GLP1's usage by athletes

This is why the class of drugs is on the WADA watch list, right? But enforcement is only as good as testing.

For short duration events where glycogen stores or gastric emptying aren’t a factor sure they may be enhancing. But in Triathlon and especially long course those factors are incredibly important… :joy: indeed…

I’m sure that will be the case and I am also sure that it won’t make these people “faster” like other banned substances.

No he can’t, and 40 years of history has shown this..

It hasn’t been tested yet, but I haven’t heard of any reported findings of widespread meltdowns of GLP-1 users doing endurance sports (yet).

It may still cause problems at the more competitive end of participants, possibly, but I don’t think right now any doctors are warning patients that they’re going to see collapses in their athletic performances as of now.

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The problem is when it comes to diet, nutrition, and exercise, what we knew 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago was often wrong. I think we have made some progress over the past 10 years or so identifying better what are healthy foods and healthy lifestyle choices. I personally don’t believe it’s simply “impossible” for any one individual who is not in the throws of a huge metabolic disorder to lose weight. They simply have not found the protocol that works for them but that doens’t mean it does not exist.

I think that scenario is highly likely. To offset the muscle loss, someone who is a competitive long course triathlete is going to have to commit a substantial amount of training time just trying to stave off the muscle loss in the gym. That will without question diminish their S/B/R volume and performance. Back around 2013 when CrossFit was all the rage, I tried doing 3 days per week of that kind of strength training. I got great at doing squats and deadlifts and wall balls, I lost a lot of pace in S/B/R.

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You don’t know this, at all…Someone who is training 20 hours+ a week in S/B/R will quite likely lose no muscle, or no more than they would have on just strictly dieting. Once again you are using studies on severely obese folks to drive your thinking on the matter, not people already using their muscles everyday in strenuous exercise. Most people training for triathlon due very well retaining muscle, and if you need to lose 30lbs to be at an ideal race weight, then there is muscle to lose along with a lot of fat..

That’s pure speculation, I’m simply using the actual data we have available. If that data proves to be different for your case in point, fine. But as of now that’s not what is indicated and there are other side effects that can be problematic for endurance training. And who is this unicorn training 20+ hours per week who needs to lose 30lbs?

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I can guarantee you that the folks I know in this situation, are fully informed on diet and nutrition. But after a lifetime of failures at controlling it, most have given up or just onto the next diet that doesn’t work for them..But now they are in the real danger zone, in the AG’s where this kind of weight shortens your life by decades, or gets you to a direct early grave…Now perhaps your protocol is to keep throwing different diets and programs that haven’t worked their entire lives, I would take this new completely approach. A pill or shot that virtually guarantees them to lose weight, and tons of it all they way down to a number they haven’t seen since they were teenagers. And with that comes a litany of good outcomes on so many other areas of health and wellness, and in time to actually make a difference in their current and future lives. I mean how many times do you hit your hand with a hammer before you realize it hurts, and just keeps damaging your hand..Not sure why you think/assume that most folks just lack will power to solve this issue, when we know that is not the case..

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Do you even understand how this stuff works? It’s not a metabolism booster, it makes people lose weight by slowing down their digestion making them feel fuller and slowing their eating.

Throw in the added impact it has on glycogen and the liver and its a recipe for disaster for triathletes.

Again someone who is completely ignoring the way this stuff works. The only ‘magic’ is that it makes people eat less. Calorie restriction through will power, diet or this drug is basically the same and will not spare any muscle mass that would have otherwise been lost through a crash diet…

Which is “exactly “ what I said. Not sure why your are arguing with someone that agrees with you completely…

Yes sorry I realised that just after I posted :person_facepalming:

About 20% of any normal Ironman field and several that do RR’s here after their races.. (-;

Yes yes, as there is not “actual” data on the subset of athletes we are discussing here. You using data on another completely different group is also speculation when trying to overlay onto our group…

If you are going to speculate that endurance athletes will be able to mitigate muscle loss through their training, then you also have to allow, as per the article I linked, they are also opening themselves to a likely higher incidence of the kinds of tendinitis and over use injuries we are already prone to. Like I said, no free lunches.

I think you’re way overestimating your ability to ‘predict’ what this drug does. Just because you think you know what the downstream mechanism is, doesn’t mean you’re remotely right, especially with complex effects like this one.

At least right now, there are absolutely zero widespread warnings about significantly decreased exercise performance, loss of endurance, or other similar declines outside of what you’d expect if you are losing a lot of weight quickly. Doctors aren’t warning patients to either not run 5ks etc or at least expect a big decline in performance if they do. I have several friends on GLP-1s who have lost so much weight that they are now running again, and they are having zero issues (granted they are not competitive runners, but still.)

I’m going to go with GLPs are probably completely fine for the vast majority of endurance athletes based on this reality. Even if one can ‘rationalize’ why it should make one worse - it doesn’t seem to be proving so in practice thus far, at least noticeably. More studies with higher performance athletes may change this, but at least now, I’d be surprised to see a big effect given how little is seen now across millions of people.

You mean like you did saying they could mitigate it through weight lifting? We are both speculating, only you seem more sure of yourself for some reason. And once again, those other injuries you quoted are from the severely obese groups. We do not yet know it that translates to folks that are quite healthy and train most everyday doing something. And no free lunches, I think a 100 years of history of drug use in sports differ with that conclusion. Not a free lunch, but one paid for 1000x over and over. It’s why we test for this stuff, it works. And yes there are known side affects, but as far as I know, there are no real studies on longevity. I do know a whole bunch of 60+ year olds taking a bunch of stuff, feeling healthier, going faster, and who knows the real long term problems, if any..I personally will not roll the dice on the unknown, but I also am not going to say I will never take part in the anti aging programs when and if my health dictates it. I just won’t compete anymore, but will continue to live the lifestyle..

God… people are correct when they say all you want to do is argue. Doctors don’t warn about any and all ‘ sports performance’ impacts when prescribing medications.

And yes it is quite simple-take a second and understand how and why this drug works. Then try and tell me how this could not possibly impact triathlon performance… unless of course you think slowing gastric emptying is a good thing :roll_eyes:

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No, you’re the one thinking you are smarter than what the ACTUAL results are showing in real-world practice right now.

For example, I’m sure at least hundreds of people on Slowtwitch, who are racing triathlon, are on GLP-1s right now and losing good amounts of weight with them. Where are the posts about “wow GLP-1s tanked my triathlon race performance?” It’s not just here, it’s nowhere. I haven’t seen any news on any sports media talking about this.

You KNOW that if this even had a little traction in some part of the sports universe, repoters would be all over it, because so many people want to know everything about GLPs, and this would be a huge ‘reality check’ to the seemingly free benefits that GLP-1s are giving. But nope. I haven’t seen any yet - if you find one from a major newspaper, def share here as that would be big news.

Again, I’m of the strong opinion you think you might be smart enough to predict the ‘logical’ downstream consequences (which I actually I agree with in terms of logic and known GLP-1 mechanisms), but it’s proving to be so not true even now with millions of people happily on this drug that there’s basically zero reports of it in media. I’ll bet if they do find a negative effect later, it’ll be pretty small, given that almost nobody is howling about it now.

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