Natty VS Steroids: Should We Train Like Them?

Foreign. What's going on everybody? And welcome to the Built With Science podcast. You're here with your host as always, of course, me, Max Coleman, AKA Coleman at all and sitting in front of me as always, dpizzy P. Dpizzle P Danny Boy, AKA Danny Boy. So today we're going to be talking about something a little bit less scientific, maybe a little bit more philosophical though we will sprinkle in some science talk here and there because, well, we're addicts and we can't help but doing so right. But today we're going to be talking about the Natty or Not movement. Not necessarily us going through different influencers and bodybuilders and saying if we think they're natty or not. We're not going to be touching on if we think Thor, AKA Chris Hemsworth is natural or not. We're going to be talking about it from kind of a top down view of why this movement exists in the first place and how we feel about it kind of personally, as well as how you should interpret individuals talking about if someone is natural or not. We're also going to talk about things like the natty limit, how steroid use affects how you go about training in general though we'll spend very little time on that. And yeah, it's going to be a very conversational episode where we're just kind of chat about this super popular thing that we don't really understand why it's super popular. So let's start there. Danny Boy, why don't you talk to us about why you think the Natty or Not movement exists in the first place and even just tell us what the Natty or Not movement is.

Yeah, so this is going to be obviously speculative because we don't have data. Although, you know, maybe there's some young scientists out there who want to do some survey esque data to see why people are so obsessed with this. But yeah, the popularity of outing fake natties is definitely very big. So there's personal brands that literally revolve around just speculating upon whether somebody's natty or not or what substances they take. And I think this is probably two, maybe three wrong in that one, people care about what they can achieve naturally. So looking at other individuals and seeing how big they are and wondering if they're natural is sort of them trying to compare themselves to what they potentially could be and will get into that later on and see if that's a reasonable thing to speculate on and whether it's worth it for you to speculate. On that. I think another thing that unfortunately is probably within our human psyche is that we kind of like catching people lying. So I don't know why that's the case, but it seems to definitely be the case where, you know, if somebody's just lying and selling something, especially when they're lying, you want to kind of show that they're not an upstanding individual. And three, is if somebody is really jacked and is natural, then you kind of want to know what their secret is. So how are they training? Can I do something that they are doing to make myself look more like them? So I think, can I inform what I'm doing with these people that are seemingly, you know, many standard deviations above the norm to just a fun thing about whether they're lying or not? And I think those are probably the main categories.

Yeah, I hate to be so cynical about it, but I think too, like, the exposing people, I think is the real reason why. Why this movement exists. And to be fair, not to just, you know, throw a little bit of credence towards the movement itself, I think there's. It's not completely unfounded meaning fake natties, which is kind of the reason this movement exists, exist. People who say that they are natural even though they aren't. So I will throw out some people's names right here. Rob Riches, who I was a big fan of when I was a kid, the British bodybuilder who had this really cool episode, this really cool, like, series on YouTube of, like, cool body. What, but what can you do with it? I love that. And funny enough, he had an episode with Michael Hearn. And they're both naturals. Yeah, exactly. Michael Hearn is not really a fake natural, though, because his body naturally produces Trend balloon acetate. So it's a joke for those of you who don't know, but these are individuals who claimed to be natural, literally on camera in public spaces, said, we do not take anything, and then they get popped for steroid use. Things like the Liver King. He's probably the most recent, most prevalent fake natty. And I think that, again, to throw a little bit of credence towards the fake natty or natty or not movement, it has led to a lot more transparency about drug use, which I think is beneficial. I think that being open and honest about what you're doing to achieve what you're trying to achieve is very beneficial. So, God, Larry Wheels is a really popular one who's very open about a steroid use. All the individuals at Renaissance Periodization, they're very open about their steroid use and I think that's a positive thing. I do take that as a very positive thing. So, yeah, I just. We have been burned a lot of like Danny Boy and I got into this when we were pretty young and we looked up to these individuals who we thought were natural and we thought what they achieved was something that was generally achievable by natural individuals because they were claiming to be natural. And then we find out that they're lying. And that kind of hurts a little bit. So I think that it there is like this movement to kind of expose these individuals because that sucks. Don't lie. And you know, especially to children, to try and get them to buy your product just so you can make a bag, you know what I'm saying? So just to throw. I like. I think the Natty or Not movement sucks and I wish it didn't exist, but I understand why it exists because we've been burned and there are some positives to come out of it, like the more transparent use of steroids from influencers today. Cool. Do you want to move on to kind of what it means to be natural or do you have anything to add to what we were just talking about?

