You’ve spent hours and hours practicing your sport…wrestling, basketball, soccer, WHATEVER. You’ve gotten tired, sore, and even hurt sometimes trying to improve your body and your skill. You’ve made sacrifices – lots of them. Practicing and playing were more important to you than watching TV, sleeping over the weekend, or even hanging out with your friends after school.

And, it was worth it! Your time and effort and sacrifice paid off. You’ve become a better athlete because of all the practicing, and competing. What’s more, you’re really proud of yourself. But your pride in your self-discipline and your success has a catch to it. The catch is that some of your fellow athletes didn’t put their all into practicing and improving, like you did. While you were running, lifting and sweating, they were sitting on the sidelines a lot of the time, taking shortcuts. They were using performance enhancers like EPHEDRA or STEROIDS. It totally sucks!  There you are doing it the hard way, practicing and competing with and against other kids while they’re juicing up with chemicals that make them BIGGER, FASTER, and STRONGER.

Angry as you are about their taking the easy way out, you know it's not the right way.  The junk they put into their bodies can be dangerous. Often, it’s not even legal to use despite what the manufacturers of these products claim, their stuff doesn’t really work.
That’s why you’ll continue to PLAY IT SMART. Your self-discipline and pride in yourself will give you the strength to say, “NO” whenever a teammate, a coach or an advertiser tries to offer you a quick fix.

There’s no such thing as muscles in a bottle.  In sports, as in life there are no shortcuts to success. If you want to perform better, don’t let unsafe performance enhancers control you. Be in control of yourself with your own hard work and persistence.