions and behaviors. Furthermore, path analysis suggested that attitudes, perceived norms, and self-efficacy to refrain from doping predicted intentions to dope and, indirectly, doping behaviors.
Limitations:
Various meta-analyzed effect sizes were based on a small number of studies, which were correlational in nature. This is a limitation of the extant literature.
Conclusions:
This review identifies a number of important correlates of doping intention and behavior, many of which were measured via self-reports and were drawn from an extended TPB framework. Future research might benefit from embracing other conceptual models of doping behavior and adopting experimental methodologies that will test some of the identified correlates in an effort to develop targeted anti-doping policies and programs.
Both policy makers and sport stakeholders have fought against doping since the 1960’s but largely separately from each other. In light of recent events, political discussion, and academic debate, this article considers the expediency of using legislation to fight doping in sports. Building upon and comparing experiences in the U.S. and in Sweden, this article concludes that increased governmental involvement is undesirable from both the policy makers’ and the sport stakeholders’ perspectives. The reasons for this conclusion are, primarily, (i) that they are driven by different aims, (ii) that they differ in what they consider doping, (iii) that policy makers may push rules in sports in an unwanted direction, (iv) that expanded government involvement increases the likelihood of fundamental rights challenges to sport rules, and (v) that there are alternative ways of enhancing existing rules’ efficiency.
The nature of welfare state regimes has been an ongoing debate within the comparative social policy literature since the publication of Esping-Andersen's TheThreeWorldsofWelfareCapitalism (1990). This paper engages with two aspects of this debate; the gender critique of Esping-Andersen's thesis, and Kasza's (2002) assertions about the of welfare state regimes. It presents a gender-focused defamilisation index and contrasts it with Esping-Andersen's decommodification index to illustrate that, whilst individual welfare states have been shown to exhibit internal variety across different policy areas, they are both consistent and coherent in terms of their policy variation by gender. It concludes, in contrast to both the gender critique of Esping-Andersen, and Kasza's rejection of the regimes concept, that the approach is therefore neither gender blind or illusory, and can, if limited to the analysis of specific areas such as labour market decommodification or defamilisation, be resurrected as a useful means of organising and classifying welfare states.
Background
The Danish strategy for fighting the use of anabolic androgenic steroids in fitness centres is likely the most comprehensive of its sort in the world. It is instituted in the national anti doping organisation, Anti Doping Denmark (ADD), and consists of doping controls, educational campaigns, and anonymous counselling through a web-based email service.Aim and methodInquiries that were submitted to ADD's web-based counselling service over an 18-month period were explored with the aim to identify and analyse differences in concerns and approach to the counselling service. Two categories of inquiries were the focus of attention: (1) those addressing side effects of anabolic steroids and (2) those addressing concerns for receiving a positive doping test after the use of supplements.Results and discussionIn the first category four different types of approaches were identified and inquirers’ concerns analysed: (a) those that lacked knowledge on anabolic steroids, (b) those that had experienced side effects, (c) those that expressed knowledge of anabolic steroids, and (d) those that presented potential harm reduction dilemmas for the service. The second category revealed noteworthy concerns as a result of the legislation on the issue.Conclusion
The approach to the counselling service and the knowledge of health consequences of the drugs consumed differed substantially between the two categories and groups of inquiries.ImplicationsIn order to educate the target group about anabolic steroids there is a need for the involved organisations to consider harm reduction policies in adjunct with the often applied zero tolerance approach.
Although various surveys have tracked the prevalence of anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) use in American teenagers and young adults, no recent surveys have assessed the lifetime prevalence of AAS use in Americans overall. We therefore analyzed serial youth-survey data to derive estimates of the lifetime prevalence of AAS use in the current American general population.
We first determined the distribution of age of onset of AAS use, based on pooled data from nine studies. Using this distribution, we then developed equations to project the eventual lifetime prevalence of AAS use among young survey respondents, once they aged and completed the period of risk for initiating AAS. We similarly calculated the denominator of lifetimes of risk for AAS use in the total American population. We next applied these equations to four independent national youth datasets to derive current American general-population estimates for lifetime AAS use. Finally, using data from 10 pooled studies, we estimated the lifetime prevalence of AAS dependence among AAS users.
Age-of-onset studies consistently showed that AAS use begins later than most drugs, with only 22% of users (95% confidence interval: 19-25%) starting before age 20. Applying the age-of-onset findings to national youth datasets, we estimated that among Americans currently age 13-50 years, 2.9-4.0 million have used AAS. Within this group, roughly 1 million may have experienced AAS dependence.
