The Uneducated PT Podcast - 🎙️ Episode 127 — Dr. David Nolan: The Enhanced Games, Human Limits & the Future of Performance

Episode Date: November 1, 2025

This week on The Uneducated PT, we’re joined by Dr. David Nolan, sport scientist and lecturer in Sport & Exercise Science at Dublin City University — and one of Ireland’s leading voices on performance, physiology, and ethics in sport. In this episode, we dive into the controversial world of the Enhanced Games — a proposed Olympics-style event where athletes can openly use performance-enhancing drugs. Dr. Nolan breaks down what this means for science, fairness, and the future of sport. We ask:Is the Enhanced Games about exploring human potential — or just selling enhancement drugs?What would it mean to live in a society that openly embraces chemical enhancement?Could this blur the line between sport, biotechnology, and entertainment?And what are the ethical and health implications if “enhanced” competition becomes normalized?It’s an honest, thought-provoking conversation on where performance science might be headed — and whether pushing human limits has finally gone too far.

Dr David Nolan, welcome to the Uneducated PT podcast where people, a lot smarter than me, teach me about things that I don't understand. So before we get into the topics that we're going to discuss, can you just give the listeners a little bit of background into the work that you do and how you came across what you're working on at the moment? Sure, I suppose my title of anywhere else we'd be called lectures in DCU are assistant professors and associate professors. So I'm an assistant professor of sport and exercise science up in DCU. They're working at Health and Human Performance. So in my role there, I'm a lecture across strength condition and modules,

help out in the exercise physiology, and then across the master's modules in strength and condition and allotted therapy. And then also supervise PhD students and doctorate students across several disciplines. So that's kind of my day job background. I'm sports scientists by trade, I suppose. So my undergraduate degree was in Limerick. and then ended up eventually pursuing a PhD in DCU under Dr. Brendan Egan there and was lucky enough then to end up getting a position in the faculty. So day today, lecturer and researcher research interest then, probably touched on them today, quite broad across originally the female athlete sex differences in exercise, a lot around menstrual cycle hormonal contraceptives, their influences.

And more recently then moving into kind of men's health space looking at testosterone therapy and different uses. testosterone right across the spectrum from anabolic steroids use into sport and bodybuilders right across the therapeutic uses of testosterone in health then a few other areas in sport performance and even historical sunlifting sprinkled in there then as well we'll most certainly get into what what made you go down that route of pursuing you know a sports background like was a passion of yours when you're younger were you've been sport when you're younger yeah um When I When a child

I still get slag about it I wanted to be a herpetologist A sorry, what? A herpetologist A herpetologist is the field of science that studies reptiles So it used to be a great guy On the TV back then

Austin Stevens I think was his name He was one of these wildlife photographers So he used to be like going through the jungles Trying to get pictures of these snakes and everything like that Not a lot of money in that probably So I went into sport science

Where yeah So it probably wasn't the best avenue either I'm pretty kind of your typical route During adolescence Involve sport, game football, martial arts Got into weight train I was always interested in that But I was always

Academically strong I suppose So I was interested in science So kind of probably exposed To documentary, saw VOTOMX That kind of stuff in the lab look cool So I was interested in doing that kind of stuff So yeah I remember sitting in there

with the guidance counsellor and they were like oh what course you want to do i was like i want to do sports science and uL and i think it's like 490 500 points around the time they're like oh well what are you going to do if you don't get the points i was like well i'll get the points i was an arrogant little shit probably were you always academic even when you're younger yeah i was always academically strong um just probably just won those things um but on my CEO out uhuel number one and I think I had UCD number two so the way the points worked if I didn't get in UL I wasn't getting into UCD

so it was an all or nothing and I ended up I was looking up and then ended up going to UL and yeah it's as sports scientists it's gas in like table quiz sports questions comes up or name the footballer

can't name it I'm like I'm not good at sport tribute and so I'm interested more in the science and the physiology of performance and also I've got exposed to health kind of disciplines throughout my time then as well so very much interested in the role exercise and sport and play in our health and performance but yeah interest in actual sport and kind of can take relief with a lot of it so it was either reptiles or sport science yeah and it's probably some people who joke it's probably a bit of reflection of my my own character slippery reptile

what would you what would you say is how many young people who want to pursue a career in sports science Like how what's your reflections on it so far? I would strongly encourage it. So like the last couple of years I've been at higher options, working to stand on different career panels. And people would be discouraged. Parents will discourage like, oh, there's no jobs in it. And I think we need to stop viewing university as just training people to go into a job.

Yes, there's vocational courses. There's, you know, nursing and physiotherapy and all these ones, leads and teaching to go straight into a job. But that's not what the university is about. That's not what academia originally it's about. It's about learning, learning how to think, to be a critical thinker, to come up with new ideas, and then give you a wide range of skills. You can learn a lot of different jobs. So sports science is great in the fact that it doesn't train you to be something specific. It trains you as a generalist. And it's great for someone that's interested in science, first and foremost. It is a science course. It's chemistry,

physics, biology all applied to and taught through the lens of sport and health. So it gives you a taste of all knows and then you can pick where you want to specialize. So if you like science, you're interested in sport and exercise, but you don't know exactly where you want to go. It's a great kind of start point because a lot of people, it shocks me the amount of students that want to do physiotherapy. And I asked them, well, have you ever a shadowed a physiotherapist? Have you ever gone in and done a day in the hospital with a physiotherapist?

No. it's like you don't even know a physio because we all see the physio running out onto the pitch, you know, on match day but that's only a very small portion of what a physiotherapist does and your training is very small in that area where most of the physiotherapy is in the hospital setting

working with someone after stroke, someone with COPD with breathing issues, neurological issues, the musculoskeletal, the sports exercise science, only a very small part of what physios do. So if someone thinks that that's all it is, it's just funny that we all

want to be going to, we think we want to be in these careers without ever shadowing or being in that environment we have this kind of romanticised version of what that environment is going to be like. We see the same in elite sport these sports science students think oh elite sport must be all so professional

and you know everyone is in there working really hard and everything is perfect when you talk to them when it's in there it's control of chaos like it's no humans are messy we're chaotic people and elite acting they're very elite at one narrow bandwidth and that's their sport. Usually their life is a mess outside of those things because they're hyper-specialists in one area.

Yeah. We were talking before you came on about, you know, people have their ideals about they're going into this kind of career and this is where they're going to end up. And then obviously it doesn't plan out the way they want to be. That can kind of take you a little bit of an ego hit. I suppose with sports science or any of them kind of pursuits, You probably have to have an open mind that you could end up down any real field with this. Like you said, in terms of like you've so many different kind of topics and subjects that you've kind of went down and have a hole.