Yeah, I think we can go to what it means to be natural.

Cool. Yeah, I think people often think of it as a kind of a binary thing. You're either using steroids or you're not. But it's a little bit more complex than that when you really start breaking down what it means to be natural. So why don't you go ahead and walk us through that a little bit?

Yeah, so it is a pretty complicated answer actually, in terms of really nailing down where somebody is, especially when you make it binary, natty or not. Because if somebody did one cycle. So first let's go over what people commonly think about somebody not being natty, which is they take some sort of anabolic hormone. So that's specifically something that's usually some sort of testosterone derivative or growth hormone and things that would fall into that category. But it gets really murky when you start thinking about the subcategories within sort of that realm. So if somebody did one cycle 10 years ago, or they had some sort of growth cycle that caused them to produce that hormone when they were younger, and then that growth was then removed. Do you have.

You say growth? You like mean cancerous growth? Like a.

It could be a. It could be a non cancerous growth. But typically they. I mean, they could be either way. So you can have Like a non cancerous or cancerous growth that causes you to excrete whatever the hormone may be, whether it's growth hormone or testosterone, stuff like that. Like I think they call them benign tumors or something like that. I'm not a, you know, you don't give a.

About that stuff.

We're not oncologists out here. But yeah, I think there's definitely, you know, categories of growth that wouldn't necessarily be cancerous but definitely cause you to excrete the hormone of interest. So if people are out there and they want to be natty, but. Well, if it's natty or not, it's, you know, a different. But you could just have someone.

Just.

I don't even know how you would do that, but I'm sure it's possible.

Where you induce, stick your hand in a microwave, turn it on. Just hope. This is horrible. Golly.

Yeah.

Okay, so outside of like truly rare, like literally having some sort of growth in your body that's causing you to excrete secrete excess testosterone or whatever it may be. Right. It gets even more murky when you start talking about like truly what it means to be natural. Like you and I take creatine and I know this is kind of silly, it's not an anabolic steroid, but it is not natural to do so. It is not natural for me to take pre workout before I go to the gym. You know what I mean? Like these are things that give you some sort of ergogenic benefit that your body is not producing endogenously. So are Danny boy and I natural because we take creatine and caffeine and pre workout before we go train or not? You know what I mean? So yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to. Just trying to bring us back to not.

Yeah, exactly.

Their hands in microwaves. But go ahead and keep talking on what it means to be natural.

Yeah, so you bring up the point of doing something that. Or taking something that isn't an anabolic hormone that could potentially put you in the category of unnatural, or at least on the spectrum of unnatural. And I think people like, oh, well, creatine is a natural substance. It's found in meat.

But.

But for a normal individual, you would just not consume, you know, two pounds of beef per day. So you taking that supplement is allowing you to do something that you otherwise wouldn't do on a regular basis. So is that quote unquote natural? You know, that's can be up for debate. Another category that's often overlooked is genetic mutations. So Myostatin is a cytokine that essentially blunts you from increasing muscle mass, so it prevents hypertrophy. And there's people that have mutations that essentially delete the myostatin gene. And they get absolutely massive because of the fact that they don't have that inhibitor in myostatin. And so that is something where they didn't do anything or take anything exogenously, but they're absolutely massive. Like, you can look up the photos of these little kids or I don't, I don't know, maybe eight or nine, and they look like just absolutely yoked, like bodybuilders. You can look up even the cattle, I forgot the name of the actual cow, but they're absolutely massive and just super, super muscular. So.

