I didn't say geared people "have to" work harder.
I said that geared people "work harder"
Meaning that because you can recover much quicker and eat more and create more muscle, you work harder and harder.. lift more weight, do more sets/reps, train more frequently.
All of this means you are working harder than the non geared fella because you can.
Assume you take a pair of twins.
say 25 years old, 5'10", 85kg, 12% body fat.
Both have identical lifts, and look identical in terms of body shape and size.
If one of them was given good gear at good dosages and sorted out his PCT at the end, and the other did nothing different in regards to supps/gear, and both of them did the exact same workouts using the same weights/sets/reps/rest/frequency.... and ate the same foods etc... at the end of the trial, geared bro would probably be in better shape.
Had the geared bro been allowed to train more weight/sets/reps/frequency (which the gear would have allowed him to recover from), and eat more like he would have wanted to, he would be in even better shape.
Honestly, if someone said to me... Hey, this here gear will solve all your knee/back/shoulder/elbow problems, I'd sign up.
But even as a lifter that does comps in an untested federation, I wouldn't bother using gear to get better.
Just not wired that way in the brain area.
lol... one of my dogs gets shots every 6 months for her arthiritis in the elbows... called Zydax I think... The last visit I actually asked the Vet if it had been trialed on humans... apparently it has and it doesn't have the same effect... spewin...
TLDR? gear "allows" you to train harder and so you do... that's the main reason to take them...
Obviously there are many different steroids and some have different effects, but all in all, you can get bigger and stronger, faster than without.