I think so. There was someone speaking at Higher Options this year, and I can't remember his name. But when we look at the data, careers as such are a thing of the past. And what I mean by that, it used to be you joined an organisation or a career field at trade at 18, 20, years of age and you were there to retire. What we're seeing in kind of corporate world now or even just in the world of work, we see people loyalty to a certain institution or company is not there anymore. That's the thing of the past. So people are moving much more frequently job hopping and like you talked to anyone who works in

farm with a couple of friends. If you've been in a farmer company more than three or four years, that's actually seen as a bit strange. You're like, oh well why haven't you jumped to another farm company yet that's the culture there you change every a couple years but what we've seen in trends now is people don't only change jobs more frequently people are trying to change in career so it seems to be that people are doing one career per decade seems to be the kind of things that we're seen in Gen Z and these in these younger ones so just what you want to do in your 20s isn't necessarily the job or even the industry you're going to be in your

30s and your 40s so that's why I think we need to start viewing and again DCU we have DCUTUR's program this idea of developing transversal skills These are skills that we can use across any industry, your teamwork, your communication, leadership. Because again, that's why I like the concept of being a scientist, to being able to handle data, to be able to look at problems objectively and be able to kind of distill information. Have nuanced conversations and be able to actually understand context is important, because I can take it from a decade in science and then go into business. So, Lash, we'll see McKinsey is a great example of a big consultant company,

were the very analytical and data driven. So I could do a decade of being a research scientist and then move there and apply those skills in a corporate consultancy way and then go into a completely different industry. So this idea of we need to stop thinking that college is to prepare someone for a job. It's to give them skills that it can just go out

and be valuable across societies a whole. That makes a lot of sense. What do you think has changed in the fact that Gen Z are more open to, Is it they're more kind of willing to risk in terms of changing careers or is it just the dynamics have changed from before? I don't know. It's, again, it's not my area especially. So I think I say it's just opinion.

But I think they are people who use the word in titles. But entitles may be the wrong word. They're probably less willing to put up with inequality or put up with a standard of living that they're not happy with. So some people will call it entitled Other people would call it They just want to demand a higher quality of living Or a higher standard of living And I think there

We exist in a much more transactional world now Where it very much used to be You went into a business Where maybe it was a family company And you knew the boss And you knew the family And there might be the family in the village or the town So there maybe was a sense of loyalty to that person

Because if you went home It's like oh I'm packing in that job Your father is probably like, you're not, I'd to see him down the pub Friday night. I don't want him saying you've, you know, sacked off the job where corporations are faceless now. So, you know, if I go in, if I'm a young person, I'm working in a big multinational, I'm just a number to them. So you don't feel like, you know, you're betraying any loyalty or you've any sense of loyalty to a company. So I think that it's just, and society is now much more mobile. People are moving around more.

with the argument, I suppose, the EU and just the ease of travel. We just move around a lot more, so to relocate isn't as much of a big deal. And I suppose, again, we won't get too political, but in a place where there is a housing crisis, the young people, they don't own a home, so it's not like to put roots down anywhere.

So for them, if they get a better job opportunity, what am I doing? I'm just letting out in the lease to go rent somewhere else, so it doesn't matter. So it's not like to have roots put down. And so I think that combination, of wanting a higher standard of living, valuing work-life balance much more, and just the economy is doing so much better.

You know, businesses are finding hard to fill jobs. So that means that the powers in the potential employees that it would be much more demanding than what they want because if you're not going to give me what I want, there is another business that probably will. Speaking of different topics and avenues that you can go down, you were on the radio recently speaking about the enhanced games and obviously we're going to talk about that as well as a multitude of different topics and what actually before i get your thoughts on the enhanced games could you actually just explain to the listeners who haven't heard about it yet what it is essentially

okay so the enhanced games it is a competition taking place next summer in Vegas and the idea of the hans games is to be to put it crudely the steroid Olympics essentially so what they are doing they're running different events, weightlifting, swimming, 100meter sprint, and they are allowing the use of performance-hance and drugs in their athletes. Their ideas, they claim it's to, you know, advance the limits of human potential by embracing the advances in technology in pharmaceuticals and doping protocols to push limits. That is their claim, that's what they're putting forward as this kind of competition to push the boundaries. What it is in reality, we can talk about that. But in a nutshell, these athletes that have volunteered and said they're going to appear,

they're being brought into the enhanced games, they're getting medical supervision and they're going to go on performance and have some drugs for a period of time and then end up competing in this event. So the athletes are getting, I think the appearance fee varies, but about 100 grand for just an appearance fee. Another quarter of a million. if to win their event and then an additional quarter of a million dollars if to break the world record in their event then as well. Yeah, so Irish swimmer Shane Ryan has joined in enhanced games, controversial events that permits the use of her performance enhancing drugs. Ryan stated his decision was driven by the need to earn money after a career in which he felt underpaid. And he also views the games as a form of entertainment and a chance to push his body to new limits in a controlled environment.

sport Ireland has strongly condemned this decision. What do you think? Do you think he's... I mean, I suppose a consenting adult who was already given a lot of the sport has the autonomy to make his own decisions when he wants to get paid more? Yeah, it's a difficult one to tease out. This is why I think this society we need to get better at having nuanced conversations and try to be as objective as he can. And my thoughts are still not probably fully formed on it,

but I can appreciate all sides of the argument. So the enhanced games itself, from a purely academic scientific perspective, it's fascinating. I find it fascinating because I am interested in. We've allowed technology to advance every other area of sports performance, apart from pharmaceutical advances in technology. So can you explain that a little bit for this mess? Yeah, so if we think of like we've allowed sports science support the use of laboratory, the use of all in physiological testing. We see the advent of super shoes, we see, you know, the Lycra. We've a load of scientific advances in the equipment, the training techniques that, you know, we do altitude training and we do these altitude chambers, heat chambers.

We use all these methods and scientific approaches to enhance human performance and athletic performance. But the one area of technology that we don't allow is pharmaceutical or pharmacinetic advances in technology. or to even experiment with those. So from a purely academic, scientific curiosity perspective, it's fascinating. If we did allow it, what could we do? How far could we push the human body? But that's intellectual curiosity.

What we do has an impact of a society level. We have to always think of overseeing consequences. So that's, I find it fascinating now. I think we need more research into that area and probably research has been hesitant to go into this area and there's ethical reasons. We might be dangerous to do some of these research we want to do. But I find that fascinating

and I'd love to be involved in research in that area. Shane Ryan, as an individual athlete, I don't think there's much conversation either there because, again, who are we to judge that individual person? Because Shane would put the argument forward that he was on a very low kind of stipend when he was a professional athlete, not enough to sustain him in his retirement.

He's given everything he can to the sport and he's going to now and he's kind of late stage of his career. He's going to go and make a lot of money that's going to sustain him. And yes, people would argue that his legacy is tarnish, but he would make the argument like no one really cares that much about swimming.

