The Industry Elephant
The $10,000 Challenge
Since it normally comes up at some point, let's just address this head on. Performance enhancing drugs, steroids, HGH, GEAR, however you choose to reference them, may be useful but... do you need them? If your goal is to be a pro bodybuilder with muscular 22-inch arms then, yes. If you've been training all your life to compete in a sport, then recognize that you have to take a banned substance to even the playing field and feed your family then roll the dice and good luck to you. For the rest of us, the answer should be a resounding, NO!
I have zero problems with people taking whatever they feel they need to take, my issue is with the dishonesty within this industry that I, for better or for worse, helped to create. In my view, if you're getting even a single percentage point of your "conditioning" from a medicine cabinet or a surgeon's knife and you're not being completely transparent about that, you're a liar pedaling unobtainability to people who trust you.
So, for all of you "influencers" and fake weight users out there I propose a challenge. At any time, anyone can approach you (or I) with $1000.00 plus testing fees and request a drug test from a US Drug Test Center within 48 hours. If you test negative, you keep the $1000.00 but have to be available for 6 additional months of testing from the date of the first test. If you test positive for any banned substance that you cannot prove came from your over-the-counter supplements, you pay that person $10,000.00 and add a full-page apology, explaining what you took and where you got it, on the home page of every social media account you have.
If you can prove that the banned substance came from one of your supplements, you MUST name that supplement company on your website and leave it there for a full calendar year. If you refuse to comply with the request and cannot reschedule within 24 hours, you forfeit the $10,000.00 with the same stipulations listed above. Some of you have been pretty vocal about this, one way or the other, so I hope to see true "Fitness Professionals" step up and agree to follow suit, it evens the field on which we play, and we owe it to those who trust us.
