wtf klokov isn't natty??? 😱

The question is " Who in the weightlifting world is not on PEDs ? "

Am I surprised? No. Is Klokov still my favorite? Yes. 🏋🏽‍♂️

that "caught" tho, does anyone in the right mind genuinely believe that pro weightlifters are natural?

"Everyone's on steroids" - Sun Tzu

If they had two divisions, on gear and no gear, I’m willing to bet that people would still get popped for gear in the clean division. The desire to win will always trump common decency.

If they definitively proved he DIDN’T juice, I would drop dead where I stand

I would like to add, I own a biotech/biochem research company. My company has actually been contracted to do several studies on a multitude of anabolic compounds. There ARE better ways to test for steroids, but most importantly... there ARE safer ways to use steroids where athletes can get the most out of it without overdoing it. We are in the 5th year of a 15 year study on Turinabol. Let's just say the results so far have shown that most athletes using it - are using way more than they need to get the results they desire. Anything you put in your body meant to benefit has a point of diminishing return where it becomes detrimental.

Sandbagging, extortion and corruption are always unfortunate. I don't invest myself much in weightlifting as a sport but I practice it and watch it. The beauty in my opinion is found in the journey for the individual rather than competition.

Klokov being caught for doping is about a surprising as Tony Blair being caught for political corruption and for war crimes. Good video though :)

Thanks for doing your content of this style on Sundays. It always gives me something really solid to watch on my only day off!

Oh no! A weightlifting legend who competed against a bunch of other people on gear got busted for using gear! His legacy is RUINED!

Someone needs to break into the lab and steal Usain Bolt's samples quick

That 365 lb strict press was all I needed to assert that

"Our roided-up guy beat your roided-up guy." - Bill Burr (and anyone with a brain who follows weightlifting)

I think the funny thing about doping is that if humans never developed PEDs we would have a more grounded view of what a big lift is. Back before any one really took PEDs there were plenty of people that we deemed impressive. It just really sucks though because if anyone wants to chase their dream of competing at the highest level, they most likely have to consider PEDs.

great vid. appreciate your honesty.

nice to see some actual weightlifting content.

Great video

Thank you Zach for this amazing content which is actually sports related content than some influencer type gym bro bullshit.

nice back ground! May the force be with you

Love the way you pronounce all those names

Klokov is a beast - even by taking all the best steroids available, very few ppl in the world can match his lifts

Damn, that means I'll never do a 200kg pause snatch.

I'm 72 and been involved in powerlifting (age 23 to 59) and Olympic lifting (59 to ???). Best of luck Zack, great stuff. Keep winning, be a champion of truth. It's simple not complicated. I tell the lifters I train, " The smell of 'bull's wool' can drift through the 🤳 phone."

I ran your technique and capacity 2 then strong like bull. Loved it.

Happy to be part of that 3%. 🙋🏻‍♀️

USADA is not that crazy in all sports. We (in bobsled) almost always knew when they would start coming around and do their pre season/off season testing while living at the training center. It was very routine for the most part and very scheduled. Also, living in a different country but competing for USA I NEVER got tested by USADA in the off season while training at home.

"Lady and gentlemen..." A personal greeting from Zack, nice! And a good day to you, too. Though 3% of 160,000 means there are another 4800 of us out there lurking. :-) On topic, agree broadly with your stance. Great to see big lifts, but I'd really rather it were done natural. If the playing field is supposed to be level, it should actually *be* level. And the corruption you describe is appalling.

Sorry for the multiple comments. Just been a fan of yours for years since the early Thrall and Juji collabs and I love your content. Also, you asked for opinions. 😆

Aww man…. Next we are going to find out Alexander Karelin isn’t natty either.

I’m a simple man, I see thumbnail of Geoff, and I stop what I’m doing and click

I'm shocked. SHOCKED!!!

Great depth and speed on the 400 lb squat.

There are books about how the IOC withholds positive tests when they choose to. I gave up on the idea of a natural athlete long long ago.

The surprised pikachu meme thumbnail was the best, fits like a glove

Klokov pause snatching 200 kilos, What do you mean he's doping???

Hahah "lady and gentlemen" that killed me man. Shout out to the one lady whose watching this

As someone else said, if weightlifters were natural the clean and jerk world records would barely be equivalent to snatch world records nowadays. Not to bring up my country India which is not at all dominant in weightlifting it's very weird that the clean and jerk record in the (85-96 kg class) the one in which tian Tao, meso and toshiki compete is 197 kilos whereas I'm pretty sure there are lifters in that class who have snatched that in training if not in competition. Edit : Clarence himself has a snatch of 195 but I'm not sure of his bodyweight, so Idk if it helps😅

Cool background bruh!

Zac with that Turnstile Love Connection. ❤️ Respect went up!

That's pretty DOPE

You said "lunch time entertainment " as I took my first bite of lunch...

Oh no Klokov on gear?! ...anyway,

I mean this really isn’t anything we weightlifting fans didn’t know, I still like watching his lifts

Shoutout turnstile 💪

Klokov spoke about being on "pharmaceuticals" before. It's well-known on the inside everybody is on.

