The Road to a Rebuilt Reputation The use of performance enhancing drugs has harmed the reputation of a number of sports throughout history and it has gone rather unnoticed that bodybuilding has suffered the same fate quite dramatically.“To enjoy or understand it you need to suppose, first that the male body is a potentially beautiful thing, capable of being worked and perfected like a piece of sculpture.” Those are the words of respected academics Gaines and Butler who studied bodybuilding very closely in the 1970s. The idea that bodybuilders set out with the intention of being statuesque, while achieving perfect muscle definition was very common 30 years ago, however, as the decades have passed the priorities have changed. Aspiring bodybuilder Adam Sinicki, 20, has been training since 1996 and after years of hard work and dedication he is saddened that general public consensus seems to be that ‘all bodybuilders are pumped full of steroids’. “I think that a lot of people connect bodybuilding with drugs. Drug use goes on in every sport but Bodybuilders seem to get a particularly hard time about it,” said Sinicki. “In bodybuilding people assume that all of the competitors are using them - whether rightly or wrongly - and this obviously gives it a bad name. “This is a concern for the future of the sport because with the majority believing drugs are heavily involved it's difficult to see parents being happy to see their child taking part for example.” A quick glance at Flex or Muscle & Fitness will show you the image of the modern bodybuilder, complete with oversized bulging muscles. Size that many feel is unatainable without some help from steroids or synthetic hormones.
However, not every competition is like this. There are ‘All Natural’ competitions on the bodybuilding circuit that are rarely covered by high-profile media outlets. Although, the very fact that these competitions exist is surely of major concern to bodybuilding enthusiasts as it appears to confirm the wide-ranging fears that a large percentage of leading athletes use performance enhancing drugs. “The all natural competitions don't get the same kind of attention as the ‘Mr Olympias’ but then obviously that's what people want to see,” added Sinicki. 
“I admire what the likes of Jay Cutler have done but I won't be doing it myself and perhaps bodybuilding would be better if someone a bit smaller, but with greater detail, won for a change.“But that'll probably only happen when and if drugs are completely banned from the sport.” Sinicki later suggested that although the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness (IFBB) subscribes to all the anti-doping codes and regulations their testing system has an obvious and major flaw. “They give prior warning to the athlete that they will be coming to test them in the near future, thereby giving them the opportunity flush the drugs out of their system - and muscle gained from steroids can be maintained for several months” Surely this is a worrying sign for the authorities as the reason for testing athletes without giving notification is that it prevents the use of banned substances while training, before removing them in time for competition. Therefore, the IFBB are inadvertently enabling athletes to beat the regulations and this is something Sinicki believes is down to the consumer nature of the sport. “The problem is that audiences/judges no longer place as much emphasis on detail and symmetry as they did a number of years ago, instead they want to be amazed by the size of the athlete, “Subsequently they almost allow the use of drugs to go unchecked as this makes for the most dramatic television.” In the pre-televised sport era this was not a problem because judges looked for sculpted perfection with athletes aiming to, as Thirer and Greer once said, “[develop muscles] to a high degree of hypertrophy and symmetry…with the object of perfect visual harmony”. Bodybuilding has deep-roots within the world of theatre, historically at least, because of its use of choreography to display the muscular definition and although the highly competitive element has altered this slightly, it continues to be similar to what former Mr. Olympia Frank Zane described as “a ballet”. 
However, with the current drug problems that appear to be quietly rife within the sport a major question needs to be answered about whether or not the very essence of bodybuilding is being ruined.“I think that's a strong expression. I wouldn't say the essence has been ruined because these guys still put in a lot of work and are rewarded for it,” said Sinicki. “It might be fair to say that the judges these days are perhaps placing too much importance on size over symmetry.
“Unfortunately, what this has done is to put a lot of average punters off the sport as most won't look at a bodybuilder like Jay Cutler - who I'm not necessarily accusing of using drugs - and go 'I want to be like him'. “And if they did, it wouldn't be worth the effort because they’d probably have to use steroids, whereas with Zane you could actually say 'Yes, I can do that' which would make more people interested in competitive bodybuilding. “I think that if the officials took a gamble and focussed more on aesthetics they might win over more of the general public. You might start seeing bodybuilding contests on mainstream TV. “The worry is obviously that if they were more striking and less gigantic then it drive away many of the hardcore fans and drug-enhanced competition would go underground, however I think it is a gamble worth taking and in the long term it would be a wise and profitable decision.” It is relatively common knowledge that a number of bodybuilders are potentially guilty of taking advantage of the major flaws in the IFBB’s drug testing system and perhaps it is time the governing body finally took the plunge and began to take the sport back to its roots in order to regain the respect it has lost. References Boxill, J. (2003) Sports Ethics: An Anthology, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Gaines, C. and Butler, G. (1974) Pumping Iron, New York: Simon and Schuster. Monaghan, L.F. (2001) Bodybuilding, Drugs and Risk, London: Routledge. Mottram, D.R. (2003) Drugs in Sport, London: Routledge. Thirer, J. and Greer, D. L. (1978) Competitive Bodybuilding: Sport, Art or Exhibitionism? Journal of Sport Behaviour, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp.186-194. Hey, check these out too!
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