Dr. Mike Israetel of Renaissance Periodization, a college professor of exercise science, competitive bodybuilder, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, recently offered his take on Gordon Ryan‘s assertion that he could have achieved the same results in his career without performance-enhancing drugs.
Ryan, widely considered the greatest modern grappler, made the claim during an interview.
He said, “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 initial reaction to the first part of that statement was a simple, telling “Huh,” signaling skepticism. When he had the chance to respond directly, he acknowledged that jiu-jitsu is unique among sports in that technical mastery matters far more than raw physical advantage, but he stopped short of endorsing Ryan’s claim.
“Depends on the sport,” Dr. Mike said. “In Jiu-Jitsu, no, but they sure help.”
Israetel did agree with the second half of Ryan’s statement, that st**oids help athletes become the best version of themselves.
“Absolutely,” he said. “They just enhance you. There’s a reason people take them. It’s not cuz they make you worse.”
He was clear that Ryan’s greatness is primarily rooted in elite technique and tactical intelligence, not physical advantage alone, describing Ryan as “a master technician and tactician” who plans sequences in advance and systematically closes off his opponents’ options. He also noted that even among performance-enhancing approaches, roids rank behind weight training and mat time as factors in jiu-jitsu performance.
“There is no st**oid you can take that makes you that much better at Jiu-Jitsu compared to like adding a session a week of Jiu-Jitsu,” he explained. “Lifting weights is going to make you better at jiu-jitsu than taking ster**ds.”
Ryan has been open about his PED use for years, noting that jiu-jitsu organizations had no testing protocols when he began, making their use permissible at the time.