Still recording videos even when on Coruscant, nice

These days you can get better advice on gear use from reddit than you can from a physician because the people on reddit will at least be honest. As a natural, I have absolutely nothing against people using steroids. I have trained and fought in amateur Muay Thai for 13 years. I am a 4th Dan in Kendo with 8 years of experience. I have never had any intent to use gear, because I have never had the intent to compete on a national or international level. But for those who do? To be the best, you gotta beat the best...and all of the best are on gear. I fully support anyone who wants to pursue their dream of being a champion powerlifter, weightlifter, strongman, bodybuilder, etc... my hope is that in the future there will be avenues for them to do that in a healthier and more closely monitored fashion. We can never hope for a "natty" division in any strength sport. Unless someone decides at a very young age they want to be an Olympic Champion in weightlifting and you test them every week until they make the podium you can't fully verify their natty status. And even then, the teams behind the scenes will take every step and precaution necessary to try and give their guy an edge. Whether that's developing new undetectable compounds, new methods of flushing, or even ways to cheat "baseline profiles of normalcy" for the individual athlete.

I think you have to be a bit gullible to assume that anyone on the world stage in any sport isn't on drugs. By definition these people would just have their place taken by people with similar genetics + drugs if that was the case. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if heavy stimulants/nootropics were used in even sports like chess.

who could've ever saw this coming

Shocker 😲 I'm literally stunned 😱😰

What if I told you they all were on the sauce? You can't exist at the top of any professional, competitive sport without some type of PED usage. Think about it from the perspective of these athletes. Their lives and families depend on their success. Some athletes are just better at hiding it or paying off the testers.

Love the turnstile shirt!!

Diggin the Tutnstile t-shirt

At this point I almost have stopped caring about the sport. It’s gotten so apathetic that this Saturday I competed and went in with the game plan that I’d rather bomb out than hit a low total so I went balls to the wall, opened 1 kilo under my comp PR, made it, went up 4 kilos, stood it up only to have it overturned and could not have cared less. Scratched my third cause I hit my goal on my second even though it wasn’t credited because I just could not care less about the rules of the sport. Just went there to hit heavy weights regardless of what the sport said is a good performance. I don’t even keep track of what meets come up anymore, don’t try to time my day to see certain sessions, the sport has just made us all care way less about the competition and it feels like we’re just here to see big lifts and not give a fuck about the system as a whole anymore.

"5 Russian test positive" -> definitely not politically motivated

Very interesting video..as a former lifter all this information really shock me...may i ask to you to make a video about the bulgarian disqualification in Seoul 1988...which according to the bulgarian version was due to a soviet boycott....

"Top level athlete isn't natural". WHO CARES LOL, give Lance his medals back.

Back in the day the best thing that ever happened to powerlifting was........the emergence of drug free powerlifting organizations. ADFPA founded in Pennsylvania in 1980. Not matter what argument you can put up the fact was it was an organization where the top administrators held the same anti doping values. It saved the sport. God bless the late meet director Al Siegel. Rest in peace.

Honestly if they get busted they should be put into non tested category for records and stuff

Maybe this isnt the video to comment this but w/e. As an ex swedish marine who loves lifting/running, I have always wondered; what if the military was allowed to use PEDs, with the help of doctors/experts to the limit where its ”not dangerous” anymore. Just a thought I had to share..

Now I am intrigued. Who is that unicorn lady that's watching this channel?!?

I had a vegan mozerella and pesto sandwich for lunch today Zach. Hope you enjoy this information.

I think retroactive testing is a really good idea, but how often does it get used or is it even practical? Like what determines the samples they keep and how many federations for any sport are doing it?

The Olympics need an untested category for each sport and event. Then, all tested athletes must only take blood tests as their primary means of testing.

“Lady and gentlemen…” Hi Zack. Nice to be noticed.

Lol we always knew. We're still going to fawn over him though.

Lu and Shi, see you guys in 10 years :)

I’ve been a KZfaq binge watcher for 10 years and I still don’t know what patreon is

Is it really that hard to test the winners immediately or all lifters before the olympics?

I guess my favorite aesthetic natty weightlifter is now lu xiao jun or Clarence

I want to say it used to be just 1% lady, now we’re up to 3! Nice. I sadly agree that there is very little chance of weightlifting being on the program for 2028. The tradition of doping in so many historically successful weightlifting nations will not be broken. They will win medals on the international stage, or they will stop weightlifting. They won’t be in a B session or get 10th. It sucks.

Not related to weightlifting, but I'm digging the Turnstile shirt. Awesome band.

Well he can almost strict press as much as Larry Wheels (with much cleaner form), so I don't think anyone should be surprised by that lol

Very good band.

Thoughts on there being “natural” and “enhanced” categories in weightlifting? Would we see more records being broken in the enhanced category? Would there be lifters trying to get away with doping in the natural category?