And you've probably seen pictures of it, like if you've ever seen a picture on the Internet of a like, like almost AI looking jacked cow. It's not AI and it's not a photoshopped image. It is a myostatin deficient cattle that they bred for the purposes of making meat, like more meat for us to consume. Super interesting process there, but. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Was that for meat?

I'm not sure. I thought it was. I thought it was the whole purpose of it was to just make do a producing meat much cheaper through selective breeding. I could be entirely wrong about this. It could have also been like a cancer treatment that they were testing on cattle and it resulted in that. But maybe I'm conflating two things.

Yeah. Because I think rarely do they give even anabolic hormones to actual meat cattle because of the fact that you.

They can't. Yeah, they can't do that.

Yeah. Yeah. But I'm saying go ahead. It would like taste bad because they're so little fat too.

So super illegal. Like it's. Anytime you see something. This is just a fun fact. Anytime you see something that's like hormone free chicken or hormone free, all chicken and all cattle is hormone free. It's very illegal to give hormones treatments to, to livestock, I think.

I think you can give hormones that allow dairy cows to produce more milk. And I think that's the only category that interesting is allowed. And it ends up. We're veering off topic completely here. But the amount of hormone that actually ends up in the milk is close to negligible. So I still wouldn't really worry about it. Like whether it's physiological is, you know, up for debate, but it seems pretty clear that it's very unlikely that it has a meaningful impact on health even in the case of dairy cows, but definitely not in the case of meat cattle.

Yeah. Welcome to the agricultural Built with Science podcast. Sorry, this is like. This is why we can't have conversational episodes like this.

Exactly.

Anyway, so outside of genetic mutations as well as, like, you guys get the point, though. The reason we keep going off on these tangents is because defining what it actually means to be natural is very difficult. Like, for instance, selective androgen receptor modulators. Like someone taking sarms. Right. Are they natural? I mean, they're not technically taking anabolic steroids, but they're taking something that functions in the exact same way. This is something that Broderick Chavez touches on. He's like, I don't understand why individuals are so interested in using steroids without using steroids. Like, you're trying to naturally boost your testosterone, which is because you might think that it's safer, but you're just doing the exact same thing, and it's still going to have probably the same effects on you as taking anabolic steroids. So I think we're. I think we've covered this general area pretty well. One really hard to tell if someone's natural or not. Like, it's not binary. It exists on a spectrum. Danny and I are not entirely natural because we take things like creatine and trend, not creatine and just caffeine and stuff like that. Right. But let's just say for the purposes of the rest of this podcast, what it means to be natural or not. We're going to just make it binary in that you're either taking anabolic steroids or something similar to anabolic steroids. Yeah. Booster, whatever it may be. Or you're not. Right. So things like literal anabolic agents or not is what we're going to just call natural or not for the purposes of this podcast. But the whole reason we bring that up is because it's really hard to tell if someone's natural. Right. Like, almost impossible to a certain extent. But do you want to touch on how we might be able to identify if someone's natural or not? Difficult that it may be. Go ahead.

Yeah. So while we're on the topic in terms of just helping those people out who, you know, are trying to be detectives, we're definitely not. And that's. I spend no time doing that. But some tells are when somebody's been training for a really long time, and then they make massive progress in short order. You know, that's usually a pretty decent sign that they had some exogenous help. So that's one category. And then the other category I was sort of put under the umbrella of symptoms. So things that are commonly seen when people take steroids. So back acne and just acne in general. If somebody, you know, never had acne and then they start having a good amount of acne, then, you know, potentially this is obviously. And we'll cover at the end why these are, you know, kind of murky, but that's potentially a sign. If they have enormous traps out of nowhere, that's also a sign. There seems to be some data that points toward a higher amount of androgen receptors around the trap. So typically when people get on anabolic agents, they see an increase in trap size and then tons of other related symptoms. You know, voice type things. Hair related.