Anyways, like two weeks ago very few people knew his name. He's like now everyone knows his name and it's probably for an impetus reason. Again, I'm not going to judge a single individual. He's going to his mediate decision I said, sent an adult. He retired for me sport and he went and did that afterwards. When it comes to performance

as drugs or drug use in general, I would be quite a libertarian where if it is consenting adult understands the risks and rewards ratio and they're not doing anything illegal and they're not causing harm to other people. Well then by all means, who might have judged you taking whatever substance you want? Once you're not to be in a drug tested sport,

like if you're illegally doping in a sport and that is you know cheating that's a that's a different question uh altogether so that's that's kind of where we're at that now probably the big thing that people are missing about the enhanced games is what it actually is and it's a marketing stunt is what people are missing because if we actually look at the enhanced games the games itself is a front it's a marketing tool for enhanced.com. If you go on to enhance.com, the website, the very first thing you see is a big button that says get enhanced. If you go on to there, you can sign up for their subscription service. Your subscription service involves a blood test that you send in to a doctor. A doctor then will prescribe you testosterone or your own personalized enhanced program. And for a couple of

hundred dollars a month, they will deliver out your testosterone and your other supplements or whatever it is. So that is their ultimate aim is to become essentially a testosterone dealer in the states, probably internationally, and become kind of the largest distributor of testosterone. Because when we think of the investors behind there, Peter Thiel, Trump Jr., these aren't people that are interested in sport or, oh, how fast can someone run. These are these kind of technocrat billionaires that probably have a pseudo-god complex and now we're obsessed with living as long as they want or as long as they possibly can. So the two aims is to make money

and then to probably use this as some sort of experimentation process to kind of normalise experimenting with these performance, Hans and Substance, with whatever their ultimate A&Is. But when you think of Peter Thiel, Trump Jr., these type of people, they're probably not benevolent people and they're doing it for the good of humanity.

So the real issue doesn't come from the safety of the athletes because that can be medically controlled. Yeah, so people, I've heard a lot of people say, you know, well, what if an athlete's going it dies at this game. Yeah, because that's, I would imagine that's the general population's first reaction is like,

oh, this is, they're going to fill them with drugs and, you know, this is going to be very unhealthy for that athlete. They don't think we have the societal, demonstrating effect that you're speaking. So the commentary we tend to hear is, you know, this is extremely dangerous, someone's going to die, what's going to happen?

Now, if we take enhanced games at face value for what they're saying they're going to do, they're claiming that the athletes are only going to use FDA-approved products, testosterone be the main one, but EPO and these other ones probably then as well. We're going to do everything under medical supervision, so they're getting full medical screening in advance. They're all heading out to Abu Dhabi in January, I believe, and they're going to go on the funds, have to drugs between January and March, for, they say, a couple of weeks

at low doses and then they're going to come off and cycle often for the games. Now if we look at the transformation that the swimmer had last summer, I can tell you that the transformation he had was not done with low doses over shot through.

But also, again, if you are trying to break world records, why would you do low doses for short period of time? But animal Xerreides are not drugs that, you know, people acutely die from.

The health risk of social anabolic steroids are chronic ones that happen over many years of use. So the idea, though we have this idea, it's like, oh, someone injects testosterone and then, you know, claps on the floor. That doesn't really happen. And people that, you know, we can always have adverse freak reactions to a drug as with any drug. But that's just not how testosterone and anabolic work. So the health risk to these athletes, if they're doing what they're saying they're doing,

that they're using a handful of compounds or FDA approved under medical supervision for low doses over a short period of time, if that is the case, the health risk is minimal in my opinion. There's very low health risks. The problem is, well, what does this have a knock on influence on society for maybe younger people or is going to increase normalize, you? of these formantamptial drugs in society as a whole. These athletes are getting pharmaceutical grade, testosterone, pharmaceutical grade, whatever it is. The best, purest quality stuff we would imagine they're getting. If we take Ireland as a case study, anabolic steroids are not legal in Ireland without a prescription. We can go to a doctor,

and can be described testosterone, sycinate and tantanate or intante or whatever you're using from a doctor and we can get it pharmaceutical great. The majority of anabolic steroid users are using it for, say, bodybuilding or aesthetic image and performance enhancing are getting it through a legal route. So it's coming through a steroid dealer. And when we're going to the black market for this stuff, that's going to bring in the risk of do we know that what we're getting is what it says on the label. is there contaminants in there?

And we've seen from several studies where they've tested, you know, stuff that's been acquired through the black market, though we do see there's concentrations are different to what's supposed to be. The compound in there mightn't be what it's labeled. We have heavy metals. We've got to toxins that are potentially in there. That's not, it's like every drug.

You know what I mean? There's plenty of people getting probably good quality stuff, but in an unregulated, unlicensed market where we're relying on, essentially gangland because if you look at this again because of the secret nature of it we don't have a huge amount of data

but when we look at seizure data of drugs being seized by unlarichly Connor or by at the ports steroids are always seized alongside cannabis cocaine you know these other illegal drugs so that would suggest that a lot of them are being imported

by whoever's important these other drugs as well so we're probably contributing to gangland crime potentially into them as well Here's a question then. Do you not think that there's a potential upside to, okay, let's say if we have the enhanced games that it's very much open and in front of everyone, that a downstream impact of that would be

it's more open in regards to, because we can say that people are taking animal ballad of steroids, like teenagers are taking them now. We have, you know, the rise and muscle dysmorphia and stuff like that anyway. So kids are actually getting it on the black market, do you think that there'd be more of an open conversation for teenagers

who are going to do it anyway now, actually getting better quality drugs because there is more of an open conversation on this as a downstream effect from the human health scones? Potentially, so everything's going to have pros and cons. That's potentially one of the pros. We're having this conversation now about it. I've been on national media talking about it. So it does raise awareness. The problem is it's the way we talk about a lot of time.

A lot of people who come on and it's instant demonization and just stigma of users. That doesn't work. We know that doesn't work. We have demonized and stigmatized cannabis users, cocaine users, every sort of user for the last 60 years. And that war on drugs effort doesn't seem to work. What does seem to work is decriminalization, not turning people who are using these compounds into criminals. So decriminalisations and a more empathetic approach where we have to understand why people are using and meet them at a level they're at. So I do think we need to be much more empathetic.

It's like, you know, alcohol, cannabis, we can tell young people, it's like, oh, this is really bad for you, don't do it. You're still going to do it. So we know telling people that don't do this thing. And the thing with antibiotic steroids, they're very effective. You know, that's why you're balanced. And that's why people take them because they're very effective at doing what they're supposed to do.

