Why So Many Top Strongman Competitors Cheat - And Why It’s Bigger Than Just Bad Decisions

“Why So Many Top Strongman Competitors Cheat - And Why It’s Bigger Than Just Bad Decisions”

The cultural, physiological, and systemic factors no one’s willing to talk about.

🔔 Content note: This article discusses infidelity, emotional trauma, and psychological collapse in strength sport. If you’ve been personally affected by any of these issues, please read with care. It’s not written to provoke  it’- s written to unpack what’s rarely talked about, but often felt.

Setting the Frame

This isn’t a callout piece. It’s not gossip. It’s not moral grandstanding. And it’s definitely not me pretending I haven’t made mistakes of my own.

I’m not here to judge - I’m here to explain what I’ve seen across years in this sport: as a coach, an athlete, and someone who actually cares about what happens to lifters outside of comp day.

Because if we keep pretending this is just “some guys being bad guys,” we’ll never talk about the deeper systems at play - the ones that enable, excuse, or even reward that behaviour. And if we don’t talk about those systems, we’ll keep feeding the machine that burns lifters out and tears relationships apart.

What This Isn’t

• It’s not a moral lesson

• It’s not a justification

• It’s not about specific people

• It’s not blaming partners

• And it’s not excusing betrayal

What This Is

• A breakdown of why this happens so often at the elite level

• A look at the invisible systems and incentives in strength sport

• A blunt but honest reflection on what gets lost in the chase for greatness

This isn’t about tearing anyone down - and it’s definitely not about justifying betrayal. It’s about making space for a more honest conversation before we keep putting people on pedestals they can’t stay on. Because strength athletes aren’t superheroes. They’re people - complex, messy, and sometimes deeply flawed. And the more we idolise them without understanding the pressures they’re under, the more likely we are to get hurt, disappointed, or disillusioned. So this isn’t just about them. It’s about us - and staying grounded on our own journey, without losing ourselves in someone else’s highlight reel.

The Identity–Performance Spiral

At the elite level of strength sport, what you do and who you are often become indistinguishable.

You’re not “someone who competes in strongman.” You’re a strongman. It’s your job, your reputation, your community, your status, and - like it or not - it’s how people talk about you when you’re not in the room.

And when your body is your career, your brand, and your power? The line between identity and performance completely collapses.

For a lot of lifters - especially those who’ve worked for over a decade to reach the international level - their entire self-worth becomes tied to dominance:

• Winning the event.

• Being the strongest in the room.

• Getting the sponsorship.

• Being the one people watch, talk about, and want to be around.

And that’s when something quietly dangerous happens: Validation stops being optional. It becomes survival.

Confidence or Compulsion?

What looks like confidence from the outside - swagger, presence, bravado - is often masking an internal instability. Because if your worth is built entirely on your last lift, your last placing, your last show of strength… then what happens when you don’t win? Or when your body starts to break down? Or when you’re injured, losing, or out of the spotlight?

That instability doesn’t always show up as a breakdown. It often shows up as impulsivity, control-seeking, and self-sabotage. And for some athletes, that leads to cheating - not as a cold, calculated betrayal, but as a reflexive attempt to reclaim a sense of power or desirability in the moment.

Not every act of infidelity in this world is about sex. Sometimes it’s about being seen when you feel invisible. Sometimes it’s about control when everything else feels chaotic. Sometimes it’s just a pressure valve for years of unprocessed identity collapse - in a sport that doesn’t allow vulnerability.

Not Just Male Athletes

This isn’t exclusive to men. While the dynamics might play out differently, anyone whose identity is consumed by performance - male, female, non-binary - is vulnerable to the same spiral. Especially in strength sports, where hyper-focus on physicality, competitiveness, and public perception cuts across gender lines.

Female athletes in strength sports often face different but equally intense pressures:

• To be strong but attractive

• Dominant in the gym, submissive in relationships

• Marketable, likeable, brand-safe

• Everything, to everyone, all at once

The weight of those contradictory roles can create just as much internal instability - and just as many coping mechanisms. They may play out differently, but the root is the same: when who you are is reduced to how you perform, intimacy becomes transactional.

