PEDs in climbing....drugz!

Evan Curry wrote:

Thanks for giving me some more depth about those studies. The experience you guys had with cardarine peaked my interest, so I did a quick search and came across that. I’m more concerned about effects on the liver... were this effects only seen at that same dosage. 

Also, where are you buying this supplement? Definitely curious to experiment as PE is definitely my biggest weakness for hard sport climbing.

email me and I'll help ya out. I have no vested interested financially in any company, only dispersing information/sources because I don't mind helping and I have tried a couple and found one that definitely works (first one I tried was either bunk or underdosed).

Kuntor wrote:

I'm happy that people have found beneficial information in my post! I'm happy I stopped back in MP too, checking on a few training posts, love this place :)

Kuntor wrote:

stimulants and diamox are the real climbing PEDs

Diamox?

How does acetazolamide help improve climbing performance at sea level?

 . . . (Of course it helps many people short-term with acclimatization when they go from sea-level up to altitude).

Ken

5.samadhi wrote:Adding intramuscular water weight increases the mechanical leverage rate of the muscle (by literally making it bigger and increasing the angle to the bone it levers against).

Creatine works on the phosphorylation system of ADP to ATP. Mechanical advantage has nothing to do with it.

Kuntor wrote:

creatine ... doping your body with extra isn't actually going to do a lot - cell metabolism is almost totally dependent on expression of rate limiting enzymes, so upping the substrate isn't going to do shit without training-induced upregulation of those proteins.

My two cents

Creatine . . . 

I can understand how in the short-term the effectivess of adding more of this fuel is limited by not having proportionally more enzyme to process it . . .

Might it not be plausible to think that if adding a little creatine fuel makes a small improvement in short training sessions of intense deadpoint moves, then the increase on stress from that will induce the synthesis of more creatine-processing enzyme proteins.

Perhaps you could get a long-term cycle of improvement in both intense big-move climbing performance and in capaibility to utilize more creatine.

Therefore, a sudden big load of creatine fuel is not going to yield a sudden (non-placebo-driven) increase in intense-big-move performance, but sustained smaller increase could make a difference.

I'm thinking that since creatine is a simple molecule, not a poly-peptide, taking it orally should work OK.

Ken

Related to this topic - there was a group at Duke or UNC or something that was correlating brown-fat volume to elite athletic performance (brown fat is mostly found in babies - it's lipocytes that can mobilize fat into free glucose super fast to give on demand energy, kinda like a giant glycogen store but not contained in the muscle). The hypothesis was that elite athletes tend to have more brown fat - I'd be interested to find out if there's anything that can increase brown fat.

Kuntor wrote:

. . . . if there's anything that can increase brown fat.

Wear shorts in the winter

How about way that doesn't involve my nuts ascending into my pleural cavity then?

Kuntor wrote:

 it's lipocytes that can mobilize fat into free glucose super fast to give on demand energy, kinda like a giant glycogen store but not contained in the muscle

Fat catabolism generates energy through the citric acid cycle and enters it as acetylcoA. Fat does not mobilize into glucose.

Kuntor wrote:

 - it's lipocytes that can mobilize fat into free glucose super fast to give on demand energy, kinda like a giant glycogen store but not contained in the muscle). The hypothesis was that elite athletes tend to have more brown fat - I'd be interested to find out if there's anything that can increase brown fat.

Actually I thought that well-trained endurance athletes do store fat in their muscles. Perhaps not in the muscle cells themselves, but very close by. It's supposed to be a well-known result of aerobic "long slow distance".

Another adaptation of "l s d" training is supposed to be increase in enzymes for directly metabolizing fatty acids with oxygen in muscle cells.

But I'm no expert on that sort of thing, just what I've read in racing training books.

Ken

RangerJ wrote:

Creatine works on the phosphorylation system of ADP to ATP. Mechanical advantage has nothing to do with it.

It is my experience and understanding with creatine, that adding size to my quads, biceps/triceps (etc) increases my mechanical advantage and thus my strength. I add probably about a half an inch or inch on to my biceps dosing 10g/day creatine with fast acting carbohydrates/essential aminos :)

Just my experience man! Increase the leverage, increase the strength!

(not super recommended for climbing other than during periods of training you're adding weight anyways (think hangboarding cycles). Doesn't work well for peak performance phases :/

Arginine and beta alanine are pretty much the only supplement that I use. I used to use them both when I used to lift a lot of weights. Beta Alinine helps not getting pumped as fast in my experience. The arginine promotes red blood cells and oxygen transfer... I always take an arginine pill before going above 10-12k ft. and I have never had an issue with altitude sickness, so I think it can help in that arena some as well.... As far as real PEDs go.... Nah that shit is whack.... I gotta buddy who's a personal trainer and he's always taking some Dianabol or some crap, and after hearing the side effects and watching him take it..... No way in hell would I take any illegal PEDs....