They make you bigger, faster, stronger, increase sex drive, increase all these feelings of energy, wellness. They are the positive effects that can happen from them. There are a laundry list

of negative effects that can be associated as well. Can you speak about them real quick just? Yeah, 100%. So when we look at people who use, and I suppose

I should be framed of when I talk about performance hands and drugs, that's an umbrella term. Yeah. So we call them now iPads, IPEDs, image and performance enhancing drugs. That's an umbrella term for, if we look at water, if we look at, because you and I both use performance hands and drugs. Every day when we drink our cup of coffee, that is a performance hands and drug.

Caffeine is performance hands and drug. If you use nicotine, it's performance enhancing drug. The only difference is we use a society and water deemed them as socially acceptable and acceptable performance hands and drugs to use. There are six kind of categories that WADA would look at that are banned substances. Anabolic steroids and anabolic agents are just one of those categories. You have stimulants in another one, methamphetamines. Then you have an other category where you could have beta blockers.

And there's three categories of prohibition then as well. So there's ones that are prohibited all the time. There's ones that are prohibited only in competition. and then there's substances that are prohibited in certain sports. For example, darks. There's certain drugs that are allowed in other sports that you will get done for doping in darts. That's beta blockers if anyone's interested.

So people would be like, well, why would the darts player or a chest player? Why would a chess player be doping? We see doping in chess. We see doping in darts. That would be a beta blocker because it lowers your heart rate. So you think of anything where you need to be still calm and not nervous, beta blockers. And we've seen cases of reports and case studies of surgeons potentially using like beta blockers to lower their heart rate and different things.

So could that not be a doubt could be a net positive then. Potentially, and this is why we probably need to have this conversation. So that's when I talk about performance centre drugs, that's the broad category. So it's when people talk about oh, they're taking steroids. I'm like, what does that mean? Yeah. Or even anabolic steroids. Currently under audit there's 70 odd compounds that are listed as an anabolic serri that are banned.

There's potentially hundreds if not more. The all, well, 99.9% of them are they have a testosterone backbone and something else attached on to testosterone. They're all kind of a testosterone base and depending on what way it's formulated, it'll be a slightly different version of a testosterone that acts in a slightly different way. and it has different half-life or just acts in the body differently. But when we use these compounds for a long period of time, with everything, with every compound and every substance, the poison is in the dose. So if we think of saturated fat, is it bad for us?

It depends. How much are you taking and how long are you taking that for? You know, salt, if we don't have any salt in our diet, we die. If we have too much of it for too long, that leads to hypertension and under our potential negative effects or you know hypernatomy if you take too much solving the short space of time so anabolic steroids

testosterone is the same thing if someone has taken a very small amount is there a risk associated yeah maybe but probably not all that much the risk comes when we take super physiological doses so more than what the body naturally produces or what we would naturally have in the human body

and we take that over a long period of time When we see anabolic steroid users that take those, a kind of abuse to substances take way too much, several years. Cardiovascular one is the big one we're probably all aware of. So we can see changes in lipid metabolism, so to how we kind of break down fats. We can then have a build up a plaque or hardening of the artery so it can lead to stroke, heart attack.

These hormones, again, our heart is muscle. So there's antirectrine receptors there, so we can see an enlarging of the heart, thickening of the heart wall so that can cause stress in the heart liver toxicity we can see it damaged the liver especially if you're taking the oral can it increase cancers as well that I yeah potentially so it's anabolic anabolic is you know promoting growth if you have a tumor there these again there's tumors you're going to try to grow and replicate so if you're taking an

anabolic agent depending on the type of tumor type of anabolic it can exacerbate growth it can accelerate the growth of that cancer definitely and we see that what else there's probably the side effects everyone's aware of baldness can if you're predisposed to male pattern baldness it will increase that it can increase um gynochomastia so this kind of develop with breast tissue the ones it probably would scare me the most and there's a little bit of data coming out but it's still an evolving field there's anrogen receptors in the brain it does seem to be that it can potentially augment and accelerate brain aging. So if someone is predisposed to developing dementia,

potentially brings it on earlier. Whether it causes dementia, we're not sure, but it seems to be there's still preliminary data coming out. Then there's the psychological issues. Well, I was going to say, is the steroid rage real thing? It's probably misunderstood. So, again, if any first, female listeners as they want to go to because a lot of my research has been in

dementia cycle or hormonal contraceptives any any woman will tell you that fluctuations in hormones can have an effect on your mood and your irritability and different things like that without you know having too much a misotch and a sweeping statement there but it can certainly can so same thing we're taking these hormones into body it's going to augment our hormonal environment yeah it definitely can change our mood, definitely can change how we feel. If someone is kind of predisposed to be being a bit more irritable anyway, it seems to be it can't exacerbate those personality traits in someone. There's definitely these compounds and if you talk to users, there's certain compounds

anavar is one that people would like, I can't take that because I get so anxious and so it has such an effect on me. So depression is another one. A lot of people can suffer with low mood as a result of anabolic serode use conversely people with low testosterone can also suffer from anxiety, depressive symptoms. So like everything there's a balance. Having too little is bad,

having too much for a long period of time. And then there's probably the ones that people forget like most antibiotic users are going to be injecting. So there's a risk of getting infection in the site if you're not hygienic with your ones. You get blood borne diseases if it's a dirty needle or whatever it is or

again if you're buying a contaminant, you might be injecting contaminant into your body so that can lead to necrosis infection so there are those things so there's a lot of things that potentially can be associated with long-term abuse of what about you when you spoke about psychological as well i presume if we're speaking in the context of like teenagers gym users and body image and body smorphia and I would assume well that's where we get into dependency because people will talk with steroid addiction and I remember talking to someone once. This guy, a very interesting character. He described himself as a performance pharmacologist. So he is a full-time doping coach. He works with athletes, designs their doping protocols and consults on how they should use them.

And him himself has been using analogic steroids for 40 years. And I asked him that question. And again, this guy is, well, he probably speaks about a project, Chavez, his name. I've heard of that way. Yeah, the US guy. I end up, we were sitting in a cafe in, you know, bang bang in drunk under. Not drunk under, fixer.

Bang bang. So this kind of hipster cafe and it was half 8 in the morning sitting there drinking coffee. And I asked that question. I said, Roger, because people say they're addictive. He's like, what's your take on that? He's a big brash. Well, no, he's five foot two maybe. and 100 odd kilos

but real loud guy and he turns in the middle of half day he's like, well he's like what I'll tell you is like let me ask you this, he's like you take steroids, what did it do turn you into fucking Superman? He's like, you're bigger than you ever were, stronger than you ever wore?