This isn’t about excusing behaviour. But if we want to understand why it happens - and why it’s so common in strength sport - we have to start here: When your identity is only safe at the top, you'll do anything to avoid falling.

The PED Factor - Biology on Overdrive

Let’s get this out of the way early: This doesn’t justify a single thing. No chemical, no compound, no cycle excuses betrayal or broken trust. But to pretend that performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) don’t impact behaviour - especially around sex, impulse control, and emotional volatility - is naïve at best and dishonest at worst.

Because they do. And anyone in strength sport knows it, even if we don’t talk about it openly.

Supercharged Biology, Impaired Brakes

Most PEDs increase strength, size, and recovery. But that’s not all they do. They also:

• Raise testosterone and other androgens

• Spike dopamine and reward-seeking behaviour

• Alter emotional regulation and aggression

• Reduce impulse control

Certain compounds - like Trenbolone - are notorious for turning the dial up to 11.

• Higher libido

• Restlessness

• Irritability

• Paranoia

• Sudden emotional swings

• Zero patience, zero filter

It’s not just bro-science - it’s well-documented in both user experience and pharmacology. Tren, in particular, has been informally dubbed “relationship killer” in more than one powerlifting circle. Not because the drug forces cheating - but because it amplifies every base instinct while dimming the warning lights that usually keep behaviour in check.

Add in Lifestyle Pressure and It’s a Perfect Storm

PEDs don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re part of a lifestyle that often includes:

• 6,000–10,000 calories a day

• Chronic sleep disruption

• Joint pain, inflammation, and injury management

• Preps that demand everything from the athlete and nothing from anyone else

In this setting, self-regulation isn’t just compromised - it’s exhausted.

And when your body is overstimulated, your brain is flooded with aggression and libido, and your environment rewards dominance without accountability? That’s when cheating becomes less about decision-making and more about reaction. Not uncontrollable. Not unavoidable. But undeniably more likely.

It Still Comes Down to Choice - But the Odds Are Skewed

This doesn’t mean every enhanced athlete cheats. It doesn’t mean PEDs make people unfaithful. And it definitely doesn’t mean anyone gets a free pass because they were “on something.”

But it does mean that we should stop pretending PED use has no psychological consequence. Especially when it’s stacked on top of ego, instability, and a culture that rarely tells its top lifters “no.”

You can hold people accountable and understand the forces acting on them. That’s not enabling. That’s coaching. That’s leadership. That’s real-life nuance - something strength sport could use a hell of a lot more of.

Not Conventionally Attractive… Until They Are

There’s a pattern no one wants to say out loud - but most people in the scene know it when they see it.

A lot of top-tier strongmen didn’t grow up being the hot guy. They weren’t the kid picked first. They weren’t dating models in sixth form. They weren’t the ones society put on a pedestal.

They were too big, too awkward, too quiet, too intense. The kind of kid who grew into a man with callused hands, old injuries, and a resting face that says don’t talk to me. Not “swipe-right” material - until suddenly, they are.

TV-Worthy Power Changes the Game

Every December in the UK, World’s Strongest Man becomes primetime viewing. It’s on TV next to Christmas specials and Bond films - something your gran, your mum, your gym mates, and your Tinder date all happen to catch. For a few weeks of the year, these men become household names.

And even outside of TV, the shift happens fast:

• You get noticed at expos.

• You gain followers.

• People DM you.

• People watch you eat, train, breathe.

That’s status. Add a physique built like a mythological figure, and suddenly you’ve gained what the dating world calls “sexual capital.”

Whether or not they were ever conventionally attractive by cultural standards, strength sport makes them desirable.

The Trap of Newfound Power

For men who never held social power before strength gave it to them, that attention can be intoxicating - and confusing.

Especially if they’ve spent most of their life being overlooked, underestimated, or dismissed. The sudden validation - sexual, social, emotional - can feel like everything they’ve ever wanted, all at once.

This isn’t just about ego. It’s about:

• Feeling seen

• Feeling wanted

• Feeling in control for the first time

And when you add that to all the other factors - PEDs, pressure, identity collapse - you start to see how the context creates vulnerability to behaviour most people think is just about “bad choices.”

