Anabolic steroids are one of the most popular performance – enhancing drugs at present. It is similar to the male sex hormone, testosterone. They are very effective for building your muscles. Just like testosterone which gives men their muscular appearance, anabolic steroids also work by enhancing your musculature, especially your upper body muscle mass.

This is one of the main reason why it appeals so much to baseball players, because they need to develop their upper body strength to help them in pitching and batting movements. Similarly, it also appeals to football players who need to develop the same group of muscles in order to help them achieve adequate “brute” force.

However, according to specialists, although steroids can help in muscle mass development, they do not have any advantage when it comes to speed. It cannot also be of much help in hand -eye coordination movements.

Anabolic steroids can bring about some unfavorable side effects like shrunken testicles, hormonal imbalances and high blood pressure. Plus, it also gets easily detected in screening tests. That is why some elite athletes are opting for man-made growth hormones. They mimic our natural human growth hormone (HGH). They are much harder to detect and they create a more balanced bodybuilding effect, so users would not have a top-heavy appearance.

From Boston.com:

Steroids are especially seductive for baseball players, where upper-body strength - for batting and pitching - are critical. Similarly, the man-made chemicals would appeal to football players, who also depend on upper-body brute force.

While steroids can help athletes pack a wallop, they aren’t likely to increase speed and would have no use in honing hand-eye coordination, specialists said. They also can lead to a raft of physical problems for users, including severe hormonal imbalances, shrunken testicles, and high blood pressure.