Although subject to various limitations, our estimation techniques suggest a surprisinigly high prevalence of AAS use and dependence among Americans. (Am J Addict 2013;XX:1-7).
The global-local encounter has spawned a complex polemic between ‘homogenizers’ and ‘heterogenizers’. Does globalization lead to universal cultural uniformity, or leave room for particularism and cultural diversity? This article proposes shifting the ground of the debate from the homogeneous-heterogeneous dichotomy to a structural-symbolic construct. It is argued here that while both homogenization and heterogenization occur, they do so at different societal levels: homogenization occurs at the structural-institutional level; heterogenization at the expressive-symbolic. This approach is illustrated by a case study of the ‘McDonaldization’ of Israeli society. Encounters between McDonald’s and the Israeli national habitus and national ideology are examined.
Objective.
—To test a team-based, educational intervention designed to reduce adolescent athletes' intent to use anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS).
Design.
—Randomized Randomized prospective trial.
Setting.
—Thirty-one high school football teams in the Portland, Ore, area.
Participants.
—Seven hundred two adolescent football players at experimental schools; 804 players at control schools.
Intervention.
—Seven weekly, 50-minute class sessions were delivered by coaches and student team leaders, addressing AAS effects, sports nutrition and strength-training alternatives to AAS use, drug refusal role play, and anti-AAS media messages. Seven weight-room sessions were taught by research staff. Parents received written information and were invited to a discussion session.
Main Outcome Measures.
—Questionnaires before and after intervention and at 9- or 12-month follow-up, assessing AAS use risk factors, knowledge and attitudes concerning AAS, sports nutrition and exercise knowledge and behaviors, and intentions to use AAS.
Results.
—Compared with controls, experimental subjects at the long-term follow-up had increased understanding of AAS effects, greater belief in personal vulnerability to the adverse consequences of AAS, improved drug refusal skills, less belief in AAS-promoting media messages, increased belief in the team as an information source, improved perception of athletic abilities and strength-training selfefficacy, improved nutrition and exercise behaviors, and reduced intentions to use AAS. Many other beneficial program effects remained significant at the long-term follow-up.
Conclusions.
—This AAS prevention program enhanced healthy behaviors, reduced factors that encourage AAS use, and lowered intent to use AAS. These changes were sustained over the period of 1 year. Team-based interventions appear to be an effective approach to improve adolescent behaviors and reduce drug use risk factors.
In recent years masculinity studies writers, in particular R. W. Connell, have focused on the relationship between globalization and 'hegemonic' forms of masculinity. This paper provides an assessment of this scholarship and argues that whilst Connell and others have usefully identified the gendered nature of globalization, masculinity scholars have also provided a somewhat limiting account of the global hegemonic role of a monolithic top-down 'transnational business masculinity'. By contrast, we suggest a demassification of this notion of hegemonic masculinity. Such a demassification enables the opening up of a dialogue between masculinity studies and feminist and other critical globalization scholars, allowing for a more nuanced analysis that can attend to both the unevenness of globalization in different settings and more detailed awareness of interactions between global and local/cultural/state imperatives. Our aim here is to move away from conceptualizations of globalization and hegemonic masculinity that are exceptionally top-down towards an analysis of the contested and shifting nature of gender identity at the global as well as the local level, to highlight the ways in which different hegemonic masculinities are negotiated, and even resisted. We argue that by understanding 'transnational business masculinity' as a discursive ideal that legitimates the workings of global capitalism, there is scope for a greater level of engagement between critical globalization scholarship and gender studies. This might also open the door to an account of globalization that entails more detailed reference to women and femininities. Yes Yes
Numerous studies have linked the constructs of social capital with behaviours that are health enhancing. The factors of social
trust, social cohesion, sense of belonging, civic involvement, volunteer activity, social engagement and social reciprocity
are all associated with social capital and their existence is often linked with communities or settings where health enhancement
is high. Utilizing an interpretive perspective, this paper demonstrates how the existence of social capital may enhance the
transition into drug use, the experience of using an illegal drug and decrease the risk of detection. It highlights how social
capital may contribute to behaviours which are not health enhancing. Using a variety of data, including participant observation
of 147 male anabolic steroid users and 98 semi-structured in-depth interviews with male anabolic steroid users, dealers and
distributors it was found that social capital facilitated the operation of the illegal anabolic steroid distribution network.
The subcultural norms and social trust that existed within the network allowed anabolic steroid dealers to sell the drug to
others with reduced risk of detection. It is argued that social capital facilitates the distribution of illegal anabolic steroids
and that social capital is a non-discriminatory concept, that may enhance both negative and positive health-related behaviours.