Deepening of the voice.

Yeah, yeah. So those are all obviously categories where it can be pretty obvious. Bone structure. So you'll see, especially in women, but also in men, it's just less obvious because they already have those male androgenic features where their jaw will become more square and things like that. So there's definitely some tells, but none of them are. This is a for sure thing because obviously some women already have more square jaws, some people already have acne, some people have huge traps sometimes. Somebody could have been training for a while and been training pretty poorly. You know, their life's life got in the way and they were only getting in once a week. And then they were able to now, for whatever reason, get more sleep, train more often and so on, and actually made a lot more progress. So there's going to be tons and tons of instances where you're not completely sure that somebody is using, other than the instances where an individual is just absolutely otherworldly, massive and extremely lean, where you're just like, all right. I mean, unless this person has a bunch of mutations we're not aware of, they're probably using. But the vast majority of individuals who are using don't fall underneath that category. And many times you couldn't even differentiate them from somebody who just has, you know, pretty decent genetics. So it's definitely a lot harder than people think. When people think of somebody that takes steroids, they usually think of those freaks. But unfortunately, tons and tons of people take steroids without knowing some of the ramifications and also without knowing that they're not going to end up looking like the freaks that they see. Those freaks are people who were already genetically gifted that added anabolic agents on top. So there's definitely some misconceptions in this area. Where you know you'll automatically become freaky looking just because you get on an anabolic agent.

Yeah. I think that people often go the. There's two ends of this spectrum. So you can look at someone who's comedically yolked, like just like ridiculous, like, like Jeff Nippert is incredibly jacked right there. We have every reason to believe that Jeff Nippert is a natural athlete. We have no reason to think that he is on stage. Relax. We have every reason to believe that he's never used steroids in any way or capacity. Right. There's no reason to think that he has. And so you look at a Jax person, you can immediately think they're on steroids. And it can go the other way where you can look at someone who looks like they've never seen a barbell or the inside of a gym in their entire life and they're running grams per week of anabolic steroids and you just wouldn't be able to tell. Genetic variation is crazy. And not only in respect to where we can achieve what we can achieve naturally. Genetic variation is crazy with respect to how you're going to respond to steroids. Some people hop on like a low dose Anavar cycle and all of a sudden they look like Big Raimi in, in a couple of months. Right. Incredibly unlikely. But you also have individuals who jump on crazy like peptides and they look, oh, like that guy looks, he looks like he lifts. He might be able to bench 225. It's kind of hard to tell. Like you just, you literally never know. And, and even in the cases that Danny boy just said, like, even if you see someone who's 250 and really shred it. Yeah. The odds are that they're on steroids and you, it's a dial. Right. We turn the dial of confidence up that like they're probably on steroids. Their skin is like pink and purple, they look like Grimace. They're 250 pounds, but they're 5% body fat and they have no hair, gynecomastia and back knee like crazy. Yeah. The odds are that they're on steroids, but we can't say that with 100% confidence for any reason at all. Right. And I think that's really important. And that right there kind of pushes us to the next portion of should we care if someone's on steroids or not? Like outside of just exposing someone for lying, which is, yeah, for some reason a thing that feels really good to do as a human, but outside of that Context, Why, Danny Boyd, do you think that people care so much about if someone's using steroids or not?

Yeah, so I think that the main reason, other than what we were talking about with the adding outing individuals thing, is they want to see what they can achieve naturally. And I think that ends up falling apart for a multitude of reasons. And the reason is essentially what we were talking about, which is people have vast genetic differences where we can just put everything that sort of allows you to increase muscle mass in that genetic category, in that, let's say, bone mass, there's obviously genetic component to bone mass. And then a higher amount of bone mass allows you to have more muscle mass. So somebody can naturally have a higher bone mass. Somebody can naturally have higher amount of androgen receptors. Somebody can have myostatin deletion which allows them to. This is a rare. So the difference between polymorphism or a single nucleotide polymorphism and a mutation is that it's just the rarity. So mutations are just more rare than polymorphism. So there's some polymorphisms that are associated with greater amounts of muscle mass. Interestingly, there's not a whole lot of them and they don't explain a lot of the variation in muscle mass. So we're still piecing that together. But there's clearly genetic differences. Just by looking around, you can see. And many people have had friends that were essentially on the same exact program and one person blew up and the other didn't. So there's some interesting things to talk about there.