The Role of the Strength Community

Let’s be honest: our community doesn’t exactly discourage this. There’s often a quiet hero-worship of athletes who “pull and press and pull birds too.” Infidelity is joked about, dismissed, or outright enabled - as long as the lifts are good and the sponsors are happy.

This doesn’t excuse anything. But it does explain how certain behaviours become normalised - even when they hurt people.

It’s not that fame makes people cheat. It’s that fame + unprocessed trauma + sudden power + no accountability is a dangerous cocktail. And if we pretend it’s not part of the sport’s culture, we’re lying to ourselves.

Power Imbalances Are Everywhere in Strength Sport

Strength sport is full of unspoken hierarchies. Some of them are obvious - who wins, who’s sponsored, who’s on the posters. Others are more subtle - who gets access, who gets platformed, who gets protected.

And within those hierarchies, power imbalances are everywhere:

• Coach → athlete

• Sponsor → athlete

• Promoter → athlete

• Influencer → follower

• Big name → fan

None of these relationships are automatically abusive or unethical - but they’re almost always asymmetrical. One person has more reach, more clout, more money, more pull. The other wants something - a place on the team, a repost, an in, a shot.

And when power, praise, and physique are all part of the package, it’s easy for boundaries to blur, and even easier for people to get hurt in the process.

The Grey Zone of “Consent” in Strength Culture

This is where it gets uncomfortable - but it’s where the truth lives:

Sometimes, women do seek out known names in the scene. Sometimes it’s about attraction. Sometimes it’s about proximity to power. Sometimes it’s just human curiosity - what’s it like to be with the guy everyone’s talking about?

That complicates things - but it doesn’t erase the ethical boundaries. Just because someone wanted the attention doesn’t mean they weren’t manipulated. Just because a relationship was “technically consensual” doesn’t mean the power dynamic wasn’t skewed beyond recognition.

And let’s not pretend this is a uniquely strength-sport issue. Society pushes this dynamic constantly.

• Status = desirability

• Strength = dominance

• Fame = access From pro athletes to Love Island contestants, this narrative is baked into how we view sex, attraction, and success - especially for men.

Echo Chambers and Untouchable Status

Here’s the real kicker: This behaviour rarely affects careers.

If anything, the worst that happens is a quiet rumour, a private message, or someone being awkward at a gym comp. But in most cases?

• Sponsors stay

• Promoters keep booking

• Teammates don’t say anything

• Followers move on

Many top strongmen operate in echo chambers where no one tells them no. Not because everyone around them agrees - but because everyone’s afraid of losing access, money, or affiliation.

That doesn’t make the athlete evil. But it does create an environment where consequences don’t happen - and where not cheating actually requires more discipline and integrity than most people realise.

If we’re going to talk honestly about why cheating is so common at the elite level, we have to talk about power. Not just muscles. Actual power. And until that part of the conversation becomes mainstream, the silence will keep doing damage - to athletes, to partners, and to the culture itself.

Competing at the Top Attracts the more Mentally Unstable

(Not as an insult - as a truth.)

Let’s be clear: Saying elite strength sport attracts the mentally unwell is not a dig. It’s not disrespect. It’s not an armchair diagnosis.

It’s a reflection of what we see, over and over again, in the people who actually make it to the top.

Obsession Isn’t a Side Effect - It’s the Entry Fee

You don’t get to World’s Strongest Man or the Arnolds by being balanced. You don’t win national titles by being chill, well-rounded, and prioritising “work–life balance.” You get there by being obsessed. All in. Consumed. And that kind of obsession often grows out of trauma, instability, or dysfunction.

• Controlling the body when you can’t control anything else

• Chasing validation because nothing else feels real

• Replacing therapy with training, stress with stimulants, fear with force

Strength sport isn’t just a competition for many lifters - it’s a coping mechanism. And the culture rewards that. It celebrates it. “I’m not like everyone else.” “I’m willing to suffer more.” “I’ll die for this.”

Strength as Escape - and Justification

A lot of the strongest athletes are not emotionally grounded. And when they find strongman, powerlifting, bodybuilding - they don’t just find a sport. They find:

• A way to channel their chaos

• A community that sees their pain as “discipline”

• A reason to keep ignoring everything else in their life that’s broken

Strength becomes both the escape and the excuse.

