EAMON Sullivan breaks 50 LCM FREE WR again in 21.28

DanSad and Jorge, we are not talking about USS swimmers getting AAAA times or swimming a PB in your 30's. This is about breaking WR's by large margins.

That's how anabolic steroids work. The net result of being able to train harder is that you grow bigger muscles. Has Eamon Sullivan's physique changed? (I don't know.) Skip Does exercise help muscles grow??? Do we lose weight with exercise? Does muscle definition change with exercise? I remember my chest going from a size 46 to 52 inches with increased swimming, no weight training no drugs.

Here we go again he broke the worlds record he takes drugs.

Here we go again he broke the worlds record he takes drugs. I'm not saying anybody took drugs...just saying that the comparisons being presented were not accurate.

I can't wait to see Dara in the Olympics and maybe break a worlds record.

"If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, and it sounds like a duck, and acts like a duck, it usually is a duck." ~Gary Hall Jr. Except it doesn't look like a duck... www.youtube.com/watch Does anyone have video of the 21.28 swim?

I do I will post it right here in a second

(Sorry, this post has gotten very long. I hope it's not just keyboard diarrhea.) The mechanics of muscle contraction are quite elegant. The amount of force a muscle fiber can generate is proportional to its cross-sectional area. While you can gain some strength improvement without much increase in muscle size, the effect is probably limited. It comes mostly from training the nervous system to simultaneously activate more motor units (a group of muscle fibers activated by a single neuron). My guess would be that most world class sprinters already recruit their motor units nearly maximally. So if Joe Doaks is going to make big strength improvements, I'll wager he's going to need bigger muscles. I have no trouble understanding an argument that Alain Bernard might be using PEDs. The argument is less convincing to me for Eamon Sullivan. What are the progression of swimmers' personal best times over, say, the last five years? Poking around I found swimrankings.net which allows you to graph a swimmer's time progression in various events. Here are graphs of Sullivan and Bernard. As long as I'm having fun displaying progression graphs here are a few more: Alexander Popov, Gary Hall Jr, Pieter van den Hoogenband, Michael Phelps, Libby Lenton, Dara Torres and Inge de Bruijn. I found Inge's progression most interesting. Must have been taking gelatin supplements there for awhile to grow her fingernails faster. :D All the graphs are for 50m free except for Phelps. That's for 200m fly. It appears the 50 free is about the only event he doesn't swim! One thing I think would be kind of cool is to compare a swimmer's time progression across two or more events. For example, compare the progression of their best 100m free and 100m fly times. If the swimmer was focusing on a single event you'd expect it to improve more relative to the other event. If, on the other hand, their time improvements were (largely) drug-induced you'd expect all events they were swimming to benefit. Of course, that's kind of hard to determine. Many current sprinters seem to swim 50 and 100 free and not much else. At any rate, it looks like the raw data are at swimrankings.net if someone wants to do the study. Sullivan has had multiple surgeries. Here's a fluff piece from Fox Sports Australia that discusses his "fragility" and surgeries. It offers no explanation other than that he's "accident and injury-prone". Finally, one last statistic: Wikipedia lists him at 189cm and 78kg, roughly 6'2" and 171 pounds. Hardly a gym rat's physique. Skip P.S. Damn! Davidson is really putting the screws to Wisconsin!

That's how anabolic steroids work. The net result of being able to train harder is that you grow bigger muscles. True, both anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (mediated by insulin-like growth factor) promote muscle growth. But the ability to train harder (and more often) may confer advantages beyond growing bigger muscles. When Popov's record isn't just broken but shattered, and the result is attributed to advances in technique and training, it is appropriate to be a bit skeptical. Unless, of course, you have just awakened from a coma and are unaware of the current epidemic of PED use among modern athletes.

True, both anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (mediated by insulin-like growth factor) promote muscle growth. But the ability to train harder (and more often) may confer advantages beyond growing bigger muscles. When Popov's record isn't just broken but shattered, and the result is attributed to advances in technique and training, it is appropriate to be a bit skeptical. Unless, of course, you have just awakened from a coma and are unaware of the current epidemic of PED use among modern athletes. My point was that performance enhancing drugs aren't magic, they work by producing physiological changes that confer an advantage. Looking at Sullivan I see no evidence that he's made his gains by bulking up and getting stronger. Given the choice between "some unknown mysterious effect conferred by drugs" and "better technique possibly combined with better suit technology" I think the latter is more plausible. Perhaps they have found a gene doping method that converts muscles to fast twitch or something like that, if someone could point to something saying that is practical then that would give more credibility to the PED hypothesis. I wonder if it turns out that you can do gene doping with no adverse side effects whether it will be considered cheating or be acceptable.