A lot of data on that too, like direct empirical data looking at exactly that. So, sorry, I didn't mean to keep going.

Yeah, so it's very clear that some individuals, you know, start at second base, so to speak, when it comes to being able to increase their muscle mass. So understanding whether somebody's natty or not is not going to tell you really anything about what you can achieve naturally. Because most people wouldn't be able to achieve. Well, sort of, by definition, most people wouldn't be able to achieve what those genetic outliers, even if they're not taking steroids, would be able to achieve. So you can only really compare to yourself there. And then there's the issue of how should you train? So while you could realize that, okay, this person's obviously genetically gifted, but maybe I can gain some golden nuggets from how they train that might actually inform what I'm doing. Regardless of whether I'm going to build as much muscle mass as them, it might help me build more muscle for Myself. And I think that's where there could potentially be some credence for wanting to know whether somebody is natural or not. Although it's really not that important because as we just spoke about, there's probably differences in recovery and tons of other issues with people who are even not taking any sort of anabolic agents. So using somebody else's training to inform your training might be slightly better if the person's natural, because there's probably going to be a lot less variation because depending on the anabolic agents that you take, you can recover from more and just do freaky things. But you still want to be extremely careful when deciding how to train using an anecdote from another individual. Because, I mean, even take you and I like, there's things that I can do that you would absolutely hate doing and vice versa. So you really want to find out what works for you and take the anecdotes with an extreme grain of salt, regardless of whether somebody is natty or not.

Yeah, I mean, I have a lot to say there. So, like, one, like taking someone, like, just because someone's. We've talked about this in other episodes, like, someone being jacked does not tell you anything about their knowledge surrounding training. In fact, this is kind of weird, but, like, the more jacked a person is, almost the less likely I am to take what they say with, like, the I. The finer the grain of salt, the more jacked they are. Which I know sounds silly, but if I had really good genetics and just built muscle by looking at weights, I would have never had the impetus to learn about this stuff as much as I have. And that's not always the case. Look at Mike Israel. That dude is jacked beyond all kid out and knows an unbelievable amount about lifting science. Right? Same with Eric Helms and any other pretty famous influencer, right. Who were like, scientific influencer for the most part. So I think that using. And if someone is on steroids or not, just take. I don't think there is a difference there between taking the advice of someone who is or is not on steroids. I think that you should take the advice of as many people as you possibly can and try and inform your own opinion with respect to how you should go about training as well as your own experience. Like to touch on what Danny Boy was saying, there's some stuff that works for him that doesn't work for me. Danny Boy really likes the katana overhead extension, where your arms are out to the side and you're doing extension like that. Easier for people to See that are on YouTube watching this. But that destroys my elbow. Every time I do it, it really hurts. And no matter how much I tried to grade my exposure to it, it just doesn't seem to really work with my anatomy. Right. So Danny Boy is super jacked and super knowledgeable trainer. Something that he does would not be good for me, even though it's a sound thing to do. Right. It's just I have to take my own experience on that. Right. And then Mike Israel. The last thing I'll say here is that Mike Israel had this really funny quote. He was like, people care so much about if someone's natural or not because it helps them inform of like what they're capable of achieving. Right? But wouldn't you rather the person be on steroids than be natural? Because at least if they're on steroids, that's another rock that you can turn over to maybe achieve that goal. But if they're natural and they look like that and you're natural and you look like this, you know, just because they're natural doesn't mean that that's now something that you can achieve, Right? It almost is more like not demeaning but like depressing to find out that. Yeah, exactly. Demoralizing to find out that they are natural and they just achieve that through their genetics and hard work. Right. So I think that the natty or not movement outside of, and this is kind of silly, but outside of just exposing liars doesn't have a lot of merit to informing training decisions or even informing like what is naturally achievable. We have data looking at what, how people typically respond to training. Right. And even within natural confines, there are huge variations. There are people who go through a 12 week training cycle and put on 50% more quad size than they started with. And there's individuals who will lose muscle going through that exact same program. Right. And I'm pretty sure that we have data looking at exactly that. I can't cite the exact study, unfortunately, but you just see these wide spreads across these scatter plots where there's some individuals who respond incredibly well to training without steroids and some people who respond horribly to training without steroids. So wondering if someone is on gear or not to inform your training decision or what's capable for you is moot in my personal opinion. And then maybe, maybe you disagree with that, Danny Boy. If so, that's fine, we can talk about that.