The industry doesn’t challenge this. In fact, it often incentivises it:

• Brands love the “tortured badass” image

• Promoters love the lifter who’ll go through anything to win

• Fans love the monster more than the man

So the lifter keeps pushing. Keeps breaking. Keeps detaching.

And That’s When the Damage Happens

When you combine:

• Poor emotional regulation

• A growing sense of entitlement

• Constant adoration and external validation

• A sport that celebrates self-destruction

• And a growing lack of empathy for others...

You get someone who is highly vulnerable to impulsive, hurtful behaviour. Not because they’re evil - but because they’re unchecked, emotionally raw, and surrounded by people who reward the mask and ignore the man behind it.

This doesn’t mean every elite athlete is unstable. It doesn’t mean mental illness = infidelity. And it doesn’t mean you have to be broken to be strong.

But if we want to talk honestly about why cheating is so common in top-tier strength sport, we need to acknowledge this:

 You can’t build a culture around obsession, dominance, and emotional suppression - and then act surprised when lifters make choices rooted in dysfunction.

The Culture Enables It

This doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Infidelity at the top levels of strongman isn’t just about the individual lifter making a bad choice in a moment of weakness. It’s about a culture that sees the red flags - and looks the other way.

The Silence Is Deafening

Most people around the athlete know. Teammates, coaches, training partners - they’ve heard the stories, seen the DMs, clocked the changes in behaviour. But almost nobody says a word.

Why?

Because no one wants to rock the boat. Especially not when someone’s prepping for the Arnolds, the WSM qualifiers, or an international stage. The thinking is:

“This isn’t the time.” “Not my business.” “We need him focused.” “She’ll never find out anyway.” “Let’s get through the comp first.”

So the silence becomes part of the system. Not because everyone agrees with the behaviour - but because the machine runs more smoothly when no one questions the driver.

Fans Don’t Care, Promoters Care Even Less

Fans will cheer no matter what. Sponsors post the win, repost the PR, share the trophy pic. No one’s asking whether the athlete’s personal life just imploded. No one’s asking who got hurt.

And why would they? Performance is the only currency that matters. As long as the lifts keep going up, the cheating, lying, or emotional wreckage off the platform doesn’t impact the athlete’s brand. If anything, the “bad boy” image just makes them more marketable.

Promoters know this. So they protect the image. They’re not going to pull an athlete from a show for sleeping around. They’re not going to cut ties for ethical reasons. In fact, if the athlete is drawing crowds and clicks, their private life becomes an asset - not a liability.

Partners Are Left in the Dark - Or Left Behind

Meanwhile, the person at home - the one who’s supported every meal prep, every long session, every early flight - is left to wonder why they feel so alone.

And it’s important to say this plainly: The cheating isn’t always “about” them. It’s not a reflection of their worth, beauty, or commitment. More often, it’s a by-product of everything else:

• Ego overload

• Emotional immaturity

• The pedestal the athlete has been put on

• The silence from everyone who could’ve said something, but didn’t

That makes it worse. Because now it’s not just betrayal - it’s betrayal sanctioned by the entire system.

If you want to understand why so many top strongmen cheat, you have to understand this: The culture allows it. It doesn’t just tolerate it - it enables it. And until that changes, nothing else will.

The Cost - and the Quiet Fallout

It’s easy to dismiss cheating in strength sport as “just personal stuff.” Private decisions. Private consequences. What happens off the platform stays off the platform… right?

But it never really works like that.

Because the fallout is rarely loud - but it’s always real.

Relationships Break

People get hurt. Trust gets destroyed. Long-term partners - the ones who supported every prep, sat in cold arenas, ran the ice baths, packed the food, and did the real emotional labour - often walk away, not just heartbroken, but wiped out. Not just by the betrayal, but by the realisation that everyone else probably knew and said nothing.

And what’s worse: strength sport doesn’t leave much space for healing. There’s always another comp. Another training cycle. Another distraction. No time to process. Just pressure to move on.