International research on the social determinants of health has increasingly started to integrate a welfare state regimes perspective. Although this is to be welcomed, to date there has been an over-reliance on Esping-Andersen's The three worlds of welfare capitalism typology (1990). This is despite the fact that it has been subjected to extensive criticism and that there are in fact a number of competing welfare state typologies within the comparative social policy literature. The purpose of this paper is to provide public health researchers with an up-to-date overview of the welfare state regime literature so that it can be reflected more accurately in future research. It outlines The three worlds of welfare capitalism typology, and it presents the criticisms it received and an overview of alternative welfare state typologies. It concludes by suggesting new avenues of study in public health that could be explored by drawing upon this broader welfare state regimes literature.
Between ‘two worlds’ of father politics represents the USA and Sweden as two ends on an international continuum in ways of thinking about fatherhood. The ‘two worlds’ model locates the decline of patriarchal male-breadwinning fatherhood as a core concern of comparative welfare state and gender studies. It offers historical accounts of the development of ‘father-friendly’ parental leave policies in Sweden and child support enforcement policies in the USA. The book brings together, major debates from child development psychology, ethology, sociology, gender studies and comparative social policy. In this way, the book synthesizes a wide breadth of comparative and inter-disciplinary analysis into a new typology or model for interpreting welfare regime approaches to contemporary fatherhood. It provides comparative analysis for students, scholars and social policy makers in the United States and Nordic countries, the UK, Ireland, Japan, China and the European Union. Overall, the book locates concepts of fatherhood, the decline of patriarchy, shared parenting and the de-commodification of parents as critical to ongoing debates about individualisation, internationalisation and the dawn of post-patriarchal welfare arrangements for the 21st century.
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142406/1/Overview 2017 FINAL.pdf
The essential message of the ‘two regimes’ model is that the social politics of fatherhood have taken on a global significance and that the USA and Sweden represent two ends of an international continuum of ways of thinking about fatherhood. The key selling points of the two regimes model are its topicality, originality, its global appeal, and its particularised appeal to readers in the USA, the Nordic countries, Great Britain, Ireland, the European Union, Japan and China. The book offers students a comparative analytical framework and new insights into why some welfare states have ‘father-friendly’ social policies and others do not. The book makes an original contribution to the growing fields of welfare regime and gender studies by linking the epochal decline of patriarchal fatherhood to welfare state expansion over the course of the twentieth century and it raises new questions about the legitimacy of religiously inspired neo-patriarchy.
The war on drugs is usually associated with criminal policies aimed at stemming consumption of drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and cannabis, less so with enhancement drugs like those used in sport. As drug use in sport, or doping, has become more visibly widespread, policies aimed at combating the issue have become more restrictive, intrusive, and harsh. In this article we draw new comparisons between the wider war on drugs and recent developments in sports anti-doping. We identify a growing trend towards criminalisation of traffickers and users, and associate that with another growing trend: the testing of amateur athletes. This article reviews the current anti-doping system, including the recent amateur policies, then considers of the results of one such program in amateur cycling. We then shift to consider the possible implications for amateurs of criminal doping laws and the recent debates about allowing medical exemptions for therapeutic use of banned substances. We show that drug use in sport can be understood as a new front in the war on drugs, with some extreme measures and many negative unintended consequences. To remedy this, we argue that amateur athletes require a separate anti-doping policy focused on minimising harms of use.
Injecting use of image and performance-enhancing drugs (IPED) in the general population is a public health concern. A wide and varied range of IPED are now easily accessible to all through the online market. A comprehensive literature review was undertaken according to Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) guidelines for systematic review, to identify the relevant literature. No date restrictions were placed on the database search in the case of human growth hormone melanotan I and II, and oil and cosmetic injectables. In the case of anabolic androgenic steroids search dates were restricted to January 2014–2015. Publications not in English and with a lack of specificity to the topic were excluded. The review yielded 133 relevant quantitative and qualitative papers, clinical trials, clinical case presentations and editorials/reports. Findings were examined/reviewed under emergent themes which identified/measured extent of use, user profiling, sourcing, product endorsement, risk behaviours and health outcomes in users. Motivation for IPED use may be grounded in appearance, pursuit of health and youth, and body image disturbance. IPED users can practice moderated use, with pathological use linked to high-risk behaviours, which may be normalised within IPED communities. Many IPED trajectories and pathways of use are not scientifically documented. Much of this information may be available online in IPED specific discussion forums, an underutilised setting for research, where uncensored discourse takes place among users. This review underscores the need for future internet and clinical research to investigate prevalence and patterns of injecting use, and to map health outcomes in IPED users. This paper provides community-based clinical practice and health promotion services with a detailed examination and analysis of the injecting use of IPED, highlighting the patterns of this public health issue. It serves to disseminate updated publication information to health and social policy makers and those in health service practice who are involved in harm reduction intervention.