He's like, you can fuck like a porn star he's like, would you go back to be normal after that? I was like looking and I could see people looking at me in the car dip in the head here But there's a degree true in that, isn't there? So that's one of the questions that we have to ask

young guys when I say, if you're considering using these, again, telling them the negative effects, it'll shrink your test skills, it'll affect your fertility, you know, it might limit your ability to have children down the road. When you're 18 years of age,

you don't care. You want to be big, you want to be stronger and they hear that, or the work, they do work. But what I always say to the younger people might be considering it. What's your exit strategy?

Because there's two options. You're going to stay on these till you die or you come off to them at some point. So which is it? Do you plan on being on anabolic steroid salivation? Yeah. Or do you plan on coming off them at some stage? And if you're coming off them,

when will you come off? Because if you go long enough, you won't be able to come often. You become medically dependent on them. The other thing then is they are highly effective. To minimize the risks associated, with anabolic steroid. So if someone has decided, you know what, I'm going to take anabolic steroids because I want to be bigger, because I want to be stronger, I know that

will potentially damage my health. Well, then the goal is to minimize the risk that they're going to have to your health. In order to do that, you would recommend that someone takes low doses over a long period of time and they monitor their, they get medically monitored while you're doing that. If these compounds are effective and you're taking them because you have an insecurity that I'm not big enough, you know, I just want to be bigger and you're putting your self-work wrapped up in your physique, well then are you going to bring the dose down if you need to?

Or are you going to say, well, you know, if I'm taking 300 migs a week and I'm getting this much, what if I push it before? Yeah. And the paradox is the bigger they get, the smaller they feel. Yeah. And that's it. And then all of a sudden it's, well, who am I? My personality is I'm the big guy in the job.

Without that, I'm a friend of mine, Stephen Manuel, Screamer used to go about. World Record Powerlifter, World Champion. Struggle to alcoholism throughout much of his lifting career. So you have to win the World Championship of competing at worlds, and then you go into a death of depression. But remember having a chat with him. and one of the biggest issues he dealt with was his identity

he was wrapped up and being strong he would be out in the club or in a pub and his friends would bring you know guards over or whatever it's like oh he can squat 300 kilos and he'd be like don't be telling people that you know because he was very much but what if I can't squat that anymore he's like am I less valuable now

it's like you only friends me because I'm strong he's like that the only reason you want to know me is because I can lift really heavy things So again, it's another good friend of mine, Hugh Gilmore, a performance psychologist, just talk about describing, you don't want to have a one banjo string. And he's a good man for the puns or innuendos. He knows what he's saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he's like, imagine you have a banjo with one string.

He's like, it's a very shit banjo, isn't it? Because that's, if you only identify with that one thing, that's all I am, I'm strong. And that's my whole identity. Or I'm big and mostly. That's my whole identity. But what if you break that one band-duster You have to say and you know That's gone what else you have

It's like you want to develop And have multiple strands You're identity in the personality that This is not who I am I'm not defined by being big and strong Where if that is your one Well then you're never going to come off You're more likely to slip into

Pushing higher dose She's pushing on say a dose Just for longer periods of time Because you get bigger And there is this you know Dose response The more you take probably the bigger and stronger you're going to get. But the more you take, the health risk goes up and up.

And I suppose when we're speaking about, all right, these athletes who are going to have the best of care, and they'll probably have psychologists and stuff like that as well, what you would hope, when they're, when they're dowsing for these games, but then the downstream impact of, okay, you know, they're selling this on websites to college students. They're not going to have, you know, psychologists at hands to speak to them about their body image issues. And again, it's that medical sport. So I was talking to someone and if someone is listening has met that decision, you know, I'm going to go on anabolic steroids.

I'm going to get them through the dealer. I'm going to take the risk that there might be contaminants, but, you know, they're going to do it. The other question that is asked, like, okay, what's your budget here? The steroids themselves, not that expensive. But are you willing to go talk to your GP about this? Are you willing to get a blood test every three, six months to make sure that, you know, your lipid profile,

your LDL and your cholesterol is not elevating. Your hematricus, a lot of people will self-prescribe and your hematricate, your red blood cells start to increase as a consequence of use. If your blood gets too thick, that's when we get clots and strokes happening. So I'd ask you, well,

can you afford to do that? And if you're not willing to do that then as well, probably you're just layering on more and more risk. The other thing that frightened me one time, I remember a few years ago, my barber at the time, was talking me about oh he was

starting on steroids and this is again when you ask guys like well what are you taking like steroids like again I said you know what's 70 odd now reality what's on the mark it's probably you know 10 different ones you could be taken but again they don't know

they're just taking whatever they're told to take and I was asking them the next time he's in with him I was like oh how are you getting on he's like oh I've actually have switched my dealer's like there's another guy he's doing a 10 or cheaper. And I was like, so now you're shopping around for who will give you the cheapest illegal steroids. I was like,

that's probably most of them how they're made. If they're not from pharmaceutical companies, the powders are being bought in from China. They're being remixed with the liquid here in Europe, usually in someone's kitchen or something, and they're sealing the bottle and selling it out. So again, they're probably full of contaminants, a lot of risks there going on.

And now you're shopping around for who's doing the cheapest. and it's funny these are the same people that you know will might again we won't be too big but you're like I don't take a vaccine

I don't know what's in that I'm not injecting that to my body but you'll inject this other thing without even thinking twice where if they'll put the same critical thinking across both you probably yeah there's a bit of cognitive

dissonance there I suppose leading on to that let's talk a little bit about men's health and TRT in a medical standpoint because like you said the downstream effect of this is that you demonise steroids

and does a lot of potential benefits for steroids especially for a specific group of people. Yeah, so I'm very much interested in men's health and one of those areas in particular is testosterone therapy and the potential applications of testosterone therapy. So that's probably what people don't realize then as well. So these anabolic steroids, these weren't developed for athletes.

If we take a very brief history lesson of how doping came about in sport, well you can even go right back and kind of if we go to into Greece and Rome and these type of places they had to understand that you know Teskel seemed to play some sort of role in virility and you know we had like Unix and different things and there was different culture things around it and but we didn't really understand and we didn't isolate testosterone itself to the mid 1930s but again as a size of there was a Russian surgeon, Sergei Bornoff, made a fortune in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

He lived like a king in Paris. He used to do testicle transplants. So for the rich and famous, this was the big thing in the late 1800s early 1900s, where he would take, usually from chimpanzees, take the testicles from them and implant them into the of wealthy people that usually middle to older age men. You can look at this up for some great images of papers on it. But with the idea was get the young testicles, put in the older fella, it'll give them the variety. So mainly chimpanzees sometimes goat.

Now, did that even just go terribly wrong? No, so placebo, they felt great. I think he was to play a fortune for this. The thing was, so he was just getting to testes at putting them in there. He wasn't hooking them up right. So the testicles were pretty much instantly rejected and did die off and turn to scar tissue. But these people felt great.