Kids Lose Stable Homes

This part doesn’t get talked about - ever. But some of these lifters are parents. And when cheating blows up a relationship, it’s not just two adults figuring out who gets the air fryer. It’s custody arrangements. Lost weekends. Emotional instability. Kids wondering why mum’s sad, why dad’s gone, or why the vibe at home is different.

And no one posts that on Instagram.

Athletes Feel Empty After the Podium

Cheating doesn’t just hurt others - it corrodes the athlete, too. Some don’t feel anything at first. Some feel powerful. Desired. Untouchable. But eventually, the PRs stop. The crowds fade. The DM requests slow down.

And that’s when the emotional bill comes due - when you realise you’ve hit your biggest total and feel nothing. When the person you built your life with is gone. When the people around you respect your lifts but don’t actually know you.

The emptiness isn’t hypothetical. It’s reported, often, by those who’ve “made it.” But by then, the damage has already been done.

Sometimes, cheating doesn’t happen during prep - it happens after the win.

Not because of celebration, but because of emptiness.

When the goal is hit and there’s nothing left - when the cameras turn off and the DMs quiet down - some athletes realise the success they built their entire identity around didn’t fix the broken parts they were running from. That’s when the crash comes. And for some, infidelity becomes a misguided attempt to feel anything at all. Not pleasure. Not even power. Just something, to fill the vacuum that even the biggest trophy can’t touch.

Not Everyone Gets Called Out - But Many Quietly Implode

This isn’t about “cancel culture.” Very few lifters ever get publicly held accountable for cheating. It’s whispered about in gyms. Talked about in group chats. Sometimes it gets ignored altogether.

But the damage still catches up.

The lifter drinks more. Starts missing sessions. Ghosts clients. Loses sponsors. Burns out.

It’s not always dramatic. But it’s always there - the slow erosion of integrity, connection, and purpose.

Some People Lose Faith in the Sport Itself

When cheating becomes normalised at the top, everyone pays. Athletes lower down the ladder lose respect for the people they used to admire. Partners grow cynical about supporting prep. Fans stop believing the hype. And some people - lifters, coaches, supporters - quietly walk away from the sport altogether.

Not because of one affair. But because of the culture that pretends none of this matters.

Cheating in strongman isn’t just a private mistake. It’s a pattern with real consequences - for people, for families, for the future of the sport. And pretending otherwise doesn’t protect anyone. It just makes it more likely to happen again.

Other Contributing Factors Nobody Talks About

Not every case of cheating can be traced to fame, PEDs, or identity collapse. Sometimes, the reasons are quieter. More internal. More cultural. But just as real.

Here are four more dynamics that rarely get discussed - but explain a lot about why infidelity shows up so often at the top of strength sport.

The “Entitlement Loop” from Sacrifice

When you’ve sacrificed your body, finances, mental health, and social life to get strong, a quiet narrative starts to build in your head:

“I deserve something in return.”

That something might be admiration, attention, comfort, or sex - even if it violates commitments or hurts someone else. It’s rarely planned. It’s an emotional rationalisation loop that builds slowly over time:

“No one sees how hard I work.” “I’m always in pain, always tired.” “This one thing is for me.”

And just like that, cheating doesn’t feel like betrayal - it feels like a reward. An outlet. A small reclaiming of power in a life where everything else is dictated by sets, reps, bodyweight, and performance. They know it’s wrong. But it feels earned.

Hyper-Masculine Group Dynamics

In some lifting circles, cheating isn’t just tolerated - it’s encouraged.

You’ll hear it called “side quests,” “treating yourself,” or “just what happens on tour.” It becomes part of the banter. A way to prove status. A performance of dominance that fits neatly into the broader mythos of being an “alpha.”

This is especially common in groups where emotional maturity is low, and where worth is built on:

• Fear

• Followers

• Fame

• Force

In those environments, faithfulness isn’t a virtue - it’s a punchline. And the peer pressure to conform doesn’t stop when the session ends. It follows lifters into hotel rooms, expo booths, and DMs.

Lack of Real Consequences

One of the biggest reasons this keeps happening? There’s almost never any real fallout.

• Sponsors (generally) don’t drop athletes for cheating.

