Josh Saunders is a two-time ADCC veteran and one of the top over 99kg competitors in the world right now, and he’s just revealed that he uses PEDs. Given that ADCC is one of the many organizations in the Jiu-Jitsu world that does not have any kind of anti-doping policy and does not test athletes, it should come as no surprise that elite competitors will choose to use PEDs. In fact, Saunders is far from the first ADCC veteran to reveal a history with PEDs and there are undoubtedly going to be many more who simply choose to remain silent about their usage.
To his credit, Saunders actually starts about by addressing this immediately:
“The gigantic elephant in the room that nobody thinks is a secret is that anabolics are used within the sport of Jiu-Jitsu and for the gross majority of federations, it is largely untested.”
There is one promotion that tests their competitors of course, the IBJJF. Although rather than employing any kind of randomised testing, the IBJJF simply tests the winners of a tiny handful of it’s biggest tournaments. Saunders was clear about what he thought of that policy:
“Really what they’re saying there is it’s an intelligence test. You just come off a couple of weeks beforehand or you just duck the podium altogether, you claim the victory without providing a positive test.”
Despite the fact that PEDs are so incredibly common in BJJ, Josh Saunders is one of just a tiny handful of competitors who have been this refreshingly open and honest about the subject. Fellow Australian Craig Jones has revealed the ‘stack’ that he takes, but Saunders has even explained the background of how he came to take them:
“The reason I decided to do it initially was that after ten years of weightlifting, I was always interested in it and I basically gave myself that very base limit to see what I could achieve naturally. Now people are gonna be for or against this argument, it’s not your decision so I don’t really need the opinion. That was my minimal effective dose for me to see what I was capable of in a ten-year timespan. This also neatly coincided with the fact that I used to be in a tested sport, in Rugby League, I was subject to 8 or 9 USADA tests.”
Just through that experience alone, Josh Saunders has actually been tested for PEDs more than almost all elite BJJ competitors ever would be. Obviously that testing stopped when he left the sport, but his decision to begin PEDs wasn’t immediate:
“I didn’t plan on taking it for Jiu-Jitsu, I was taking it whilst doing it, I think I started when I was a blue belt. It was never to get an edge in Jiu-Jitsu, it was literally out of just pure curiosity.”
Although Josh Saunders is being open and honest about his usage of PEDs, he’s very clear that he’s not advocating that anyone else should follow the same path. He also references a recent accusation from Mikey Musumeci that there are kids in BJJ taking PEDs:
“I’ve had thousands of conversations with younger individuals between the ages of 16, sometimes even neighbouring even 14 and 15 which is terrifying, all the way up into their mid-20s about whether or not they should do it or not and every single time I say ‘no, don’t do it.’ Reason being is that they haven’t got the necessary education to make a good decision, they do not understand that it is a lifetime decision.”
”Typically they’re taking it as a result of wanting some sort of shortcut to a means to an end. They’re very outcome-fixated on their goal and they’re only thinking about their goal in terms of a 12-week timeline. It’s a very short window where they’re probably going to do things that cannot be maintained for a long period of time, which means that the side-effects are heightened to a massive degree.”
Saunders also addresses the idea that all BJJ competitors are taking PEDs too, which is something that those more knowledgeable about it’s prevalence in the sport might say:
“There’s many athletes in the sport who are extremely good who either are, or claim to be, natural. We’re obviously not going to be able to decide one way or the other whichever they are, but if they are… by all means, good for them. If they’re not, they’re lying t**ds and they should be outed. Don’t think that you have to do it, don’t think that it’s necessary.”
Josh Saunders revealed his usage of PEDs and gave his reasons for doing so in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