Another one, the medical officer, you know, I don't know if you're Johnny Cash fans, but San Quentin, the medical officer in San Quentin in 1920, Joe Stanley was his name. Some of the inmates who were executed in San Quentin. He took their testicles and did the same thing, did the testicle transplants to others. So that was kind of before we had testosterone, that's people were chasing this idea of there's something into testicles that if we get the young ones and you know revital it and revitalises.

Then you had this guy, Ernst Lacker, around mid-1930s, synthesized testosterone. So from bull testicle and we got the first synthesis of testosterone. Now, as you can imagine, mid-1930s in Europe, I believe actually he was a Jewish man himself. and he actually had to flee then from to avoid Nazis. The history gets a bit murky around there. But apparently the story goes that testosterone was then administered to soldiers in the trenches in World War II that were malnourished and they realized what we give them to testosterone just seem to put on a bit of size again and a bit more a bit of morality back in them.

So there was this signs that maybe injecting testosterone into people who does. benefits. World War 2 ended, you then had the development of the Cold War. You then had in 1954, the World War Waked and World Championships in Vienna, where the Russians apparently were injecting testosterone before one out in lifting.

There was... The Russians were really the trailblades of this. 100%. There was a doctor there. So it was Americans, Russians went out in heavy lifts, there were seeing injecting the testosterone.

There was a doctor there. there, Dr. Ziegler, was his name, American, came back to America and he developed a different form of testosterone, anabolic steroid called the animal. He was the one to get the animal. Then that led to the rise of doping in the kind of that. And again, the core war between USSR and the USA, the Olympics was, you know, who could bring the better drugs, essentially, in the Olympics. He also worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger and all those. Was there, was there, could you see a trend in like world records and stuff like? Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah, you can see it's a massive going up. Then you come across to 1967, the International Olympic

Council banned anabolic steroids. Interestingly, first reliable test to detect Antibiotics was a decade later in 1976. So but then since then you asked the development of water in subsequent years and that work. That's kind of that history. But the social was first synthesized for medical reasons. Most of these drugs that we ban in sport were first developed for medical reasons to treat. Again, if you're cynical you can start to look at how many people have therapeutic use exemptions. That is you can apply that on a medical ground you need this medication and therefore you can get granted to use it in sport.

Have a look at how many elite tennis players have asthma and are now able to use the inhalers. Have a look at how many professional basketball players are low in testosterone, have clinically low testosterone and are allowed to CRT. We see this across or some of this stuff in plain sight, but these compounds were developed from medical use. Can I just interject there? So that's very, very fascinating. And I suppose that's an argument that people will make about the enhanced game, that it's finally putting things on an even playing field, because people are going, or athletes are going to find a way to get the upper hand.

And I suppose it only takes one or two to be, like, what was it in the cycling? I think, like, the number 13th or something in the Tour de France was the only one that wasn't enhanced? Yeah. So we know, again, this is the societal question. This is why I think we shouldn't just shut everything down. It's good to have these debates and be able to talk about it in a nuanced and context way. It depends on what do we want sport to be. And again, I can give both sides the argument.

So if I go to one extreme and I'm probably in a unique position that I know people across the spectrum that are staunch people for clean sports. and I know Broder Chavez on the other end where he will argue that his argument at testing in sport

is on escrow he's like by forcing people to test he's like it forces them to you know use illegal compounds

on supervised and you know get more more experimentally where his argument like if you allow it then we could make it really safe

that would be his argument at that side where another one a friend of mine Dominic Munnley or Monelli met the argument to me last week

he looked up well what was the original idea behind the modern Olympics and it was that purity of sport purity of competition and again

I don't have skin in the game either way as such you know I don't give a strong opinion either way but it's I think it's interesting at society level

well what do we want sport to be do we want sport to be you know it's about that purity and fairness of competition where we're not taking these it's not who can get the best drugs or who can be the best chemist.

It's about, again, people argue where you're born with different genetics. Is it level the playing field? I don't know, but it's about you against your fellow man or your fellow woman where you know we both had the same resources. We both have access to the same things

and this competition stays you versus I and it's going to be a totality of our preparation here. And yes, look, and serendipity is going to play a role but that's it. So again, it's why what we want sport to be. And at the site level, we need to have that conversation.

Sorry, going back to then, TRT in terms of modern men's health then. Yes. What does low testosterone in older men or... I think in older men. Can you give me a deal of a bit of the statistics or research around low testosterone and modern men? Yes, so the technical term for this hypogonadism. So you're gonaditis, so you're gonaditis, and your testicles and high boat meaning low so it's that we're producing low levels testosterone there are markers for

what that would be and if anyone's go get a blood test it's kind of low eight nanomoles but testosterone have normal levels if we use kind of people it depends on what measurement you're using your scale like you'll hear people talk with like between 200 to 1000 if i'm talking about nanomoles it's a different measure um but normal testosterone on the blood test we would use is between 12 and 30, which is a huge range. Someone could have double the testosterone, but both of you are clinically normal. 8 to 12 is, okay, there might be stuff going on here

if there's symptoms associated. The low 8 is low testosterone. We do see as men get older, there's what someone called a manopause. So that would be naturally declining levels of testosterone as we age. Interestingly, when you get married become a father here, testosterone levels decrease.

I heard that before. What's the logic behind that? So it is something, it is a phenomenon we seem to see. The evolutionary biologists would say that it is because your role is changing. Yeah. By lowering that testosterone, you can become more caring, more... Less risk taking. Less risk taken.

These type things. And in fairness, if you talk to anyone, I'm not a father, but if you talk to anyone that is, they will say once I've had children, they're even driving... in the car, I should slow down a bit here, you know, I have a family to take care of. So the potential is that change. How that probably varies hugely between people. But we do see that. Now, for a lot of men, if they stay active, you know, they're eating well, sleeping well, low stress.

