Doping and the perfect body expert: social and cultural indicators of performance-enhancing drug use in Danish gyms

Abstract

Most doping studies focus on the incidence of performance-enhancing drugs and devote little attention to the training sphere or the social factors involved in this process. In this study, Danish doping data from different social arenas of sport and physical exercise (7,039 respondents) form the basis for analyses of the relative importance of social indicators. More respondents from gyms admitted to having experimented with legal as well as banned performance-enhancing substances than did respondents among elite athletes, and the relative importance of education is only indicated among gym users with experience of anabolic-androgenic steroids compared to respondents within the sphere of competitive sport. These results are discussed in the light of findings from qualitative studies of the doping phenomenon. Two patterns of doping practices are discernible in the analysis: whereas aesthetic modification appears to be a primary goal behind certain training regimes and the potential use of pharmaceutical substances in gym and fitness culture, the desire to improve physical capacity appears to underlie the training regimes as well as the use of certain pharmaceutical substances in competitive sports. It is argued that the notion of the perfect body expert is useful in developing a theoretical understanding of the role of drug use within physical training spheres while conceiving different patterns of doping practices.