Some Gold’s Gym franchises are distancing themselves from bodybuilders and weightlifters due to the association of anabolic steroid use among these groups. Tom Martini, the owner of Gold’s Gym in Stoughton, believes that there are fewer steroids users at his gym because it is designed to attract more individuals interested in aerobics and fitness programs (”Stoughton gym owner addresses steroid incident,” October 2).
Martini said his gym does its best to discourage steroid use, but it’s impossible to keep people from talking about them when they come to the gym. He says young men, in particular, are mesmerized by the big-muscle look glamorized in health and fitness magazines.
“The young guys want the look, and it’s easy,” Martini said. Martini says he thinks his gym, which has a variety of aerobic and fitness programs, has fewer steroid users than gyms that are mostly geared to body builders and weightlifters.
Curt James found an interesting video of former Gold’s Gym co-owner and CFO Ed Connors. Ed Connors is interviewed by IFBB pro bodybuilder David Dearth during the 2006 Olympia Weekend. Connors is disillusioned by the current state of professional bodybuilding, referring to it as a “freak show.”
Well, I really feel that somehow I had this dream for bodybuilding and the gym business and I kind of see what’s on stage as sort of perversion of that. I’m not crazy about where bodybuilding is. I wouldn’t want to look like most of the guys on stage these days. I’d rather look like the guys that I consider, like you; that were part of the golden era of body building. I think that’s what a lot of people in America aspire to. And you motivate them. I think unfortunately it’s become kind of a freak show.
Connors feels that participants are more interested in anabolic steroid information and anabolic pharmacology than training and nutrition knowledge. … Read the rest of this entry »
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