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Yeah, I mean, I think that, and I think you'll get into this later, even though I think both of them are not a good idea in terms of taking sort of training advice from people who are natural and unnatural and trying to integrate that or forcing that integration into your training is obviously a bad idea. But I think based on averages, so you know, sort of to argue the opposite point, you know, there's a reason we, we choose populations in studies, right? Because you're more likely to be represented by an individual who does things that you do. So if you're, or has characteristics that you have. So if there's steroid users and there's a study on steroid users, unfortunately we don't have that because obviously steroids are illegal substances at this point at least.

Most of them are in the United States.

In the United States, yeah. You're less representative of that population if you're natural. So you can draw stronger conclusions from studies that have you as a representative. You know, the other categories of this are age and potentially gender and so on. But the, that I think extrapolates to considering the average individual you see and all of those anecdotes and being in the gym for years and years, I would say that the vast, vast, vast, let's just take an example. The vast majority of people that I know train within the 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week range. And so the vast majority of people that I'm exposed to are people who are natty, who, who are not using steroids. And I can sort of take that with some solace and be like, all right, you know, if I'm there and the evidence seems to point that way in people who are natural, I can be pretty confident that if, if I'm within that range, I can play around a little bit and see what works for myself. But if that wasn't the case for people who were unnatural or people who are using steroids, then I wouldn't be as worried if that makes sense. So I think it's, it's something that I just consider a little bit more when I hear an anecdote, especially when that anecdote falls in line with things that I've experienced. So they're an individual who has trained around how long I've trained, they experience joint issues, how basically the more puzzle pieces that fit in with my personal experience or an experience of one of my clients, I'm like, all right, maybe I'll consider this anecdote and how it, how they went about doing this thing and try it out for myself, while I'm less likely to do that for somebody that's taking anabolic agents, because what they're taking matters a whole lot. So you can talk about now maybe one, respond to what I just said and two, maybe the whole concept of being able to tolerate more volume and so on.