That natural decrease in testosterone doesn't seem to have much of an issue. That they can still live a full life and they're full of energy. For some, their testosterone levels come down so low where there would be, what we're, we call low test and those type of men will have erectile dysfunction, low sex drive, low mood, potentially anxiety, decrease muscle mass, decrease bone mass. So again, there's chicken and egg by not exercising, you know, you're losing muscle mass and then potentially impeding your thing. So all the things we do that probably have a negative effect we source to with health will negatively impact our testosterone. Smoking, too much alcohol, having too high levels

of body fat, anyone who's diabetic is at potential risk, increased risk of low testosterone. So in these cases, if someone is presenting with low testosterone on a blood test, we usually do two tests to conform, and they're exhibiting the symptoms, well, then there seems to be a lot of benefits for medically prescribed testosterone, testosterone replacement therapy, and that is giving them exogenous testosterone that brings them back into the normal range. Now that is different. The testosterone

that you would describe is the exact same anabolic seriates of that leap would take. The difference is the dose. In a medical context, we're bringing you back into normal clinical range. In a performance enhancing for sport, we're taking super physiological doses. We're taking more than

naturally it's found in the body. Again, when we see that we bring to one back into the normal physiological range, that seems to be very beneficial for her health. Increase mood, increase physical performance, decreased, you used to be this idea that increased cardiovascular disease seems to be protective against cardiovascular disease now on the data that's coming out now. So it seems very, very beneficial. Problem is, because of the demonization of testosterone in steroid users, a lot of men are kind of stigmatized for thinking of using

testosterone that way. And they're not telling people or they might feel a sense of shame. A lot of them will say, I'm not going to go on that testosterone because that's just chasing you. The way I feel is just a natural part of age where it's not. Now, the reasons people, you'd have what we call primary and secondary, like granadism. So it can't be just genetic and underlying reasons why people develop that. Right. So you could be doing all the lifestyle factors correctly. You could be trained. Yeah. And it can have just a dysfunction within the system. or we can have a kind of a lifestyle, an inflicted one,

which is a result of poor lifestyle and poor excellence. The problem is, you tell someone, you know, well, you need to just, you know, get out there and exercise. This could be a man that's like, I'm so tired and my mood is so low,

I do no motivation to get up on exercise. We do this testosterone therapy, and it's always, you know, we want a lifestyle change along with this. But all of a sudden, that bit of testosterone might be that kind of chicken, where before the egg, where, oh, now I feel a bit better. I'm actually in the mood to go do exercise and then we get this synergistic effect. Where, okay, they're feeling a bit better.

They'll start exercising and that's having a benefit and we'll keep going that way. But probably because of that stigma, there's a lot of GPs that are hesitant to even consider testosterone therapy as a viable therapy. Research is probably not done enough because a lot of ethics boards are afraid to just associate. see a testosterone injections with no anabolic steroid use and don't understand the risks so I think we need to start understanding it as a more viable and I'm lucky enough that we're collaborating and research with dr. Emmett Byrne and Dr Martin Rourke actually based here in Bray but moving up to the beacon and they run a very successful men's health clinic where we're starting to in DCU run some of these research studies to start to measure the long-term effects of using testosterone therapy

in it so this comes back to point you made that like stigmatising and shame around these drugs or any drugs really doesn't benefit anyone. No, no, especially not. Because again, a lot of these, there's a very unique, so I call it kind of this testosterone use continuum where we have the medically supervised TRT users. They're engaging with their doctor and they are, you know, they came in because they felt some symptoms, low mood, low sex drive, whatever it may be, but they weren't happy with how they're feeling and this therapy seems very, very beneficial. And I, you know, they're going to be. And I it's, you know, changing lives of many men.

If you're around the spectrum, you have anabolic steroid users taking huge amounts of self-prescribed testosterone, usually not with medical supervision. You also have a unique cohort in the middle that I find fascinating. And these are men who are self-prescribing to testosterone, so they're buying it from the same place to steroid users. They're buying it.

And they're self-prescribing to testosterone, because they're listening to Joe Rogan, and they're like, I want to go on T or D, but they're not going to their doctor. So they're self-prescribing, but they don't identify as, steroid users. They're like, no, this is just for my health. I'm just doing this for my health because, you know, I'm low a T. But then when you look at the doses you're using, it's like,

that's not a TRT dose. It's a low level, it's anabolic steroid dose you're using there, but they're not engaging with their doctor because they don't understand that this could be affecting the blood work. So if you go on medically prescribed TRT, you're getting blood tests every three months. And again, like any drug, you might have to change dosage, type, this exact type we use, because it might be negative effect in some blood markers, so we want to minimize that use. But the thing is, the reason that the self-rescribed TTR users and the anabolic steroid users, why do they not engage with their GP? That's what I'm interested in, and how do we get them engaging with their GP? So, even if you are using anabolic steroids, because you want to be the next mystery Olympia, how can we change

the conversation that they're comfortable enough to go down to their GP and say, can we do this blood test? because I'm worried about my lipids or I'm worried about my hematical going up where they can have a non-judgmental conversation with their doctor who will might rightly say as look as a medical doctor I advise you these compounds are dangerous so we shouldn't be on them

but this still will allow them medical care and you know we've got much better in recent years with understanding how to support people with addiction and through more empathetic medical approach we need to start to do the same with people using forms, hands and drugs. We're not going

to reduce the risks associated reuse by stigmatising and demonising use. We're going to do it with an empathetic approach where we work with them. We've had some success with needle exchanges we see in the UK where people can go in

and swap their needles. Little things like this but again we need to educate both the GPs that they understand because the other reason a lot of these users will not engage with their doctor. My doctors understand. If I go in and start talking about these, they don't understand.

So we probably do need some upskilling in GPs and the medical field, but we need to have more empathetic and non-judgmental approach to discussing use with these users. Moving on from men's health to women's performance, I wanted to talk to you about the research that you've shared. So new research from Dublin to the University Explores, the mental cycle, hormonal contraceptives and pelvic floor dysfunction in Africa. athletes playing ladies, Gaelic football and Komowli.

Can you tell me a little bit more about that research and what stood out for you? Sure. Last couple years I've done a lot of work kind of around female athlete. I joke, I spend a lot of my time man's men in the menstrual cycle, the seats of women. That's a lot of my time. But that particular research, I was supervising done with a student, Poppy Jean McGuire, who we surveyed over 400 Gaelic games actually.

Gillet Games athletes across ladies football and Komogi all at senior level and both club and inter county and again try to map the landscape around menstrual cycle characteristics symptomology and hormonal contraceptive use and then also pelvic floor because there's been quite a lot of research across different sports now around kind of menstrual cycle and symptomology and contraceptive use that's basically where it asks them you know characteristics of menstruation how long is your cycle how long is the bleeding phase, different things. Do you have any mental dysfunction? And then what symptoms are you perceiving with that mental, associated with the menstrual cycle? And do you believe it has an impact on performance? And same thing around hormonal contraceptives. So that side of thing was pretty

much in line with what we previously found in other sports. And that is half of athletes are a bit more are used in the form of hormonal contraceptive. So they don't have a menstrual cycle because they're on hormonal contraceptive and the ones that are naturally menstruating they perceive a good proportion and perceive that there have a lot of symptoms that they attribute to dementia cycle cramping mood changes low back pain and increased sweating these type of things and a large proportion of those will say it negatively impacts their performance so that's kind of broadly in line with what we will see now what I will say is that's highly variable between individuals and then also the prism

cycle to cycle it varies quite a lot so there's no kind of one size fits all approach to that what we did that other research has failed to do we've actually asked about some signs of potential of health and floor this function

