Dr. Mike Israetel – an exercise science professor, famous YouTuber, as well as a BJJ black belt – weighed in on Gordon Ryan’s claim that he could have reached the same level in his career without PEDs.
Ryan, widely regarded as the greatest modern grappler, made the case in a recent interview:
Do you need ste**ids to be the best athlete in the world? No, I don’t think so.
I think that I could have done all this natural, and I could have been the best in the world without st**oids.
What I do believe is that you need st**oids to be the best version of yourself as an athlete.
Dr. Mike’s acknowledged that Jiu-Jitsu is somewhat unique in how heavily technical mastery outweighs raw physical advantage, but he didn’t fully back Ryan’s claim:
Depends on the sport. In Jiu-Jitsu, no, but they sure help.
He did agree with the second half of Ryan’s statement, that steroids help athletes reach their physical ceiling:
Absolutely. They just enhance you. There’s a reason people take them.
It’s not cuz they make you worse.
Israetel was clear that Ryan’s dominance comes primarily from elite technique and tactical planning rather than physical edge alone, describing him as “a master technician and tactician” who sequences attacks in advance and systematically eliminates his opponents’ options.
He also noted that among performance factors, steroids rank well behind weight training and mat time:
There is no st*roid you can take that makes you that much better at Jiu-Jitsu compared to, like, adding a session a week of Jiu-Jitsu.
Lifting weights is going to make you better at jiu-jitsu than taking ster*ids.
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