So yeah, like you said.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, yeah. So just to respond to what you said very briefly, because I mean, yeah, of course I agree with everything you just said. I just think that. And you even said this, but averages, right? Research on the populations that are representative, you are still average, right? Or average is. So a study that tells you you can gain X amount of muscle from doing a particular protocol. There are people in that study that gain no muscle and there's people in that study who gain twice as much as what they're saying is the average. Right? And then to further that, like there are individuals who will get far more jacked naturally than some individuals will running full bore steroid cycles. Right? I mean, that is, that is just how variable we can actually be as people. Right? So, yeah, I mean, like I said, I entirely agree and I probably am more likely to take the advice of someone who's jacked and natural than I am, or at least I'm more willing to experiment with protocols used by natural athletes than I am individuals on gear. And the reason for that is, is because, and this is where we're going to touch on training differences between the individuals. And this is going to boil down to basically an entire like a single sentence, right? Which is that when you're using steroids, the only difference that Danny boy and I can confidently say about how that affects your training is that it lowers your floor and raises your ceiling, right? So it lowers the floor by which you're going to respond to, meaning you can do less and grow more than an individual who is not taking. Assuming all things are created equal, right? But you can also just do far more because what you're capable of recovering from is way higher. Right? So just to touch on, we'll throw one study in here. There was a study in the mid-1990s by Boston et al. I'm sure I'M butchering that name, I do apologize. But they basically took like around 50 individuals and placed them into four separate groups. Right. Individuals training without steroids, individuals not training, but also not taking steroids. And then in two steroid groups, training with steroids and not training with steroid use. Right. Everything came out basically the way you would expect. Except the craziest thing is that the individuals taking steroids and not training grew more than the individuals training and not taking steroids. Which is to say that taking steroids seemingly has some sort of hypertrophic or anabolic effect, even in lieu of training entirely. Right. So not only can you just grow more, but also if you then titrate training into steroid use, right. Which hopefully you are, you're going to grow more, like a lot. And not only that, but the amount of sets that you can do per week probably increases as well. Right. Because you're, you're in. Your recoverability is also improved. It's kind of long winded there. But all that is all to say that training differences between a bodybuilder who uses steroids and a bodybuilder who doesn't probably don't look that different other than the individual using steroids can get away with making more mistakes and they can get away with just doing a lot more in the gym in general. Do you have anything you want to add to that?

Yeah, just in terms of summarizing, I think you can get more muscle growth per set and you can also recover from more sets. And I think the interesting thing here is also just anecdotally from people's experience, different agents seem to allow for you to do more or less like potentially more joint specific agents where you can just tolerate more volume because your joints don't get as beat up. And there's also anecdotes of people who ramp up their volume as they ramp up their anabolic agents. So it's, it's clear that there's a relationship between how people dose what they're taking to how much they're doing in the gym. So that's a strong reason to sort of not copy protocols where somebody's getting extra help, so to speak. So I think that's probably the strongest rationale for not just taking that cookie cutter program and using it as your own. So other than that, I don't have too much to cover. One thing that we didn't mention was that there's some agents that allow you to be like leaner and things like that that technically aren't anabolic steroids but just allow you to get really lean. And that would also be in the category of. Or more along the spectrum toward unnatural, but not even a steroid at all. So, yeah, in my head, other partners and stuff. And butyrol. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so they did. Yeah. And I think those similarly wouldn't. Wouldn't affect training to a large degree. Maybe they would.

Not, to my knowledge.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah. So let's kind of wrap this up. Yeah. Basically we have here in the outline, train hard and find out is basically to say that, look, man, you're never going to know what you're able to achieve naturally or on gear, so you might as well just train hard and find out what you can achieve naturally and then if you end up deciding to pull the trigger later in life, do so. But that's not the advice of Built With Science tm. But yeah, you want to. You want to throw us a little wrap up for the episode.

Yeah. So basically, one, natty or not is a spectrum. So it goes from somebody taking absolutely no supplements and getting no help whatsoever to taking a whole lot of gear. And then in terms of trying to base your training decisions on whether somebody is natural or not, you. It's probably a bad idea because of two reasons. One, people's natural ceiling is going to be vastly different based on genetics. So seeing how much somebody grows, whether they take steroids or not, is not going to inform you about how much you can grow. And looking at somebody's training, regardless of whether they're natural or not, is, for the most part not going to inform your training all that well. Although you can probably gain a little bit more in the way of golden nuggets from somebody that represents you just a little bit more. So somebody who is natural and maybe has some of those same symptoms and tendencies, and honestly, what you enjoy also potentially goes into that equation. So the only way to really find out your natty limit is to work hard for years and years, train modifications as needed, and don't worry too much about whether somebody's natural and have fun, you know, training supposed to be fun.

Mind your fucking business and go lift yourself. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well said, man. Okay, cool. Beautiful episode, dude. So, as always, thank you all so much for listening to the Built With Science podcast. If you have something that you want us to cover that we haven't talked about yet, feel free to reach out to us @builtwithscience on Instagram. And as always, thank you so much for listening.

Peace.