Are you ripped? Do you need to work on your abs? Do you know your ideal body weight? Your body fat index? Increasingly, Americans are being sold on a fitness ideal - not just thin but toned, not just muscular but cut - that is harder and harder to reach. In Body Panic, Shari L. Dworkin and Faye Linda Wachs ask why. How did these particular body types come to be "fit"? And how is it that having an unfit, or "bad," body gets conflated with being an unfit, or "bad," citizen? Dworkin and Wachs head to the newsstand for this study, examining ten years worth of men's and women's health and fitness magazines to determine the ways in which bodies are "made" in today's culture. They dissect the images, the workouts, and the ideology being sold, as well as the contemporary links among health, morality, citizenship, and identity that can be read on these pages. While women and body image are often studied together, Body Panic considers both women's and men's bodies side-by-side and over time in order to offer a more in-depth understanding of this pervasive cultural trend.
In Sweden, but also internationally, official regimes and public health organizations conduct fairly comprehensive antidoping measures. As a consequence, numerous ‘new’ ways to learn about and access these types of drugs have emerged. Social media and different internet forums, for example, have become part of a new self-help culture in which people can anonymously approach these substances, discuss their experiences of using them and minimize the possibility of encounters with the police. This article focuses on how the use of performance- and image-enhancing drugs (PED) is perceived and negotiated socially in the context of an internet-mediated and online community called Flashback. The results are in accordance with similar studies on internet bodybuilding communities. That is, even though the participants to a certain degree are aware of the risks and health costs of this kind of physical regime, the gains of using PED clearly dominate the discussions. Adding to this research, this article found that in the imaginary world of online bodybuilding a number of ideas about the ‘genetic max’, as well as the ultimate possibility of exceeding one’s limits, and creating something special and extraordinary, circulate. These stories confirm in many ways the legitimate mission of searching for the ultimate bodybuilding adventure, using different means and methods to transcend the limits of the self/body.
Many of the models and theories that aim to explain drug use in sport are limited by a focus on individual athlete decision-making that centers on the socioeconomic costs and benefits of using drugs. However, this limitation narrows the debate to how various penalties and sanctions might curb use. The authors suggest that to broaden the debate the investigation should include an exploration of the context in which drug use occurs and a situational diagnosis of the assumptions, values, and beliefs that underpin drug use in sport. To this end, the authors have developed a model of drug use in sport that combines the micro orientation of individual athlete and interpersonal behavior with the macro orientation of sporting context, structure, and culture. They use this contextualized model to contrast a use-reduction policy with a harm-minimization policy that allows sport organizations and athletes to manage their drug use in a safe and secure environment.
Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with 10 college-level female bodybuilders, this paper focuses on several aspects of female bodybuilding that are underexplored in existing literature, including purposeful gender transgressions, gender attribution, racialized bodies, and the conflation of sex, gender, and sexual preference. We draw on critical feminist theory and the social constructionist perspective to enhance collective understanding of the subversive possibilities emerging from female bodybuilders' lived experience. Collectively, female bodybuilders' experiences affect somatic and behavioral gender norms in a wider Western-type industrialized society such as the United States.
This study considers the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990 in light of the political climate of the late 1980s. A series of Sports Illustrated articles concerning the adverse consequences of steroid use are addressed, as are the broader social forces that may have led Congress to pass legislation classifying steroids as Schedule III controlled substances. Articles from Sports Illustrated appeared in the appendixes of congressional hearings, and several individuals who appeared in those articles were invited to testify. From a theoretical base of agenda building, this study focuses on the relationships between media, policy makers, and everyday news consumers.
Most doping studies focus on the incidence of performance-enhancing drugs and devote little attention to the training sphere or the social factors involved in this process. In this study, Danish doping data from different social arenas of sport and physical exercise (7,039 respondents) form the basis for analyses of the relative importance of social indicators. More respondents from gyms admitted to having experimented with legal as well as banned performance-enhancing substances than did respondents among elite athletes, and the relative importance of education is only indicated among gym users with experience of anabolic-androgenic steroids compared to respondents within the sphere of competitive sport. These results are discussed in the light of findings from qualitative studies of the doping phenomenon. Two patterns of doping practices are discernible in the analysis: whereas aesthetic modification appears to be a primary goal behind certain training regimes and the potential use of pharmaceutical substances in gym and fitness culture, the desire to improve physical capacity appears to underlie the training regimes as well as the use of certain pharmaceutical substances in competitive sports. It is argued that the notion of the perfect body expert is useful in developing a theoretical understanding of the role of drug use within physical training spheres while conceiving different patterns of doping practices.