so interestingly about one third of the players experience urinary leakage during training or matches either all the time or occasionally and that is something

that's probably stigmatized in sport not talk about like a lot of people would say well there's a taboo around the metro cycle in women's sport we don't talk about that

maybe I've just been a marsden it too long I think we've overcome that a lot any female teams I've worked with I think people are much more aware that the metro cycle has is an issue we need to be aware of I found even it went very

mainstream with like personal trainers and I'll be like oh I know I know the differential cycle look at me and then there was kind of like the oh this is a the one way you have to train your clients because they're weaker at

this stage. They're straight training. And then obviously research came out dismissing that like listen if you feel strong go lift the PV. The phase waste trend and it frustrates me in one way because it's great we're getting more education and the female specific issues but then a PT or an SEC

coach to learn about that and then everything revolves around that. Yeah. Yeah. We shouldn't just boil down female at least female clients to the reproductive system. That's just one and that sync that sync in cycle like course that people were trying to sell I think I thought oh there is anyone that's kind of selling that to train a certain way based on entry cycle yeah it's BS yeah but the pelvic floor has probably been dismissed a bit where we don't talk about that where a lot

of girls you know one-third are having a newly leakage 40 odd percent of having neuroly urgency and we see that when women start exercise that have that strong and feeling to go intense urge to go to the toilet we have inland incontinence so fecal incontinence then in a proportion then as well and gentle pain so these type of things and again we've seen in sport maybe if we think of dropout in sport why this is an issue we know dropout in adolescent girls is a big issue in sport if you every time you train or you know go in tents for a ball or lift heavy in the gym a little bit of urine drips out of course if you think that that's not normal that that doesn't happen to a lot of people that can be very much

embarrassing feeling and very stigmatised and definitely could be something that would make you shy away and potentially leave sport so I think we need to get better at normalising the conversation around that and probably the frustrating or saddening thing about it it's very treatable with athletic development and physiotherapy we can do pelvic floor interventions where we strengthen up those pelvic floor muscles and we can see a very significant reduction in those experiences of urinary leakage urinary urgencies so a lot of these girls suffering in silence where they shouldn't. You know, we can definitely work with them. So I think that's the next stage.

We need to get more aware of potential role of the pelvic floor and pelvic floor is functioning in sport. And that's quite, it's like quite common to be focusing on your pelvic floor after like postpartum and it's very normalised and that's the very so. And that's when you talk to people, that's what a lot of people say is that, oh, I thought it was only something that postpartum women or older women suffered with. Yeah. Not, you know, very fit 20 year old intra county players.

Yeah, yeah, interesting. Also, I wanted to touch on before I let you go as well. Obviously, the Dublin Marathon was just completed there a couple of days ago. And I think running has gotten very trendy over the, have you noticed? Yeah, yeah. So, and I suppose you did a talk on preparing people for a marathon. Can you explain what you spoke about? Yeah, so there was four of us above four researchers in DC.

and we all took a different aspect, psychology and nutrition in your intervention. I talked about strength training. Obviously, I talk about essentially preaching the gospel of strength training because there's very few domains where getting stronger is going to have a negative effect. I can't think of any really.

And endurance running is one does where people might think that to run 26.2 miles being strong. I was getting stronger. I was increasing my deadlift or my squat going to have a difference there. But the evidence is very robust and strong that anyone who increases your strength as an endurance or VTC, a big reduction in injury risk potentially, but the evidence probably on injury risk is mixed.

It definitely doesn't increase injury risk, but it definitely might reduce it. So again, there's no negative effect there, but on performance, it is very, very effective and improving performance. So anyone that's a runner might be familiar with kind of running economy, that amount of auction we use at a given velocity and something we've measured the lab but if we improve that you become a more efficient runner

and so again it probably makes sense that if your muscle is stronger every stride we do the contraction the force requirements there are at a slightly lesser percentage of your maximum so you're working at a slightly lower intensity

and things like plyometrics or improving the ankle stiffness the ability of the active tendon to act as a better spring when we're running is more efficient then as well. So we just see that overall getting people stronger and also getting stronger around the pelvic control. So we know a lot of runners can have issues with lower back pain

or pain around the hip area and overuse injuries around the hip area. So we see that runners who are stronger have better what we call pelvic control. So the muscles are better able to kind of stabilize and control the movement of the hips while you're running. And all these things come together. by being stronger, we're able to improve running performance, reduce injury risk, and reduce some of the negative symptoms and associate with running.

Now, I'll make the argument that we're not built to run long, long distances. Anyway, when you look at injury rates in sport, people think that, oh, you know, a gym, you're going to get hurt in the gym where the gym is the safest environment you can be. I was like, if you want to guarantee you're going to get injured, go run a marathon. I was like, I see it on the weekends anyway. People live in everywhere. Like when you talk about sports, a lot of sports is what happens if you get injured.

If you're an endurance runner, it's what are you going to do when you get injured? Because anyone is running multiple long distance events, they have some sort of injury. And most of them, a colleague mine, Dr. Rieferbork, would describe as living in the middle city, where most runners, like, they don't have an injury that's so bad that they can't run,

but there's always something that just kind of aches me. and it's only after several months then it ends up kind of exacerbating and increasing to the point where they have to take time off. Right, so athletes who are going to ignore you anyway just get stronger. Yeah, yeah.

What are just some common, let's say someone's, they're running now and, you know, a lot of runners maybe they don't have gym experience style, but they're like, right, you know, because I'm taking this seriously now, I might as well take a good going to the gym rather than a bit more serious now. Is there any common mistakes that runners make

when trying to add in some gym work? probably doing that kind of bodybuilding approach again it doesn't have to be much one to two gym sessions a week you know it's going to be do a lot for runners your simple movements do something on two legs

that's kind of a squat or a hinge movement at your trap bar deadlift do something on one leg some sort of lunge do something laterally side to side some sort of lateral lunge or something like that and then concentrate on some of the other muscles around the hip so try to get some glute me work you know we can see like clam shells or whatever and try to do some things that strengthen the hip flexors and the stabilizers around the hips

then will be something and then work that ankle calf complex and do the bicep curls not going to make you a better runner but everyone wants to pick her bosaver they're very important okay david it's been a pleasure speaking with you today thank you very much if people wanted to keep up with the work that you do where can they where can they find you online uh social media handles are all at Dr David Nolan, so straightforward enough. And then if you Google my name, David Nolan, put in DCU afterwards. If you put David Nolan, there's still this swimmer,

this elite swimmer that kind of outranked me on SEO slightly. So I'm looking to come after him. But until then, if you put in David Nolan, DCU, I'll pop up. Well, if you want to definitely pop up, make sure you subscribe to Uneducate BB Podcast. David, thank you for today.