• Promoters don’t bench them.

• Followers don’t unfollow.

• Coaches don’t intervene.

• Teammates don’t call it out.

Even when the behaviour is widely known, there’s no professional cost. And when you’re being rewarded for strength, not character, why would you change?

Now this isn’t saying that all of these should be the consequences - its just highlighting the fact that they aren’t.

The end result is a system where cheating becomes a risk-free behaviour - especially for those at the top. And the longer that dynamic holds, the more common it becomes.

Emotional Outsourcing to the Gym

For a lot of strength athletes, the gym isn’t just a place to train. It’s the only place they know how to feel.

Training becomes the outlet for everything - anger, anxiety, grief, fear. And for a while, that works. Until it doesn’t.

Because if the gym is the only space where emotions get processed, relationships start to dry up.

• Conflict doesn’t get resolved.

• Communication shuts down.

• Intimacy disappears.

Partners feel neglected or rejected. And eventually, the athlete starts to look elsewhere - not always for connection, but for escape. Cheating becomes the shortcut to emotional intensity in a life where real emotional connection has been replaced by barbell work.

It’s not about attraction. It’s about aliveness. And many lifters don’t even realise it’s happening until they’ve already blown up everything they once cared about.

Attachment Style and Abandonment Issues

A lot of elite athletes come from instability - emotionally inconsistent homes, absent parents, or early relationships that taught them love wasn’t safe or reliable. As a result, they develop insecure attachment styles: anxious, avoidant, or some volatile mix of the two.

They might:

• Crave connection but fear intimacy

• Lash out or pull away when someone gets too close

• Self-sabotage when things feel “too good”

Cheating, in this context, isn’t about sexual conquest - it’s often about preemptively controlling rejection. If you cheat, you can’t be abandoned. If you destroy the connection first, it can’t be taken from you later. It’s a trauma loop disguised as dominance - and it leaves everyone involved worse off.

Travel, Distance, and Disconnection

Strongmen at the top spend huge chunks of the year away:

• Competing internationally

• Attending expos

• Doing sponsor shoots

• Training at gyms far from home

This creates both physical distance and emotional separation from their partner - and in that gap, old boundaries can blur fast.

When you’re living out of hotel rooms, surrounded by fans, and disconnected from everyday life, it’s easy to feel like the rules don’t apply here. Temptation feels less real. Consequences feel far away. And loneliness starts to get mistaken for opportunity.

A lot of affairs happen on the road - not because the athlete is a villain, but because no one helped them build guardrails for when life became unstructured.

Narcissism and Self-Objectification

Strength sport rewards attention-seeking. Social media amplifies it. Sponsors feed it. And somewhere along the way, some athletes start to believe their own myth.

This isn’t full-blown narcissistic personality disorder - but many lifters develop narcissistic traits:

• Needing to be admired constantly

• Viewing themselves as exceptional or untouchable

• Treating others as tools, fans, or distractions rather than people

At the same time, training creates extreme self-objectification - constantly monitoring your body, your image, your output. And when you objectify yourself for performance or likes, it’s easy to start objectifying others too. Relationships become transactional. People become props.

And cheating becomes just another thing you can do - because you can.

Parasocial DMs and 24/7 Access

Strength athletes aren’t just admired from afar anymore - they’re messaged directly. Flirty comments. Sexual DMs. Fans with zero boundaries.

What begins as dopamine-fuelled praise can quickly turn into a slippery slope:

• “It’s just a reply.”

• “It’s just banter.”

• “She messaged me first.”

• “I didn’t initiate it.”

This illusion of detachment - the idea that it doesn’t “count” if it’s through a screen - makes digital infidelity dangerously easy. And once emotional cheating starts, physical cheating often follows.

The athlete might not even recognise what’s happening until it’s too late. Because online, everything feels consequence-free - until it spills into real life.

Moral Injury and Internal Conflict

Not every strongman who cheats is cold-hearted. Some wrestle with it deeply. They know it’s wrong. They feel shame, guilt, and disconnection - but don’t know how to stop.

Why?

Because by the time it registers as a problem, they’ve often already told themselves:

“I’m a bad person.” “This is who I am now.” “There’s no coming back.”