In this article we explore the social constructions, body perceptions, and health experiences of a serious recreational and competitive bodybuilder and powerlifter community. Data were obtained from a discussion forum appearing within an online community dedicated to muscular development. Forum postings for a period of 36 months were transposed to QSR NVivo, in which a narrative-based analytical method employing Gee's coding approach was employed. We used a priori codes based on Bourdieu's multipronged conceptual categories of social field, habitus, and capital accumulation as a theoretical frame. Our results expose an extreme social reality held by a devoted muscle-building community with a fanatical obsession with muscular hypertrophy and any accouterment helpful in its acquisition, from nutrition and supplements to training regimes and anabolic androgenic substances. Few health costs were considered too severe in this muscular meritocracy, where the strong commanded deference and the massive dominated the social field.
DESCRIPTION The book explains how the usage of drugs in sport came to be considered in terms of "abuse" contrary to be thought of being ethical and supportive to the athletes in the early days of modern sport. PURPOSE The aim of this book is to question of using and abusing drugs in sport at length from a historical perspective. It proposes to discuss the issue as a dilemma of 'good anti-doping' versus 'evil doping'. FEATURES The issues addressed in this book are as following: 1.Sport, drugs and society; 2.Doping and the rise of modern sport, 1876-1918; 3.The science gets serious, 1920-1945; 4. Amphetamines and post-war sport, 1945-1976; 5.The steroids epidemic, 1945-1976; 6.Dealing with the scandal: anti-doping and the new ethics of sport, 1945-1965; 7. Science, morality and policy: the modernisation of anti-doping, 1965-1976; 8.Doping, anti-doping and the changing values of sport. ASSESSMENT This book will be great interest to the sportsmen as well as students, researchers and practitioners in the sport and exercise disciplines whether they work in the laboratory or in the field since it is about a popular topic in sport. It could also be valued as a reference book, because it targets to avoid easy answers to difficult questions in the controversial subject of drug use in sport
Almost one half of male and female students participate in high school-sponsored athletics, and high school also is a time when classroom health promotion curricula are less effective. The Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids is a sport team-centered drug-use prevention program for male high school athletes, which has been shown to reduce alcohol and illicit drug use. Just as anabolic steroid use is associated with male athletes, female sport participants may be at a greater risk for disordered eating and body-shaping drug use. Extending sport team-centered programs to young women athletes required defining and ranking factors related to developing those harmful behaviors. Survey results from a cross-sectional cohort of female middle and high school student athletes were used to identify and prioritize potential curriculum components, including mood and self-esteem, norms of behavior, perceptions of healthy body weight, effects of media depictions of women, and societal pressures to be thin. The derived sport team-centered program was prospectively assessed among a second group of female student athletes from 18 high schools, randomized to receive the intervention or the usual care control condition. The Athletes Targeting Healthy Exercise and Nutrition Alternatives (ATHENA) intervention is a scripted, coach-facilitated, peer-led 8-session program, which was incorporated into a team's usual training activities. The ATHENA program significantly altered the targeted risk factors and reduced ongoing and new use of diet pills and body-shaping substances (amphetamines, anabolic steroids, and sport supplements). These findings illustrate the utility of a structured process to define curriculum content, and the program's positive results also confirm the sport team's potential as a vehicle to effectively deter health-harming behaviors.
This article examines the processes by which the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004, an act that added steroid precursors such as androstenedione to the list of Schedule III Controlled Substances in the United States, came to pass in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Grounded theoretically in political economy, the article addresses, in the abstract, how the interplay of political pressures and economic influences stands to affect the actions of public officials, and how "tougher" drug policies-those touted to be more substantive and efficacious than existing regulations-often fail to effect change. The article concludes with implications for those involved in the regulation of anabolic steroids and steroid precursors.
Taking steroids: What could it hurt?
- D Charlebois
Charlebois, D. (2017). Taking steroids: What could it hurt? Retrieved 2018-10-10
from. https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/teen-derek4.htm
Shots or gel for TRT? Thank you
- J Nathan
Nathan, J. (2014). Shots or Gel for TRT? Thank you [Msg 6] Aug 20, Retrieved
2018-10-10 from:. http://forums.rxmuscle.com/showthread.php?127992-Shots-or-Gel-for-TRT-Thank-You
No one is looking at this headline. The New York Times
- J Branch
From ‘classical’ to ‘freaky’: An exploration of the development of dominant, organised male bodybuilding culture
- D Liokaftos
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