Kuntor wrote:

What is the side effects of using exogenous gh that you are mainly concerned with? Raising fasted blood glucose levels? Water retention? Raising BP? The first is a real concern the latter are not such a huge concern and can be controlled by use of natural diuretics (dandelion leaf/root tea) and controlling diet/sodium intake and lowering daily dosage of GH.

We mitigate blood sugar levels raising over time by taking breaks from using gh, employing exogenous insulin with gh (giving break to one's own pancreas) and helping shuttle glucose quickly into muscle cells so desensitization is not so drastic, and going onto ketogenic diet with use of intermittent fasting to keep fasted bg around 80-85....95 is the level you should bow out of using GH and opt into IF/keto/using GDAs for a few weeks. Doing the latter also has this awesome side effect of keeping you ripped at maintenance calories :)

@RangerJ - good catch! Yeah, circulating free fatty acids is the correct answer (low circulating glucose stimulates lipolysis of triglycerides in the adipo/lipocytes). Interesting aside, alcohol goes straight into the Krebs cycle, hence why just drinking can make you fat! (Im drinking a beer right now is why I mention that)

Someone mentioned energy storage in muscle - that's glycogen. I heard a number a long time ago in med school of something like roughly 2500kcal worth of glycogen is typically stored in muscle, and that number can go up using the "long and slow" training regimen previously mentioned. 

As for what 5.samadhi was saying with gh regimens that's a topic I'm hardly an expert on. My understanding of side effects is largely based on cases of unregulated high volume use like bodybuilders that can develop symptoms like sex-hormone insufficiency (eg - small testes, low bone density, enlarged breasts) after cessation. I should say though, that i work primarily in basic science and not clinical practice, so take the word of a practicing physician over mine (and that's just a general rule for the internet). 

5.samadhi wrote:

A stimulant that does not cause vasoconstriction (unlike the example of adderall above): fluorinate modafinil. Lasts 4-6 hours, using it does not cause much peripheral stimulation...just really clean pure energy.

Hmmm. I used modafinil in a couple non-climbing related scenarios where intense focus and alertness were required. It was great for that but what I noticed, also, was tremendous emotional fragility and brittleness the next day. It's like the modafinil drained your emotional reserves to give you all that go the day before. Would only take it again in an emergency situation where getting the hell through something difficult today was more important that having my emotional equilibrium tomorrow. Definitely not something I'd do just to redpoint a climb.

Kuntor wrote:

by the way, there's no "normal" amount of glycogen stored in muscle! Compare a 180lb man with 18" arms to a 110lb girl with 10" arms.........there's no comparison in the amount of glycogen those two people store....hint: the dude has WAY more! Something you "heard a long time ago in med school" probably doesn't have any place in an advanced discussion of supplements/training taking place in 2017 :)

AndrewArroz wrote:

Hmmm. I used modafinil in a couple non-climbing related scenarios where intense focus and alertness were required. It was great for that but what I noticed, also, was tremendous emotional fragility and brittleness the next day. It's like the modafinil drained your emotional reserves to give you all that go the day before. Would only take it again in an emergency situation where getting the hell through something difficult today was more important that having my emotional equilibrium tomorrow. Definitely not something I'd do just to redpoint a climb.

Oh yeah! :( I wouldn't use modafinil or fluourinated-modafinil if I were you either :(

That sounds like a really shitty side effect you have. Its all good because stimulants aren't really like some holy grail we've found that really help training or performance that much at all. You're not missing out on much, other than a mild buzz that can kinda help push you harder with training or a redpoint/onsight...coffee or nicotine can do the same though :)

Kuntor wrote:

@RangerJ - good catch! Yeah, circulating free fatty acids is the correct answer (low circulating glucose stimulates lipolysis of triglycerides in the adipo/lipocytes). Interesting aside, alcohol goes straight into the Krebs cycle, hence why just drinking can make you fat! (Im drinking a beer right now is why I mention that)

Alcohol is converted by alcohol dehydrogenase to acetaldehyde. That is converted to acetate by aldehyde dehydrogenase. Acetate plus ATP and CoA gives you acetylCoA. That, again, is at the top of the Krebs cycle. It's the same entry point as 2 carbon energy from beta oxidation of fatty acids or glycolysis. The pathway from fatty acids to acetylCoA is reversible through malonyl CoA and fatty acid synthase. It would be more correct to say that excess acetylCoA makes you fat, whether you get that from the carbs in beer or the alcohol doesn't really make a difference.

Just trying to bring some biochemical accuracy to this discussion. 

Also, again, mechanical advantage has nothing to do with the effect of creatine. The vector difference from a small increase in muscle mass is miniscule. The "power" comes from increased availability of ATP.