That creates moral injury - the psychological trauma of violating your own values repeatedly until your identity collapses. This internal pain doesn’t lead to reflection. It often leads to more self-destruction:

• Drinking

• Avoidance

• More cheating

• Emotional numbness disguised as “focus”

And the longer it goes unaddressed, the harder it is to rebuild a version of strength that includes integrity.

Body Dysmorphia, Validation Loops, and “Strength Isn’t Enough” Syndrome

Even at the elite level, many strength athletes still don’t feel attractive - because they’ve internalised the idea that size ≠ desirability. The result?

• They chase aesthetic validation on top of strength validation.

• Compliments about appearance - not performance - hit harder emotionally.

• Cheating sometimes becomes a way to prove they’re desirable outside of just the barbell.

This is especially true for those who never received romantic attention before they were strong - and still don’t trust the attention they get now.

Addictive Personality Traits & Novelty-Seeking

The mindset that gets you to 400kg deadlifts is often the same wiring that makes someone more prone to addiction or self-sabotage. Whether it’s training, PEDs, sex, caffeine, pain, or praise - some athletes are addicted to novelty and stimulation. And if one high fades? They chase the next one. That includes:

• Flirting

• Risky encounters

• The thrill of “getting away with it”

For these lifters, cheating isn’t about dissatisfaction - it’s about dopamine maintenance.

Unbalanced or Transactional Relationships at Home

A difficult truth: not all athlete–partner dynamics are healthy to begin with. Sometimes:

• The relationship was built around support, not mutuality.

• The partner becomes more of a manager than a lover.

• Communication has collapsed after years of sacrifice.

That’s not justification. But it creates an emotional vacuum - and many athletes don’t have the skills or willingness to fix it the right way. So they outsource intimacy instead.

Community Silence Teaches the Next Generation

Even younger lifters see this play out - and learn the wrong lesson. If your idol cheats and no one says anything? If teammates quietly enable it? If coaches laugh it off?

You don’t just absorb that behaviour - you expect it to be part of the deal at the top.

That creates a cultural lineage of unaccountability where each generation of athletes inherits the same silent code:

“Get strong enough and the rules stop applying.”

This Isn’t About Condemnation. It’s About Context.

This isn’t a hit piece. It’s not finger-pointing. It’s not moralism from a pulpit built on hypocrisy - because let’s be honest, most of the people doing the loudest judging aren’t any better. They’re just not as visible.

This is about context - because strength athletes deserve to understand the systems they’re in.

The incentives, the pressures, the echo chambers, the biology, the power dynamics - all of it. Because if you don’t see the machine clearly, you can’t choose how to move through it. And you sure as hell can’t protect yourself - or the people around you - from the cost of playing at this level.

Coaches need to stop pretending it’s not happening. Fans need to stop pretending it doesn’t matter. And athletes - especially the ones chasing greatness - need to get honest about what they’re actually sacrificing to be here.

Because it’s not just time, money, and calories. It’s connection. It’s trust. It’s the kind of discipline that actually lasts after the comps are over and the cameras turn off.

Strength without discipline isn’t strength at all. 

And if we don’t start having these conversations - hard, awkward, necessary conversations - someone else will.

And odds are, they’ll be a lot less qualified, and a lot more interested in tearing people down than in telling the truth.

So let’s tell the truth now. While we still can.

Before silence does more damage than honesty ever could.

So if you’re chasing greatness - are you ready for what it might cost you, outside of the gym?

Not just physically, but relationally. Emotionally. Ethically.

Because the danger isn’t just that you’ll lose yourself in the process - it’s that you’ll hurt other people while you do.

And if you think this could never be you, ask yourself one thing:

When was the last time someone in your circle told you no - and you actually listened?

This article addresses systemic issues in strength sport. It is not directed at any individual athlete or incident, and no assumptions should be made about specific cases.

Disclaimer: This article deliberately does not address issues of intimate partner violence (IPV). That topic requires its own focused discussion, handled with the appropriate care, expertise, and support resources it deserves. The aim here is to explore broader systemic and cultural dynamics-not to conflate them with abuse.