In other news, we have a damn Giraffe making great youtube videos.

Okay, here is a crazy idea I just had. What if people developed weight lifting suits in the sense the could enhance your lifts, like what's happening in equiped powerlifting? Then you choose, take whatever drugs you want, or use the suits and compete clean. Yes given the nature of suits and these lifts, I don't know how feasible this could realistically be. Nor have I any ideas what kind of numbers one could put up blasting drugs relative to these suits. But the goal would be getting the suits to more competitive so no one would want to take drugs. But you still get the issue of people trying to beat the drug tests in the suits. So yeah I guess maybe you offer two (or three based on market demand) divisions the natural raw, and anything goes, and then if the market wants it natural suited. And the anything goes category is only for bragging rights, while the others can actually have money and what not on the line. Frankly I like strongman's approach in a lot of ways, I think you can find some tested shows at the lower levels but at the very top it is anything goes ped wise. And frankly I think that is at least one of the most fair ways to do it. Yes you know laws on what is legal wear makes it's harder to say get to the top tier. But let's be real I don't think anyone who has spent a few years lifting thinks wsm guys are natural at this point. There are some guys in the past who probably were natural or relatively close to it, but the sport is too big now. I feel weight lifting should find away to actually make things fair, so anything goes might just have to be the rule for a while, ideally while anything goes you build up a big loyal fan base you use to make a bunch of money to eventually make two options anything goes, and well tested, then you move athlete's over to well tested with monetary incentives, and you hope to move those fans of those athletes with them. Similar to how the UFC addressed this issue. But I think that weightlifting will have to lose its place at the Olympics for a bit, and it's going to have to grow despite that loss of publicity. Only once it's well drug tested do I think there is a chance it comes back to the Olympics. Frankly the sport needs to grow before it will be taken seriously again. It's one thing to be a sport that many people only remember exists when the Olympics roles around, it's an other entirely to be as currupt or worse than the boxing in the Olympics, while it's more boring to watch than say curling, and it gets almost no tv time as a sport even in the Olympics. But I do like the movements and practicing them, I also will enjoy watching competitions from time to time. But I am well aware this sport it frankly hard to watch, hard to advertise, and it has a hard time selling advertising to get more money into the sport. Frankly you have to make snatching and clean and jerks truly popular. Once the question is what do you snatch, in stead of what do you bench, and clean instead of squat then you will have a chance. Personally, I think you will have better odds at making the moments popular if you try to make a new organization like powerlifting. But here is the real pitch, power lifting is popular, but it doesn't have one real unified body, so a new organization should become that body and you have a 5 lift total. Why does that matter? People like bigger totals so that helps with marketing over powerlifting, it also helps recruit talent from two sports, it also puts a premium on powerlifters being fast and mobile, since here they actually do need to be great at producing power and not just moving heavy weights.

I would like to say: “all drugs can be used” just to see the big Clarence on stage

Powerlifting has tested and untested federations. Perhaps adopting that for WL would help a little, although it's very possible that there are people doping under the radar in tested. However, having the avenue for untested, go as hard as you'd like and juice beyond belief without consequence would at least decrease the likelihood because why go through the stress of cycling while tested when you can just go 100% full bore with no consequences? So yeah, my thoughts on this are categories. Let the juicers juice with each other and set wild records like in Strongman, Powerlifting, and etc.

Damn the part about corruption of IWF was absurd to me. I meam that guy who was told to perform bad. You train all your life, you're in your best shape ever but you can't express yourself. And Olimpcs are only once every 4 years, you're lucky if you can attend even 4 and you have to give up one of them, wow

He was taking his vitamins

Retroactive testing is paradoxical. In a sport where PEDs aren't allowed, you have to have it, otherwise you'll miss cheats, and then fans can't invest meaning into the results and records. But if you do have it, the results and records can change at any time in the future, so how do the fans invest meaning into them when they know that the athletes on the podium probaby won't be the same a year later?

Cool to be filming from coruscant

I mean when you think about how strict the UFC is with drugs and everyone is still doping, any other sport doesn't come as a surprise. I just feel bad for athletes who get the short end of the stick - like when Lance Armstrong became public enemy no1 even though he was cheating as much as everyone else at his level. I understand athletes don't want to come clean about gear, but people like the Rock and Whalberg really should. Steroids are everywhere, and people need to realise that

Could you review my squats ?

no one is surprised... still a legend though.

Look at dudes skin appearance and his density along with the intensity it was super obvious to me

Where could I find that background?

At 12:10 does zack means that lu xio jun has been popped for drugs?

Is it only a matter of time when we will see lasha be caught out?

Shocking

Yo! Sick turnstile shirt.

And let's be real we really never here the track and field community talk about steroids and they get popped quite a bit

Wow.... who would have guessed....

Hey! I'm part of the 3.3%.

I'd love to give a nuanced take, but it really is as simple as allowing PEDs. The benefits greatly outweigh the downsides.

Do you believe it to be as rampant in top IPF powerlifting?

...And nobody is surprised.