Performance
After Steroids, the New Juice

In baseball and throughout sports, athletes seek the next competitive edge
By RUSSELL ADAMS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 22, 2005; Page P7

Walk into the training rooms of the Chicago White Sox and you won't hear any talk about chemical concoctions that build muscle overnight, as that topic is now taboo around the league. But you may see pitcher Dustin Hermanson squatting awkwardly on a $10,000 machine that jolts every muscle in his body 25 to 30 times per second.

Steroids, officially at least, are now out of the picture, thanks to the crackdown by Congress and professional sports. That has given new urgency to an already intense search for new ways to get athletes to run faster and jump higher, from machines to protein shakes to oxygen-deficient chambers.

Before games, Texas Rangers players jolt their calves and hamstrings for a minute or two with a hand-held unit they call the jackhammer to stimulate fast-twitch muscle fibers, which are the key to quickness. Players on the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox stand on vibrating plates while they squat-lift hundreds of pounds, in order to stretch and massage the muscles while they work. Other athletes are using drugs intended for asthmatics to relax muscles around their airways and help them breathe.

The consensus in professional sports is that the stepped-up effort to get rid of steroids has cut down significantly on the number of players taking them, mainly because it has increased the chances of getting caught. In baseball, the shrunken physiques of some players, combined with the declining numbers of home runs, support that conclusion. Still, some players continue to test their luck. Just this week, Mets reliever Felix Heredia became the eleventh pro baseball player punished under the stricter steroid-testing guidelines introduced this year.

Knocking a fraction of a second off a player's 40-yard-dash time or increasing his vertical jump by an inch helps win games -- and makes players and teams richer. As a result, they will go to great lengths to find pills and gadgets that give them an edge.

Teams are reluctant to talk about training and rehabilitation methods, but we spoke with sports doctors, technology companies and athletic trainers in all four major leagues to find out about some of the hot new techniques, as well as some older ones that are starting to gain greater acceptance. A few of them are available at select, higher-end gyms, but in most cases, you'll have to become a professional athlete to reap any benefits. Here's what we found.

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Some athletes stand on the vibrating Power Plate while weight-lifting.

Technique: Vibration

Concept: By shaking the muscles while working out, the player gets stronger faster.

The skinny: The idea that you can shake someone into shape has many skeptics, but it's getting a fresh look in pro sports. A growing number of teams are using a device called the Power Plate, which looks like a fancy scale but has a mechanism underneath that vibrates 30-50 times a second. Users don't have to do anything but stay in a quarter-squat, but elite athletes often incorporate weight-lifting exercises. The VibraFlex, which the White Sox use, is an adaptation of the same technology.

Availability: At a limited number of health and fitness clubs throughout the country.

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Oxysox and other sports socks claim to help pump blood back to the heart.

Technique: The oxygenating sock

Concept: A special sport sock aids in pumping blood that collects in the calf muscle back up to the heart.

The skinny: Athletes who complain of heavy legs at the end of games or workouts really are talking about the buildup of blood below the knee, which hinders endurance and explosiveness. It also makes it harder to fit into skates, which is why one of the makers of these compression socks, Oxysox, has been embraced by the National Hockey League.

Availability: They are popular among professionals who work on their feet, like flight attendants, and widely available at sports equipment and apparel retailers.

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Technique: Chemical help

Concept: Athletes are getting more creative in using supplements and drugs intended to treat illnesses or other conditions.

The skinny: Olympic athletes increasingly are taking beta agonists, drugs designed to help asthmatics breathe. ACTH, a pituitary hormone, is increasingly popular among athletes because it is believed to promote healing. And inderal, a beta blocker designed for people with high blood pressure, is commonly used by athletes as a tool to fight jitters. These substances aren't always legal -- some leagues ban them.

Because the nutritional-supplement industry isn't regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, supplement companies can easily misrepresent the contents of products. Case in point: Ephedra, now banned by the major pro-sports leagues, sometimes can show up in products under names like bitter orange. But there are plenty of supplements that don't show up on drug tests.

Availability: Supplements are widely available at health stores, but aren't vetted through normal regulatory channels -- so do research before taking them. And experts don't recommend using drugs like beta agonists and hormones like ACTH for performance purposes.

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Technique: Mobile eye tracking

Concept: It's looking in the right place, not the quality of your vision, that translates to performance.

The skinny: A Canadian doctor several years ago developed the concept of the quiet eye, an athlete's ability to keep his eyes on a target, whether a basketball hoop or a baseball's seams. Until recently, the device that records the subject's gaze was too cumbersome for most fast-moving athletes. But the recent development of a smaller, lighter-weight device has caught the interest of a few NBA and MLB teams.

Availability: Unless you have $20,000 to spend, you're out of luck.

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Technique: The "dynamic" warm-up

Concept: Stationary stretching, a staple of sport warm-ups for decades, isn't the best way to prepare the body for physical exertion.

The skinny: If you can't remember the last time you touched your toes, don't feel too bad. Neither can Brian Roberts, the Baltimore Orioles' All-Star second-baseman. That's because Mr. Roberts no longer warms up standing in place. The trend is toward more aerobic warm-ups focused on movements players are likely to make in a game or practice. A growing number of pitchers now warm up on an upper-body ergometer, which is like a stationary bike for the arms.

Availability: UBEs can be found at many gyms, and most forms of dynamic stretching require minimal equipment.

Write to Russell Adams at russell.adams@wsj.com